Free Online Tools To Help With Your Budget

One of the most popular New Year's resolutions is to finally make a budget and stick with it. In many cases, the people who are making those resolutions are finally realizing that they're not going to get anywhere financially until they take care of their money and figure out where it's going. After all, how can you cut unnecessary spending if you have absolutely no idea what you do with your money once it lands in your account?

The good thing about the Internet is that it often provides us with tools that are free to use, whereas just a few years ago, we would have had to pay for the same privilege. Here's a partial 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 subscription ($3 a month), this software is now absolutely free. Users of the standalone version of Quicken will certainly find it lacking in terms of advanced features (like investment tracking, for example), but in all fairness it's a decent offering and its feature list is very good: automatic nightly updates from your bank accounts and credit cards, bill payment reminders via text message or email, and customization options. It a solid choice.

Mint. The site is easy to use: opening an account and entering your banking and credit card information is done in mere minutes, and Mint pulls all of your balance and transaction information. Some nice touches: on top of breaking 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 patterns.

Geezeo. Geezeo is a free online money management system that also lets you discuss ideas with others. Settings up your accounts only take a few simple steps to complete and they will be automatically updated 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 system and social networking service built into one application, a la Wesabe.

Buxfer. With its no-frills design, Buxfer keeps the focus on balancing your checkbook and performing some basic money management and financial planning. This software is specifically targeted towards the younger crowd, with its specialized iPhone and Blackberry access interfaces. It makes splitting, managing, tracking money easier and lot more fun for its young users. However, the service restricts itself to bare-bones financial management. High-end financial planning and advice are clearly not the focus here.

Wesabe. Wesabe is a community-based personal finance site which allows users to track their bank accounts while sharing money tips and goals, with a strong community of users who continually help each other through the very active forums. Tying all this together is the software's tagging system. Everything on the site can be tagged, be it a transaction, a tip, or a goal. The tags are visible to the community and make it that much easier to see what's "normal" for a spending category, or to get tips and set goals.

This is by no means a complete list, as new services and sites are popping up every day (or so it seems). But the aforementioned options should give you a solid base on which to build your search for your very own ideal tool to help with your budget.

Seed Newsvine

Bookmark this article in your preferred program

Comments

Add Comment

Popular Articles in this cathegory

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.