Online Budget Tools

I just wrote about the maximum 401k contribution limits for 2010, (along with the schedule of historical 401k maximum contributions since the IRS started instituting limits in 1987) and the maximum contribution limits have recently come out for 2011.

Those who have extra dollars to sock away will be disappointed to discover that the 2011 401k contribution limits remain exactly the same as they were in 2009 & 2010, at $16,500. In addition, the catch up contribution (for those over 50 years of age) is also left unchanged from 2010, at $5,500.

It’s disappointing since having seen the recent rates on high yield savings accounts, you wouldn’t be earning much by socking it away in a savings account either.

So what’s one to do with any additional funds? An option is to start a Traditional or Roth IRA. You can consider Zecco who currently offers one one of the lowest fees per trade amongst all the discount brokers.

Having a budget is one of the most important factors in achieving financial freedom. It gives you insight into what is really happening with your finances, and allows you to set goals and track your progress against them.

What’s nice is that creating a budget is easier than you think. Here’s how.

1. Gather all your financial documents together. Gather all your bank statements, credit card statements, utility bills, cell phone bills, investment accounts, pay stubs – and everything else that provides you with information on your sources of income and your expenses.

When building your budget, you’ll want to review and consider actual data, rather than rely on your memory. It’s not uncommon for people who are building their budget for their first time to say “I had no idea I was spending so much on X…”

Today, online banking and financial management make accessing and reprinting this information easy. Also an online budget tool such as Mint.com can make accessing this information exceptionally easy.

2. Calculate your monthly income. List all your sources of income. For example, if you receive a regular paycheck and have your taxes deducted by your employer, record just the net income (or take-home pay) amount. Also include any other sources of income that you may receive.

If you are in a profession where you work on commission or tips, or your income is variable in another way, do your best to come up with an estimate for a monthly income total, and if you are uncertain, err on the side of being conservative and list a monthly income total on the lower side – it’s better to estimate a smaller amount and find yourself with more income than to over-estimate your income and find that you can’t cover your budgeted expenses.

3. Create a list of your expenses. This is probably the most difficult part of creating a budget – understanding your spending habits which means understanding what you are spending your money on. So build a list of all types of expenses, from housing payments to movie tickets.

You can start by going through your financial statements (checking, credit card, etc.). However, this wont provide you with a full picture, since you pay for some expenses in cash. So try to think closely about your money is spent and estimate your current spending patters. A good exercise is to track your spending habits for a period of time to get a sense for the “hidden expenses” that you wont necessarily remember that are eating into your budget.

When creating your list of expenses, it’s important to refer back to your financial statements – make sure you’re being honest with yourself about the amount that you spend.

Tip: Remember to account for any large annual expenses (for example, property taxes) as a part of your list of expenses. You can break this down into a monthly amount by dividing the expense by 12 and including that on your list of expenses. You can save for this by automatically deducting from your checking account into a high yield savings account, to ensure you’ll have enough funds to make your payment at the end of the year.

4. Categorize all your expenses as fixed or variable. Fixed expenses typically run about the same amount each month and are the most necessary expenses. Examples include housing payments, car payments, student loan payments, utilities, insurance, etc. Thus, although your World of Warcraft monthly expense is the same amount each month, it doesn’t meet the “most necessary” requirement to be considered a fixed expense, and would be listed as a variable expense.

Variable expenses are those that are more likely to vary from month to month. Examples include groceries, dining out, entertainment, and gifts. This category of expenses is where many folks run into trouble, as variable expenses tend to creep up if you don’t keep an eye on them, and bad decisions and splurges can become budget-busters.

5. Examine your cash flow. Now that you have a sense for your income and your expenses, add them up and compare. If your monthly income is greater than your monthly expenses (fixed + variable), that’s a good sign, and you should focus on fine tuning your budget and work toward specific goals you create, like saving for retirement, building an emergency fund, or buying a home.

If you have more in monthly expenses than you have income, you will need to make some changes, in order to avoid driving yourself into (further into?) debt.

6. Set goals & make changes to manage your budget. When you boil it all down, managing your budget is pretty simple – you can either increase your income or decrease your expenses.

Increasing your income is typically more difficult (although I’m a proponent of everything from negotiating your salary to finding ways to make extra cash to increase your income), so decreasing your expenses is typically the path for more immediate impact.

Determine the amount by which you will need to increase your cash flow, and begin looking critically at all your expenses, starting with the variable expenses. Given that these are usually less essential, it would be easiest to cut or scale back from this category. Break your variable expenses into categories and set a budget monthly amount to stick to – for example “$250 per month for groceries.”

If you find that modifying your variable expenses doesn’t get you to your target goal, you may need to make more bigger changes to make an impact. Sometimes all manner of tweaking variable expenses isn’t going to make a difference when something like a large rent payment dwarfs everything by comparison.

Set goals to help you make changes, and run the numbers to make sure that the goals you set are realistic and achievable. By tracking your cash flow on a regular basis, you can see the financial impact of the decisions you make, and how purchases affect your overall financial standing. Keep close to the numbers and revisiting your spending against your set budget monthly to track your performance and make sure that you stay on track.

As we head into the final stretch of 2010, now is your time to review the 2010 maximum allowed 401k contribution limits (as determined by the IRS) to make sure you are making the most of your 401k plan.

For 2010, you are allowed to contribute a maximum of $16,500 to your 401k plan – which is exactly the same as it was in 2009. Those who are 50 years of age or older are allowed to contribute an additional amount in the form of a “Catch Up” contribution (see below).

So if you are behind, and want to kick up your contribution amount, now is the time, since there are likely only a handful of pay periods remaining before the end of the year, and contribution changes sometimes can take a pay period or two before they go into effect.

Also if you planned to get your contributions out of the way early, and elected a high contribution amount, it’s time to check to make sure you don’t go above this maximum contribution.

Remember the one rule that applies to all 401k plans – your annual 401k contribution can’t exceed more than 25% of your pay, so in looking at both the 2010 limits and the historical limits, for the sake of showing the true maximum limits, we’ll need to assume that there is enough pay so that the 25% limit isn’t a constraining factor. Obviously this isn’t the case for everyone, so you’ll need to consider the 25% rule when evaluating your own personal contribution limits.

Schedule of Historical 401k Maximum Contribution Limits

The 2010 limit is a little disappointing for those who have the ability to contribute more and would like to grow their retirement portfolio as possible, since this is one of the six times since 1987 when the contribution limit hasn’t been increased.

Here is a list of the historical contribution limits, so you can see how the schedule of 401k contribution changes has evolved since these maximum contribution limits were started in 1987. I’ve broken out the year-over-year dollar amount increases (or lack thereof). These do not include catch-up contribution amounts for those over age 50 (see below).

• 2010: $16,500 (no increase)
• 2009: $16,500 ($1,000 increase)
• 2008: $15,500 (no increase)
• 2007: $15,500 ($500 increase)
• 2006: $15,000 ($1,000 increase)
• 2005: $14,000 ($1,000 increase)
• 2004: $13,000 ($1,000 increase)
• 2003: $12,000 ($1,000 increase)
• 2002: $11,000 ($500 increase)
• 2001: $10,500 (no increase)
• 2000: $10,500 ($500 increase)
• 1999: $10,000 (no increase)
• 1998: $10,000 ($500 increase)
• 1997: $ 9,500 (no increase)
• 1996: $ 9,500 ($260 increase)
• 1995: $ 9,240 (no increase)
• 1994: $ 9,240 ($246 increase)
• 1993: $ 8,994 ($266 increase)
• 1992: $ 8,728 ($253 increase)
• 1991: $ 8,475 ($496 increase)
• 1990: $ 7,979 ($352 increase)
• 1989: $ 7,627 ($314 increase)
• 1988: $ 7,313 ($313 increase)
• 1987: $ 7,000

For Those 50 Years of Age or Older: 401k Catch Up Contributions

In 2002, the IRS implemented what are known as “401k Catch Up Contributions” which allow those over 50 years of age to contribute an additional amount to their 401k plans. I’m not sure what the title “Catch Up” refers to since folks aren’t really catching up to anything specific, but I do like that it allows those who are nearing retirement to contribute an additional amount to their 401k accounts.

Here is the Schedule of Historical 401k “Catch Up” Contribution Limits. These amounts are in addition to the limits mentioned above, and are only eligible to those 50 years of age or older.

• 2010: $5,500 (Traditional + Catch Up Contribution = $22,000)
• 2009: $5,500 (Traditional + Catch Up Contribution = $22,000)
• 2008: $5,000 (Traditional + Catch Up Contribution = $20,500)
• 2007: $5,000 (Traditional + Catch Up Contribution = $20,500)
• 2006: $5,000 (Traditional + Catch Up Contribution = $20,000)
• 2005: $4,000 (Traditional + Catch Up Contribution = $18,000)
• 2004: $3,000 (Traditional + Catch Up Contribution = $16,000)
• 2003: $2,000 (Traditional + Catch Up Contribution = $14,000)

For those who have the option of contributing to a Roth IRA, that is also a very good idea. Earnings and distributions are all tax free – an amazing benefit. I’ll cover Roth IRAs shortly.

Do you plan on maxing out your 2010 401k (or have you already)? Do you think these are the appropriate limits?

A savings account is, of course, a place where you can store your money at a bank. But more than that, it is a fundamental part of your overall budget management system. Choosing the right high yield savings account is one of the first steps in being able to effectively manage your budget. It helps by:

• Giving you a place to manage and track your personal savings goals.
• Providing you with an important cushion to protect against unexpected emergencies.
• Giving you a sense of security and financial stability, knowing that your financial resources are safe, growing and FDIC insured.

High Interest Savings Account Rates

Choosing the best savings account boils down to the two most important factors: a high interest rate and customer service. Obviously you’d like to have the highest interest rate since you’d like to be earning the most money as possible on your investment – you don’t want to lose purchasing power and have your buying power eaten up by inflation, if you can avoid it.

Customer service is also important. Service factors such as being able to access your accounts through an easy to use and reliable website become important. Also being able to engage with a customer service representative easily is important for responding to your questions. This is another vote for trying out different banks – to make sure that you are comfortable with a financial institution prior to socking a sizeable chunk of your money.

So I’ve scoured the web by researching “high interest savings account,” “high yield savings account” and “money market account” and here are the offers that I was able to aggregate. All of these accounts are FDIC Insured.

All rates provided are current as of November 10, 2010.

• Everbank is currently offering their YieldPledge Money Market Account with a promotional 3 month bonus rate of 2.01%, and a 1.34% first year APY (note that this is on balances only up to $50k – larger balances would have a lower rate). Everbank is an web-only bank and has no physical branches. On the upside, it has been named “Best of the Web” by Forbes, and “Best of Breed, Online Banks” by Money Magazine. They also offer high yield checking and CDs.
• American Express Bank is offering a competitive 1.30% APY on its High Yield Savings Account. The charge card brand known for its excellent customer service became a bank in 2008, and launched stand-alone savings products in 2009 – they are a newcomer to the deposits scene. This is one I haven’t had experience with – has anyone opened an account or can talk about their experiences here?
• Sallie Mae Bank is a newcomer to the deposits accounts space – they are much better known as a company that provided federal and private student loans. However in mid-2009 they started offering a savings account and CD product. And you know what – their rate is currently very competitive at 1.30% APY. No minimum balance to earn this rate, and no monthly fees. They also will match up to 10% of UPromise earnings if you have a Upromise account.
• Discover Bank is currently offering a very competitive 1.25% APY on it’s saving account product. Like American Express, I typically think of Discover for its credit card division, and don’t know much about their service. Does anyone have any input on or experience with Discover Bank?
• Ally Bank is currently offering 1.19% APY on their online savings account. There are no minimum balance requirements, and no monthly fees associated with this savings account. Ally Bank had its roots in the now defunct GMAC Bank, but it has since done very well and was chosen by Kiplinger as the Best Savings Account for 2009.
• FNBO Direct is another well-known online bank with a web savings account that is currently offering 1.10% APY with no minimum balance required and no monthly fees. This is the online division of the First National Bank of Omaha (who knew Omaha had such a strong online financial presence!). FNBO Direct was rated the Best Online Savings Account in 2008 by Kiplinger.
• ING Direct was the first online-only savings account that I signed up for several years back when they were offering to deposit $25 into a savings account just for opening it. Hey, $25 is $25, so I signed up, and found it extremely easy to use. ING Direct is currently offering 1.10% APY on their Orange Savings Account (love that bright orange ball). Although they don’t have the highest rates right now, they’re still higher than many national banks like Bank of America who are offering next to nothing on their rates. I’ve kept them, but am putting most of my money into other accounts with higher rates. They have no minimums and no fees.
• HSBC Advance is offering a 1.10% APY. They have no minimums and no fees. They used to be called HSBC Direct, and they are also one of the online banks with the strongest reputations.

Savings Account Tip

Many folks including myself have multiple savings accounts to manage their money. I have an online savings account solely dedicated to paying my property taxes at the end of the year – I’ve set up automatic deductions from my checking account on a bi-weekly basis (on the days my direct-deposited paycheck hits) so that the money automatically gets swept from checking into savings before I have a chance to feel like my checking account is nice and full and spend it. It’s a little bit of a trick – but it works. I never go into that account to draw down the cash, and I end up with enough to pay my property taxes.

If I’m feeling particularly ambitious I’ll send over an extra $50 or $100 just to sock it away before I spend it on something I didn’t really need. And because I’m keeping smaller amounts spread out across different institutions, it’s that much harder to raid: the guilt would kick in if I tried to drain all my accounts at once. So I just sit back and watch my balances grow through online budget tools I’ve used to link all my accounts together in one location.

So what about you? Know of any savings tips or tricks you use to save with different accounts? You might also be able to check with your local community bank or credit unions which might have higher rates. I haven’t explored that here, since most of those are local banks which are geographically restricted, but please chime in if you know of a better national rate.

As you may have seen from just about every personal finance blog out there – not to mention all the mortgage rate websites that track the best mortgage rates – now is a a great time to refinance as mortgage rates are at record lows. I did a quick news search, and Reuters just posted an article, US Mortgage Rates Fall to New Record Lows dated October 14, 2010.

Now this would be incredibly amazing news (pardon my hyperbole) – if we haven’t been hearing this same headline for the past 8 months…well really on and off for the last couple of years given where interest rates have been, and given that the Federal Reserve has been holding the federal funds rate (the rate that banks charge each other for short term loans) near 0% (it’s been between 0% and .25% since the end of 2008).

So for some time now, mortgage rates have kept falling and falling. You can see in the table below from HSH.com that mortgage rates have gone down steadily since the beginning of the year. So this is one of those times where it wasn’t necessarily good if you were on top of your game, listened to all the news and did what you were supposed to… and refinanced right away. Refinancing is pricey, so it’s not something you want to do every time rates drop a smidge.

This is one of those times where those who were lazy and haven’t done anything yet, haven’t necessarily missed the boat. Great mortgage refinance rates are still out there to be had.

I’m hoping to take advantage of this myself. I wasn’t lazy, but given all the changes in the mortgage & lending climate, although I had paid down a good size chunk of my mortgage, the value of the property plummeted, and my loan-to-value was screwed… Whereas in 2006 it was something like 80%, given plummeting housing prices, it quickly shot higher than that, killing any chance of refinancing at what the financial media kept screaming at me were the “Lowest mortgage rates in history!!”

But now I’m getting close to a more magical / respectable Loan to Value, and am reconsidering applying since based on others’ recent experiences it’s likely that I’ll be approved. But like any other person who wants to consider themselves somewhat savvy, I wanted to run the numbers myself. So I went down the path of trying to compare refinance calculators and quickly found out that not all of these online budget tools are created equal.

The Best Free Online Mortgage Refinance Calculators

So here is my review of the 10 mortgage calculators I tried out (the top 10 which showed up in Google for “refinance calculator“).

Google Position 1: The Bankrate Mortgage Refinance Calculator. I think BankRate is resting a little bit (at least retaining the top spot on the Google Search Engine results) on it’s reputation and the strength of the site’s brand. Their refinance calculator (below) seems to be the most basic form of the refinance calculator.

The BankRate refinance calculator doesn’t make it clear how you should take into consideration points, or let you take cash out, while most other calculators do. Folks who are on the savvier side could probably figure out how to incorporate this into using the calculator with the existing fields, but if we were able to incorporate everything ourselves then we wouldn’t need the use of calculators anyhow, right? Most other refinance calculators in the top 10 have a similar set of basic questions, but many others have some nice bells and whistles as well.

Google Positions 2 & 3: The Calculators4Mortgages Refinance Calculator. You’ve gotta love a site that is pretty single-mindedly devoted to one topic, right? Calculators4Mortgages, is just that with about 11 different mortgage calculators, and some content and tips. Their mortgage refinance calculator seems more robust than BankRate’s, such as the ability to deal with closing costs by a) rolling into loan, b) paying in cash or c) having the lender pay via Yield Spread Points.

I also like the display on the second page of the calculator since it breaks out a comparison of the existing loan vs. the new refi loan and calculates a difference between the two along a number of factors. Example here:

Google Position 4: Mortgage101 Refinance Calculator. The Mortgage 101 refinance calculator is another pretty basic mortgage calculator that clearly gives you the time required for breakeven, and lets you break out points in your refinance costs. What it doesn’t tell you is how much you would save with a refinance if you held the property for the full term of the loan (which the Calculators4Mortgages refinance calculator did).

Google Position 5: LendingTree’s Refinance Calculator This should really be Lending Tree’s refinance calculators since there are actually links to 6 different calculators including:

1. Refinance Mortgage Comparison Calculator
2. Refinance Payment Calculator
3. Refinance Points Calculator
4. Refinance Calculator
5. Refinance Home Equity Calculator
6. Cash-Out Refinance vs. Home Equity Loan Calculator

This seems pretty impressive, until you start drilling down and using the calculators. One really bothersome difference with many of LendingTree’s calculators is that the entry fields for mortgage terms in years is done as a drop down – with the only selection options being 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 30, 25, 30, 40 or 50 years. So if your existing loan term doesn’t exactly match one of these, it might be difficult to get to the right numbers. Other calculators allow you to enter years as #’s (and some with decimals so you can estimate 6 months at .5 years) to get to your numbers. Annoying.

The “Refinance Calculator” (#4) is the one most similar to the others. It has some minor differences. The first is it allows you to enter the prepayment penalty on the initial loan as a percentage (vs. entering the penalty as a dollar amount component of the closing costs as the others do). The Refinance Mortgage Comparison Calculator seems somewhat useful in that it allows you to compare a fixed rate mortgage with an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM). The remaining calculators tend to be variants of existing calculators. Their Refinance Payment Calculator is the same as their standard mortgage payment calculator.

Google Position 6: The National Bureau of Economic Research Refinance Calculator. This calculator looks very official and the title at the top of the page cracks me up: Supplementary Materials for Optimal Mortgage Refinancing: A Closed-Form Solution. Wha?

This mortgage calculator is different than the other calculators in that rather than collect information on current and “new” loan terms, it asks you information about your current loan and how long you expect to remain in your house, along with other estimated costs like closing costs and points. Then it spits out an “Optimal Refinance Rate” – and tells you something like “Refinance when the new mortgage rate is below 4.5%”. Great. I like this – it’s actionable, and I can use this info as a guide.

A couple of drawbacks include your not knowing how much to put in as closing costs since you’re not comparing against an actual refinance offer, rather a hypothetical refinance offer (so you don’t really know the exact closing cost amount). Also unlike the other calculators, it doesn’t tell you exactly how much you would be saving. On the plus side, there are some advanced parameters that allow you to tweak a) rate at which you discount future costs, b) average inflation rate over life of new mortgage and c) annualized standard deviation of mortgage interest rate – which might be fun if you were really geeky. One final plus is that there isn’t an ad on the page which adds to its academic cred.

Google Position 7: MortgageCalculator.org’s Refinance Calculator. This mortgage calculator provides essentially the same info BankRate’s & Mortgage101′s calculators, except it allows you to enter in a federal & state tax rate which then calculates tax savings and tax losses from refinancing, which I see as a strong benefit. I also like that it translates the output from a grid into “plain English” so you know how to interpret the results. Easy printing, PDF’ing and emailing of results.

Google Position 8: CNNMoney.com’s Does It Pay to Refinance Calculator. CNN’s mortgage calculator is similar to all the other mortgage calculators – it has all the basic factors the BankRate calculator has, but also has the ability to break out points from other costs, and gives you the ability to compare 3 different refinance offers simultaneously against the original loan. This is great since it allows a side-by-side comparison of potential competing loan offers, so if you have several options you don’t have to run all the numbers and record them to compare. Nice.

Google Position 9: National Association of Realtors Mortgage Refinance Calculator. For being the mortgage refinance calculator of the National Association of Realtors, I was disappointed. The calculator – which is actually supplied by “www.ezloanapply.com” (which just sounds a little spammy, doesn’t it) whose website didn’t resolve, was fine and as basic as the BankRate calculator – does the job but isn’t anything special.

Google Position 10: Refinance Calculator from HSH.com & US News. This refinance calculator is similar to that of other calculators, with a couple of differences. First it asks you to remember the month in which your original mortgage was originated, and then based on that and some other information you enter (original amount, term, interest rate), it calculates what your original loan balance remaining is. Which is great, except what if your original mortgage wasn’t a fixed-term mortgage and you had an adjustable rate mortgage then your balance might not match. Fine, except you can’t change the mortgage amount if what you currently owe as determined by your mortgage statement doesn’t match what their calculator tells you.

So this calculator became a fail for me. But if you can get as far enough that your currently owed amount matches what they tell you the amount is, then the rest works similar to the other refinance calculators.

Bonus Refinance Calculator – When I was researching calculators, I also saw that HSH just this month released a new refinance calculator which isn’t ranking in Google’s top 10. It’s called the Tri-Refi Calculator and it allows you to compare a Traditional Refinance (costs paid out-of-pocket), a Low Cash Out Refinance (costs added to the loan amount), and a No Cash Out Refinance (costs built into the interest rate) so you can compare which of the three different scenarios are right for you. So once you are ready to refinance this calculator will tell you the best strategy for handling your refinance closing costs.

In Conclusion…

So in summary, my favorites are the Calculators4Mortgages calculator which seems nice and tidy, and displays the results in a concise way with some nice comparisons, the MortgageCalculator.org calculator since it is very user friendly and factors in the tax savings / tax loss impact (which none of the other top 10 sites did) and the CNNMoney refinance calculator which allows you to compare multiple refinance offers at once. The National Bureau of Economic Research Refinance Calculator is also interesting and a good guide for determining when to refinance, but I’d still use one of the others when you actually have a refinance offer to compare actual refinance loan terms against your current mortgage.

Ok, whew. How about you? Do you have a different opinion or have you found a better refinance calculator out there – one that’s not on this list?

Getting started with managing your personal finances can be difficult.  Someone, whom I’ll call Bob, went to an Ivy League university, had a high paying job as a management consultant, and during college could recite the formula for the Black-Scholes option model by heart.

And yet, even in his 30′s, Bob had no idea what was happening to his money.  While he was leading financial analysis projects for clients, his personal finances were falling apart.  It seemed like he was living paycheck to paycheck , and occasionally going into debt – presumably not something you’re supposed to be doing when you’ve been well-educated and are being very comfortably paid.

So the point of this story?  Creating a budget and managing your personal finances is hard, even for people you think “should know better.”   But to quote JD Roth of Get Rich Slowly:  “Money is more about mind than it is about math,” and sometimes getting started is half the battle.

And if you’re here, then you’re taking the right step.

Thankfully, these days there are a lot of free online budgeting tools that do a lot of the work for you by pulling in your information from your various accounts.  We’ve scoured the internet, read tons of reviews, and have used many tools ourselves to deliver to you our list of the Top Four Best Online Budgeting Tools.

Mint.com – Mint.com today is the leading online personal budgeting tool that strives to provide a view into your entire financial life in one place. It’s a free, web-based system where you enter in login information for your various financial accounts (online savings accounts, credit cards, student loans, mortgage, brokerage & investment accounts, etc – the list is actually quite extensive) and it pulls the information into a dashboard which among other things allows you to view and track your “net worth.” This net worth number can be a little bit scary (especially for those who have large mortgages, and relatively few assets), so be warned.

Mint also categorizes everything for you, allowing you to examine your expenses by disaggregating where all your money is going (really, you spent that much on restaurants and your bar tab!?). You can also set budgets for future spending by category, with Mint notifying you via alerts when you’ve gone over your budgeted amount.

Mint was originally independent, but in late 2009 they were acquired by Intuit (makers of Quicken). Sometimes acquisition by a larger company ruins the “coolness” or inventiveness of a product, but from our perspective this hasn’t happened here. They keep building the product, and adding new features, some more useful than others. One example is SpendSpace, which allows you to compare how your spending compares with others in your local area. Really smart, and interesting use of the data they have from all their users.

The site has won awards for the best online personal finance / budgeting tool by Money Magazine, Kiplinger’s, PC Magazine and PC World.

Yodlee – Yodlee’s MoneyCenter personal finance product is a lot like Mint in many ways. They both aggregate account inforamtion and offer budgeting information. Like Mint, Yodlee allows you to set a monthly budget for each category, and will alert you when you are close to going over your budgeted amount.

I personally find the interface to Yodlee to be a bit more appealing and intuitive. In addition, they allow the manual entry of accounts – which is helpful if your account isn’t tracked through their system. Seems like if you can log into a specific account over the internet, you can connect it to Yodlee.

BudetTracker.com and BudgetPulse- For those who are not comfortable linking their bank and other financial accounts to a budgeting website, you can try either BudgetPulse.com or BudgetTracker.com, which let you manually enter in your account balances either by download or by manual entry, if you would like detail at that level.

BudgetTracker helps manage and track small business activities, with invoices, estimates, project planning, and balance sheets – so it has a broader range of services for small business owners than some of the other programs we looked at. In addition, they have a bill tracking and reminder feature using text or email alerts. The service is free for up to 15 bills and 50 calendar reminders. There are additional add-ons for a fee which allow you to do things like export your reminders to Outlook or other calendars.

BudgetPulse has a great use of graphs which help you visualize your spending and your cash flows. It also examines your spending and helps you decide how much you can afford to set aside each month for certain purchases, such as buying a car. They do this by calculating the “real cost of ownership”, including interest, taxes, and even oil changes, wiper blades & new tires. While this feature is an interesting proposition to me, it seems to want to take too much of the budgeter’s thinking behind budgeting out. So you may want to take this information with a grain of salt.

Others:

Buxfer – Buxfer was a promising system originally used for managing debts, but had grown into a more robust personal finance planning tool that automatically downloads and categorizes expenses from your checking, savings and credit card accounts. You can monitor activity on all your accounts in a single place – including IOU’s from your friends (the number of time’s I’ve forgotten…) as well as transactions you SMS to your account. While the Online Banking Report once named it “Best of the Web”, in August 2010, TechCrunch reported that both the founders now work at Facebook leaving Buxfer leaderless.