Keep track of your finances

When my wife and I first got married, it was hard for us to keep track of our spending. Neither one of us had lived by a budget before, and neither one of us really kept track of our spending, except to make sure that we didn't overdraft our bank accounts. Since then, we've learned how to make a budget, plus track our expenses to make sure that we're following that budget. Before we did, though, we found a great website that helped us keep track of where our money was going.

The site is mint.com, and it's absolutely free (I don't like to pay money to manage my money, unless I have to). On this site, you can see each transaction and place it into different categories, and then see how much you are spending in each category. It also has different charts and graphs to illustrate everything a little clearer. The best part is, if you have online banking, you can tell mint your username and password, and it will automatically track your transactions for you, provided you use your debit card or credit card (There's no way to manually add transactions at the moment). You can also set up a budget and mint will automatically keep track of how you're doing. A recently added feature is keeping track of investments. I use mint to keep track of my 401k.

Mint is not perfect, however. Sometimes transactions won't be listed from the right place; I buy gas at Sunoco, and it shows up as Sojo. Also, sometimes it has trouble connecting with your bank and updating your information and transactions. The best and most accurate way to keep track of your finances is by doing it yourself, but if you're not ready to do that or you don't know how, mint might be a good stepping stone for you.