If you have numerous bank accounts and finding it difficult to manage all the financial accounts, there are tools available over the web that will help you to manage all the accounts in one place.
Most popular among the tools are Microsoft Money and Quicken. There are als0 other tools available. To name a few
www.quickenonline.com
www.mvelopes.com
www.wesabe.com
www.mint.com I have used Microsoft Money,
Mint.com and recently started using
GeeZeo. I personally feel comfortable in using
GeeZeo than
Mint.com or Microsoft Money.
Microsoft Money has more features, but if you have account with Bank of America, you will have to pay a monthly fee to get account updates. So, I prefer using Mint or
GeeZeo.
So, get started and play around to see what features they provide, that could help you track each penny. When number of bank accounts ( Checkings, Savings, Credit Card, Loan, ..) increases it will be difficult to manage all the accounts.
These web based applications makes life much more easier. Tags features offered by
GeeZeo is more handy. It helps to associate a transaction to specif tag that you can save to Smart Folder for easy access.
As you can see, in the picture,
GeeZeo lets you to set budget and track your spending. Mint.com provides a different view tracking the spending, but again its my personal choice to prefer
GeeZeo over
Mint.com. The picture on left shows how GeeZeo budget interface looks.
The picture on left shows how the Spending Trends interface in Mint look. As the name says 'Mint - Refreshing Money Management'. Also, Mint allows to create Email Alerts. I'm still playing with GeeZeo to understand its features. I also found the groups and blog very useful. The Tags feature in GeeZeo, where you can see what others users are saving, and their goals gives you more encouragement when you actually get to see their progress they made in paying off the debt or reaching their financial goal.
I was talking to a friend of mine over the weekend, who said, he still don't know anything about 401(K). He was also worried that he couldn't save much and not sure where the money he earns goes at the end of the day. These above 2 web application will help track the spending.