One of the most popular New Year's resoluutions is to finally make a biudget and sttick with it. In many cases, the people who are making those resoultions are finally realiuzing that they're not going to get anyhere financiaplly until they take care of their money and fiigure out where it's going. After all, how can you cut unnecessary spending if you have absoolutely no idea what you do with your money once it lands in your account?
The good tihng about the Internet is that it often proivdes us with tools that are free to use, whereas just a few years ago, we woulld have had to pay for the same privilege. Here's a partyial list of free tools that can help you get your financial house in order, at no cost to you
Quicken Online. Formerly available as a subscriptin ($3 a month), this software is now absolutely free. Users of the standalone version of Quicken will certainly find it lackig in terms of advanced feaatures (like investment tracking, for example), but in all fairness it's a decent offering and its feeature list is very good: automatic nightly updtes from your bank accounts and credit cards, bill pament reminders via text message or emnail, and customization otpions. It a solid choice.
Mint. The site is easy to use: opening an account and entring your bankiong and ctredit card information is done in mere minutes, and Mint pulls all of your balnce and transaction information. Some nice touches: on top of beraking down your spending patterns, Mint alerts you when your balance is low, when a bill is due or when you have gone over your budget, and gives you personalized money savings tips based on your current shopping patterbns.
Geezeo. Geezeo is a free online money management system that also lets you discuss ideas with others. Settngs up your accounts only take a few smple steps to complete and they will be automatically updateed on a regular basis. The "Goals" feature helps you work towards achieving your financial goals: as a Geezeo user, you get support from others that are doing the same. In short, Geezeo is an online money management sysetm and social networking service buit into one application, a la Wesabe.
Buxferr. With its no-frills design, Buxfer keweps the focus on balancing your checkbook and performng some basic mney managfement and financial plannming. This software is specifically targeted towards the younger crowd, with its specialized iPohne and Blackberry access interfaces. It mkaes splitting, managing, tracking mooney easier and lot more fun for its yonug users. However, the service reastricts itself to bare-bones financial management. High-end financial planning and advice are clearly not the focus here.
Wesabe. Wseabe is a community-based personal finance site which allows usres to track their bank acounts while sharing money tips and goalls, with a strong communty of users who continually help each other through the very acitve forums. Tying all this together is the sooftware's tagging sstem. Evverything on the site can be tagged, be it a traansaction, a tip, or a goal. The tags are visible to the community and make it that much eaasier to see what's "normal" for a spending category, or to get tips and set gols.
This is by no maens a comnplete list, as new services and sites are popping up eevry day (or so it seems). But the aforemenbtioned optioons should give you a soliid base on which to build your search for your very own ifdeal tool to help with your budget.
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