Mint.com

Mint is a great FREE online money management and budgeting site.  I’ve been using it for about a year now and I love it.  I use it mainly to keep track of accounts, but (as noted here) it is much more than just a simple account management site.  There is no way I can do the entire site justice in this entry, so let’s highlight five favorite features – in no particular order:

• Real-time personal balance sheets.  This is great (sometimes depressing).  You enter your banking, investments, retirement and other accounts.  You enter your credit cards, mortgages, personal loans, car loans.  You enter everything you own (well, not everything because that would just take way too long).  Then, Mint logs in to all of your accounts, does all of the math and tells you your net worth.  So when your investments lose value – you see it (sometimes feel it).  And when you pay off debt or save extra money, you see it!  Good stuff.
• Bill reminders.  This works alongside the personal balance sheet function.  It is pretty much what it sounds like.  After you enter all of your account information you can set a reminder that a bill is due.  No more excuses!
• Budgeting.  You can input a budget and Mint helps you stick to it.  It’s not perfect, but can scan your purchases on debit/credit cards and allocate it to travel, food, etc.  So when you’ve spent way too much this month on food or clothes, you know about it. 
• Tools and rate finders.  I mentioned one of the tools here.  But Mint has so much more.  I’ll let you explore, but basically you can enter some basic info about what may work for you (average balance for example) and Mint will suggest specific accounts for you – credit cards, checking accounts, savings accounts, CDs, brokerage accounts and even retirement accounts.  And if you sign up for the personal balance sheet / account management, it scans your accounts and makes custom suggestions for you.  Thanks Mint!
• Blog.  The blog is probably my second favorite function (balance sheet is the most useful for me).  It has great suggestions for handling money wisely.  It’s well organized.  And it’s comprehensive.

So that’s it about Mint for now.  I’m sure I’ll be mentioning it again.  Go explore.  And let me know what you think.  For those of you already using link, let us know your favorite feature in the comments!  If any of you check it out and decide to sign up or expand your use of the site let me know, too!  And also let me know if you save or earn more based on some of Mint’s suggestions!  I would love to hear about it.