Mint.com

I wrote this at the airport on Sunday night, but never got a chance to post it:

As I sit here at the airport, bored out of my mind, I figure I could weave together a quick blog post to pass the time. I've recently started using a new peronal finance manager, mint.com. I heard about it a while ago, but was a little wary because it connects to your banks accounts to calculate your remaing balance and update your records. I got over it and decided to try it out.

Traditionally, I would use Excel to track my budget, but I decided to try an upgrade. Mint is actually pretty cool. It downloads all of the transactions from your account (it supports a bunch of banks) and auto-categorizes them - the tedious process I used to do manually. It can then create charts and graphs showing your cash flow and where your money goes.

You can even set up budget lines for various expenditures (e.g. $x for dining out) and it can alert you when you come close to blowing your budget.

If you are as obsessive about your finances as I am, mint might be worth a look. If you're not, you should be. :)

--Chris

P.S. I wrote this whole post on my treo, so please excuse typos.