Mint.com

If you are like me and deal with multiple financial institutions, and have multiple people using those accounts, you know that keeping track of your expenses can be time consuming.

There are many options for tracking your finances both on and offline, but my personal choice has been Mint.com.

Mint loads and tracks all your balances and transactions from your various accounts for you to be able to access all from one location, for FREE (my favorite word). They also offer budgeting tools that are super helpful to keep your spending on track. There is even a way to set financial goals for yourself, and track your progress towards meeting those goals.

My two big questions when researching Mint were 1) Why is it free, what's the catch? And 2) Is my information safe?

Mint can afford to be free because advertisers pay them to advise you to try their products. You will receive advice from Mint regarding lowering your insurance premiums by switching to one of their partners, lowering credit interest by transferring balances to a partners card, etc.

Regarding the safety of their services check out this fellow bloggers post. http://www.brokegradstudent.com/mint-myths-debunked/

Basically, Mint is secure and while they know about your finances, they know nothing about you personally.

My favorite part of Mint are the reminders and alerts. I get texts or emails if I've exceeded my budget in a certain area, if I have a credit card payment coming up, or if my balance is low in my checking account. Bottom line is that the program is a quick and easy way to see where your money is going each month, with that knowledge you can make better decisions about where you can really cut back.

What do you use to keep track of your spending and budget?