Mint.com

For those of you who do not have a bookkeeping software, or are new to keeping track of your finances, I present: Mint.com

Mint.com automatically updates your transactions nightly, and automatically categorizes as well (though you can change the categories if it gets it wrong). Setting up a budget is pretty easy, and you can see your spending trends, and even ore importantly, your cash flow.

Cash flow is basically just the difference between the money you bring in, and the money that goes out. Positive cash flow means you spend less than you earn (yay!), but in this world of credit, it is easy to have a negative cash flow, especially if its only a little negative, and not notice. Its the main contributor to that feeling of never getting ahead. Even as you move forward with a raise or something, you've been picking away at that raise with a negative cash flow, till you wonder where all your money went!

Mint.com fits in PERFECTLY with Your Money or Your Life. Step 2 in YMOYL is to track every penny that comes into or out of your life, and Mint.com is a great way to do it. Caveat: It only works if your banks, credit cards, and loans are supported by the software. If you are at a major bank, no worries. Even one of our credit unions was supported. But the other one, no luck. And no way to enter it in manually either. So that's a bummer.

But if you bank at (lets say) Bank of America, have credit cards with BofA, Capital One, and Chase, have student loans with Sallie Mae, and a car loan with GMAC, you are golden. All those accounts will automatically update, and all you need to do s make sure everything categorizes correctly (Fresh & Easy, for example, shows up as uncategorized....I guess it is kinda new as a Grocery store tho), and have a budget entered in. Note: it categorizes well for the most part, though you will need to categorize checks and cash purchases yourself.

It give you email alerts when you close to your budgeted spending, or when a credit card bill is due (no help on those utility bills tho), gives you a month by month graph of your cash flow (a BIG motivator) and, as it tracks your spending habits, can recommend services (such as rewards cards and high yield savings acccounts) that would help you save money by being focused exactly on how you like to spend.

All in all, a great service for those who are learning how to track their finances, and helpful if you want to check your eating out budget right when say, a coworker invites you to lunch (everything is online). However, for those of us who have moved beyond simply categorizing our spending, or who want to keep track of all bill due dates(not just credit cards), or who have accounts that are not supported by Mint.com yet, keep your at home bookkeeping software.