There is a new software that is totally free and can be used for budgeting called Mint.com. I wanted to mention this software because typically financial software can be pretty expensive to buy.
This software has a lot of features that make it pretty useful- including an alert if you happen to go over budget!
You can put all your money in one place and the site is completely secure. You can keep track of everything and print reports at the end of the month to see where things stand for your family, determine spending habits and so on.
Our family uses Quickbooks to manage our finances and my husband actually handles most of the bill paying and entering our expenses. We usually go over everything together once a month to see where we stand but the one thing he complains about frequently is that he has a hard time printing the exact reports that he wants to make things very simple to follow. We just downloaded this software and we are going to see if that makes things a little easier.
The site also has a few other features- like figuring out what kind of car you can afford and if you are looking to pay off debt there is a feature for that. If you are like us, and constantly working to build the savings account- there is also a feature to help with short term and long term goals.
You can check Mint.com out right here.
If anyone else has experience with this software- we’d love to hear your thoughts!
I have used Mint for a few months now. It’s wonderful! My accountant friend who is crazy about budgeting (and checks his Mint account several times a day) told me about it. I checked to make sure it was reputable since it checks your online bank account and credit card accounts etc to give you updated balances. It is really good and if you play around with it you can do a lot with it. You don’t have to download anything, I just go to the website and it can give you alerts too.
My husband and I have been using Mint.com for about 6 months now. I’m not sure how he stumbled upon it, but we have LOVED it! We just wanted something simple that would track our spending and send us alerts when we hit certain thresholds. I love that all of the transactions are categorized so that you can see exactly where your money is going. I have definitely felt more in control of our money since we started using mint.com. And yes, the best part about it is that it’s free! Highly recommended!
I have been using it for the better part of a year now. I love it! It really lets you know where your money is going. Sometimes that is not a happy thing to see, but it’s always helpful.
I actually just found this a couple weeks ago and I LOVE it! I needed an online budget tool, that I could access from wherever I am. The fact that it is free was also huge. It automatically syncs with your accounts every night and once you set a catagory, like gas from Costco, it will always catagorize it as gas. I love it!
i was also able to link my 401k account to my mint and track the stock market trends and the performance of my funds.
Clark Howard mentioned this site on his talk show today – apparently he uses it and likes it. He also recommended http://www.wesabe.com. I’m checking out mint.com now and like it so far!
Mint has been around for quite awhile-I used it for a bit-but I think Quickbooks is MUCH better personally. Quickbooks is also expensive-so if you do not have it Mint is a very good FREE alternative. But not sure, as you mentioned, I would go from Quickbooks to Mint, but it is free to try so give it a whirl!
Julie I think we will do both. Our finances are tricky because my husband has a business and then I have expenses from the blog. So we have 3 accounts basically. He will still use QB but I think we might play with Mint and see if they have better reports than QB offers.
so I just ‘sent’ a reply and it got lost in cyberspace with an error-I hate that! anywho…we also have several business (at least 6 classes and at each has at least 2 sub classes) Mint is ‘prettier’ but I think QB has better reports overall. I think you will love it-in the long run-not sure you will stick with it and QB-but it is worth a shot! It is nice that you can access it from ANYWHERE and it is ALWAYS updated-unlike QB can’t always access it and YOU have to keep it updated. Can’t wait to hear your follow up thoughts in a month or so. It is great-esp. for someone that doesn’t have any ‘financial’ program-it is wonderful. this is a wonderful tool-thanks for sharing with everyone. Have a great night!
~Julie
We used to love mint.com, but since ING Direct upgraded their security log in process, mint.com can’t support it and I cannot get my ING Direct account information. Also, we opened an account with a credit union and mint.com won’t work with that, either. I’ve contacted mint.com about it, and they say they may fix these issues in the future. For now, mint.com is useless to me because most of my financial information is not being updated. I’m bummed because I used to really like mint.com, but not anymore.
@kelly – i use mint (and have for over a year) and I have ing accounts. you just click the fix it button to update your questions and it will work again.
I love mint because I didn’t want to put QB on my work computer and I travel a lot. Mint lets me access it anywhere.