BofA portfolio feature

I just know Jenn's gonna kill me for writing an entry about finance stuff. Oh well, she's out to dinner with the "Girls" so I'm free to write whatever I want :)

Did you ever wish you could aggregate real time data from various financial accounts onto one summary page? If you're a nerd like me, you do and the Bank of America website offers an excellent solution to existing customers for free. The feature is called "My Portfolio" and it allows you to link almost any type of online account to your BofA page. You can add your 401k, IRAs, equity accounts, mortgage accounts, saving, checking, other credit cards... you name it and BofA can link to it.

Once all of your online accounts are linked, you can choose to view either a summary of your overall networth (kinda scary if you have a fat mortgage left to pay off :) or a more detailed view that shows up to date information on any securities you currently own. You also have the ability to track your progress over time using their advanced charting capabilities.

Why do I find this so handy? At the beginning of every month, I create an Excel report that details our household networth (sans mortgage). I then compare the current months data with last months data and ensure that we are either flat or (idealy) moving upwards. It's a crude finanical report card.

This process normally takes me about an hour: I gotta log into each account, ensure I pulled the right data, and create all of my reports. Now, all I have to do is log onto BofA and click on the "My Portfolio" link at the top to get the same results.

If you have an account, check it out. I'm confident you'll find that you can't live without this feature once you start using it!