Day 3: Monitor Your Budget with Mint.com

On Day 1, I talked about creating a realistic budget that accounted for all of your needs and wants and that the most important part of having a budget is sticking to it. One of the best ways I have found to monitor your spending and keeping track of your budget is Mint.com.

Mint.com provides free personal finance software that is linked to your accounts and automatically monitors and categorizes your spending. It provides you with a breakdown of how much your spending in each area, your current net worth, and other important details about your finances.

If you're anything like me, you're probably pretty skeptical about allowing a service access to your personal finance information. But after doing some research I found out that Mint.com has the stamp of approval of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and ABC News just to name a few. After establishing the reputation, I tried it out for myself and it worked great. I never had a problem with the service and never experienced a security breach with regard to any of my financial info.

Mint.com provides an invaluable FREE resource to those trying to stick to a budget, monitor their spending, track investments, save for the future, and reach other financial goals. From experience, Mint.com has opened my eyes to my actual spending habits -- which were far different than what I perceived them to be. What I also love is that it tracked all my accounts in one place. I no longer had to log on to each different online banking account to view my checking, savings, and credit cards and it consolidated its breakdown of my spending across all my accounts not just each individual one.

I highly suggest tying out Mint.com to track your newly formed budget. I hope you find it as useful of a tool as I did.

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