What's a good personal finance management web app that I can use in Canada?
Now, if you're still intrested, Mint.com works also for Canadian banks. Mint Canada Yodlee will also work. I asked a similar question (and provided answers) here. Thrive, so far, is the best in my opinion. Their tech support is top notch and their UI is far superior to Yodlee's (which provides the backend for Mint). I use MoneyStrands (formerly called Expensr), but mostly just to track expenses and look at reports on my spending habits. It has some really pretty charts, with the ability to drill down into categories and sub-categories, or graph monthly spending for any custom date range. It does a half-decent job of auto-categorizing the imported bank transactions, and you can set up additional rules for common vendors, but I still have to do some manual work after each import. It does a good job of integrating my credit cards, bank accounts, and I can even manually add cash transactions. It has some basic budgeting capabilities, but they're not very useful for someone who needs to carefully budget thier monthly spending. Another one I've heard about is mint.com, but it only supports American banks (last I heard, anyway). Here's a link with comparison of various online and offline PF software: http://personalfinancesoftwarereviews.com/compare-personal-finance-software/ Now, keep in mind I'm biased because I'm an engineer at this company, but FutureAdvisor.com provides advice on your savings and investments.  We currently help users optimize their portfolios for retirement savings, but plan on rolling our more savings goals in the future. CashBase has a web app, an iPhone app and an Android app, all sync'ed up. It doesn't integrate with banks automatically, but you can import bank statements as CSV. Disclosure: Filip is CashBase's founder.
Just saw the update: Here's some ETFs for Canada from Vanguard. "Credit scores are not such a big deal in Canada as they are in the US and even some European countries.  One reason for this: the Social Insurance Number (SIN number) isn't used for so many purposes like the Social Security Number (SSN) in the US.  The SIN number isn't even required to get credit (but with some exceptions it is needed to open an interest-bearing savings account, so that the interest income can be reported).  You can refuse to provide the SIN number to most private companies. Canada also has one of the highest per-capita immigration rates of any large country, so new arrivals are expected, and services are geared up for them.  Most of the banks offer special deals for ""New Canadians"".  You should get a credit card (even if just a secured credit card) through them with one of these offers to start a credit file anyway, but there's no need to actually use it much.  Auto-paying a utility bill through the card, and paying it off in full each month, is one way to keep it active.  No need to ever pay any interest. Most major apartment rental firms will expect a good proportion of their renters to be new to Canada, so should have procedures in place to deal with it (such as a higher deposit).  You should not give them your SIN for a credit check, even when you're more established. Same for utilities, they can just charge a higher deposit if they can't credit check you.  For private landlords, everything is negotiable (but see the laws link at the end of this answer). You will later need a credit rating for a mortgage on a house (if not paying cash), so it's worth getting that one token credit card.  Useful for car rental also. Here's a fairly complete summary of the laws on renting in Canada, which includes the maximum deposits that can be asked for, and notice periods." I used to use Quicken, but support for that has been suspended in the UK.  I had started using Mvelopes, but support for that was suspended as well!  What I use now is an IPhone app called IXpenseit to track my spending. If your requirements are hard (must have $1000/month, must have the same or bigger in capital at the end), stocks are a poor choice of investment. However, in many cases, people are willing to tolerate some level of risk to achieve the expected returns. You also do not mention inflation, which can take quite a lot out of your portfolio over the course of ten years. If we make some simplifying assumptions, you want to generate $12,000 a year. You can realistically expect the (whole) stock market, long term (i.e. over time periods substantially longer than 10 years), to return approximately 4 - 5% after factoring in inflation. That means an investment of $240,000 - $300,000 (the math is simplified somewhat here). If you don't care about inflation, you can up the percentage rather somewhat. According to this article, the S&P 500 returned an average of 11.31% from 1928 through 2010 (not factoring in inflation), which would require an investment of approximately $106,100. But! This opens you up to substantial risk. The stock market may go down 30% this year! According to the above article, the S&P returned only 3.54% from 2001 to 2010. Long-term, it goes up, but your investment case is really unsuited to investing in an index to the entire stock market given your requirements. You may be better suited investing primarily in stable bonds, or perhaps a mix of bonds and stocks. Alternatively, you may want to consider even more stable investments such as treasury notes. Treasury notes are all but guaranteed, but with a lousy rate of return. Heck, you could consider a GIC (that may be Canada-only) or even a savings account. There's also the possibility of purchasing an annuity, though almost everyone will advise against such. Personally, I'd go for a mutual fund which invested approximately 70% bonds and the rest in stocks over such a time period. Something like ING Direct's Streetwise Balanced Income Portfolio, if you were in Canada. It substantially lowers your expected return but also lowers your risk. I can't honestly say what the expected return there is; at this point, it's returned 4% per year (before inflation), but has been around only since the beginning of 2008. And to be clear, this is absolutely not free of risk. TD now has crossborder banking so you can set up a no-fee no-interest USD account with Tdbank.com and transfer money and pay bills in the US. You just need a minimum balance of $100. I might try Paypal before going that route though. Mint.com is a web app with an iPhone (and Android) app. Also, You Need A Budget appears to support all three. "I've just recently launched an open source wealth management platform - wealthbot.io ...  ""Webo"" is mostly targeted at RIA's to help the manage multiple portfolios, etc. Take a look at the demo at demo.wealthbot.io, you'll also find links to github, etc. there. It's a rather involved project, but if you are looking for use cases of rebalancing, portfolio accounting, custodian integration, tax loss harvesting, and many other features available at some of the popular robo-advisors, you might find it interesting." "I ended up with YNAB.  It worked quite well, and I highly recommend it.  It does cost money, but I found it saved me far more than its cost in the first month alone, since I saved between $500 and $1000.  And it's flexible;  when you overspend on something you can flex your budget, rather than it breaking and you give up in frustration.  Dropbox support has recently been added, ""cloudifying"" it and making it where the smartphone apps can be really useful.  I use the iPhone app occasionally, having recently transitioned to an iPhone." "Quicken for Mac will track stocks and mutual funds and allows you to set the ""home"" currency." I'm using iBank on my Mac here and that definitely supports different currencies and is also supposed to be able to track investments (I haven't used it to track investments yet, hence the 'supposed to' caveat). "The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) has a page specifically about working with a financial planner or advisor. It's a good starting point if you are thinking about getting a financial professional to help you plan and manage your investments. In the ""Where To Look"" section on that page, FCAC refers to a handful of industry associations. I'll specifically highlight the Financial Planning Standards Council's ""Find a planner"" page, which can help you locate a Certified Financial Planner (CFP). Choose financial advice carefully.  Prefer certified professionals who charge a set fee for service over advisors who work on commission to push investment products.  Commission-based advice is seldom unbiased. MoneySense magazine published a listing last year for where to find a fee-only financial planner, calling it ""The most comprehensive listing of Canadian fee-only financial planners on the web"" — but do note the caveat (near the bottom of the page) that the individuals & firms have not been screened.  Do your own due diligence and check references." I don't know answers that would be specific to Canada but one of the main ETF funds that tracks gold prices is GLD (SPDR Gold Trust) another is IAU (iShares Gold Trust). Also, there are several ETF's that combine different precious metals together and can be traded. You can find a fairly decent list here on the Stock Encylopedia site. I  found that  an application already exists which does virtually everything I want to do with a reasonable interface.  Its called My Personal Index.  It has allowed me  to look at my asset allocation all in one place. I'll have to enter: The features which solve my problems above include:  Note - This is related to an earlier post I made regarding dollar cost averaging and determining rate of returns.   (I finally got off my duff and did something about it) Envudu (envudu.com) looks very promising, and I think what they are planning to put out will do essentially everything you want. It's a single prepaid card, but with a connected app. On the app you choose which budget category you're going to spend on next, and then swipe your card. Your purchase gets deducted from that category. There aren't a ton of details yet on their website (e.g., what happens if you try to swipe on a category that doesn't have the funds available?) and there is going to be a $20/year fee, but I think it meets all of your criteria, even though it's a single card--you'll just need to use a smartphone with it. The idea being that if / when the CAD recovers I could see a gain of ~30%. That is the big if, maybe the USD and CAD will return to their previous exchange rates, maybe the CAD will fall further, you just don't know. You should try to keep a diversified pool of investments, that may include some cash in various currencies but unless you think you will need the money in the next few years it should probablly be mostly in other things. If you do think you will need the money in the next few years it should probablly be in a currency that is stable relative to the things you are likely to need it for.