"It is really user-friendly and fast to set up."
After you input your financial information Mint categorizes your balances and transactions automatically every day then provides a one-page snapshot of your spending, income, balances and net worth.
"When we get our statements from various places, it's piecemeal, it's wonderful you can look here and see a pie chart."
Just Thrive is another free website, especially cool if you're trying to save up for something specific, like a home or retirement. Just Thrive does the math and tells you what you need to save and when.
SmartyPig lets you share your saving goal using social networking applications like Facebook or MySpace. That way you can invite others to contribute their financial support.
And the site Zendough is a new program available through TransUnion and since the credit agency already has a lot of your information you have to manually input far fewer items.
Zendough also provides your credit score and lets you easily identify and correct inaccuracies on your credit report. Zendough also alerts you when your identity may have been compromised. But it's only free during a seven day trial after that it's $14.95 per month.
"I think it's worth it if you're going to use it to empower yourself to make positive, financial change."
A lot of these websites can also find you better rates on credit cards, checking accounts, and other things so check out that feature, too.
Meantime, some banks offer free nifty tools. For instance, PNC provides Virtual Wallet, which is also an iPhone app. Features include a bar slider to transfer money between checking, short-term savings, and long-term savings accounts. "Danger Day" alerts help you avoid overdraft fees and Jamie Snyder's favorite feature is called "Punch the Pig"!
"If you want to transfer money to your savings you just click it and it punches it and it makes a little noise and then the money's transferred over."
You can also access your credit report for free once a year from all three credit agencies by going here to annualcreditreport.com.
And some companies provide your credit scores for free as many times as you want no strings attached, they include Credit.com, CreditKarma.com, and Quizzle.com.
For more information:
Mint
Just Thrive
Smarty Pig
Zendough
Virtual Wallet, PNC
annualcreditreport.com
Credit.com
CreditKarma.com
Quizzle.com
