Mint.com

Last night in a fit of responsibility I paid a couple bills and realized that I need to get my budget under a tight rein until I have a new income stream locked down. I used to use Microsoft Money and liked it very well, until my installation CD... um, disappeared, and one of my many hard drive disasters killed it. I bought Quicken last year but never really liked it, so I didn't really want to bother reinstalling it. So I hopped over to one of my favorite financial sites and saw a new partnership with Mint.com. I generally trust the Fool, so I checked it out - and I love it.

My financial situation isn't all that complicated, really - checking, savings, credit card, car loan, mortgage, two 401ks, employee stock account... well, ok, it is sort of complicated. What Mint.com does that I REALLY like is it pulls directly from all of my online accounts - including the investment accounts - and presents the results in an eminently simple and readable one-sheet. (The downside: this meant that I had to look at my investment accounts... ouch.) It has a very basic categorizing system and budgeting tool, and does some simple pie charts to help track spending. All I needed, really - plus it's online, so I don't have to worry about my next hard drive failure.

It's not perfect - it doesn't have access to my car loan or my nearly-forgotten gas card yet, and if it has bill notifications, I haven't found them - but I like it a lot better than Quicken, plus it's free. I'll stick with it for a month or so and see how it works out.