Plan & Simplify.

Lately, Jake and I have been very motivated to pay off all our debt (especially student loans) and really start saving for the future. We are basically living off of my salary and putting all of his salary towards loans, savings (house down payment & travel), and retirement. It really is a wonderful feeling to put money away in savings and we are so excited about doing that even more this year! To make sure we stick to our plan, we've developed a comfortable but strict 2010 budget. We've always had a household budget since we got married and have managed to stick with it pretty well, but I've always wished I could keep better track of exactly where our money went and how close we were in each of our budget categories.

Recently, Jake read an article about an online budget program and, wow, it is seriously a dream come true. I've never been so excited about budgeting in my whole life! It's called "Mint" and its a free online money management program. It allows you to link to all of your different bank accounts (for example it links to our 2 credit cards, our debit card, our house savings, travel savings, and our emergency savings). It also links to all our debt (our different student loan providers, our car loan, and Jake's AF loan). We can then go to our Mint account and see exactly what is going on in any of our accounts or loans. Even Jake's stocks and investments, including our retirement accounts, are linked letting us know at any moment exactly how much money we have. It has seriously simplified our lives.

And, it takes all the hassle out of budgeting. You can set up specific budgets for anything (and seriously, they have thought of everything!) and anytime a transaction comes through it will put it into the right category. It really does all the work for you! At any time, you can look at balances, summaries, and pie charts that show you just about anything you would want to know about where your money is going.

If you are looking for a way to plan & simplify, you need to check this out. Whether your budget is big or small, you will love this! And their iPhone app is like icing on the cake :)