Since I began this journey, I made a commitment to myself to continue to check in and work on improving my knowledge and application of financial matters. Boy is it exhausting!

Today I finally squeezed in finishing some of my legal documents – I now have a Living Will, a Power of Attorney for Medical stuff, a Will, and a Memorial Planner Information. I still need to spend a little more time on the concept of Estate planning, but I’m not in a huge rush yet as I don’t have that amazing of an estate.

So, let me take a moment to celebrate, YIPPEE!

Okay, I still have to get them all notarized and filed away safely. Sigh, another financial TO-DO.

Next Up on my Financial To-Do List This Month:

1. Look into refinancing my home. I just took it off the market as it is not selling. I have an inquiry into my mortgage provider to see if its possible to refinance after you take your home off the market or if they have some type of waiting period. Rates are certainly low, so I do hope I can. Seeing as I have had a major career shift, and the value of my home has probably gone down significantly since my last mortgage, it should be interesting to see if its a real financial possibility for me to re-fi. Crossing my fingers.
2. Convert my Traditional IRA to a Roth IRA at Vanguard. I’m willing to pay tax consequences this  year if it means that I get to move my Traditional IRA Funds (that were previously my 401k when I was a corporate gal) to a Roth IRA.
3. Set up a Roth IRA at Lending Club. I’m going to roll at least part of my Vanguard money to Lending Club. My experiment with Lending Club panned out to be an awesome choice that I can really support. I am excited to find an investment opportunity that doesn’t make me want to cry and pull my hair out unlike my experiences with Fidelity and Vanguard.
4. Get life insurance. I can’t believe I still haven’t gotten around to this. Need to get it done – I’m going to opt for the $500K policy I think. But I do need to do more research into this area.
5. Snore. Okay. I find this stuff painfully boring and awful. Thank you to this website for reminding me to stay on track with it. It’ll be worth it one day right??!!

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A while back, I wrote a post that I still find to be an extremely valuable, but somewhat idealistic, way to manage your finances on Eker’s Jars budgeting. One of the accounts he recommend setting up is called a Long Term Savings for Spending account. He recommends saving 10% of your income towards this ‘jar’ and you can divide it into sub-jars if needed.

I also found and use the amazing site SmartyPig for Long Term Savings for Spending accounts. This amazing system has gained so much in popularity, its now being bought out by BBVA Compass.

So, now that I am fortunate enough to be making a little more income with my new business, I am eager to get beyond debt and expense payoff, and focus a little more on the long term savings for spending accounts. However, I think I have gone of the deep end. When I actually make a list (ie mini savings accounts) of all the things we want to save for, it is daunting and frankly, way more than 10% of our income. I have reached $5K in a Contingency Fund and have decided that is enough for me to warrant putting funds towards long term savings for spending now.

Here’s All the LTSS Funds I’ve Got Set Up:

I’m thinking this is largely because of the stage of life we are in. Not quite thirty, wanting to make large purchases and build a family. We have our house on the market, and ideally would like to have 60 to buy the next house we want. But that is so unrealistic when you actually look at the numbers. Needless to say, I’ve decided that Eker’s Jar’s needs an upgrade that should be different based on your AGE and/or STAGE in life.

Also, I have so many graduations, weddings and gifts, that my jar for GIFTS is truly for gifts, not charity or giving in the sense that Eker intended.

So, ideally I would like to mimic the jars theory that Eker has, but in reality, I believe it is better suited for a higher income, slightly older demographic than my family.

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Joint and Individual Accounts Keeps Couple Finances Fair and Fun

The following is a guest post by Shannon Pray.

I’ve been married for almost a year now. Prior to being married, we were engaged and kept our finances separate. We decided that if we were going to be married and sharing a home and many expenses for the rest of our lives, we needed to come up with a system for combining our finances. Having talked to other friends in similar situations, I’ve found that there are a number of different ways people have come up with to make this work.

Unique Ways Couples Manage Finances

1. For one couple I know he owns the house they live in and she pays a set monthly rent and utilities, etc. This system may or may not change when they get married this fall.
2. For another couple who has been dating for a long time, they own the home together and keep track of spending and work it out at the end of each month. This couple alternates who gets to pay for things when they go out with friends or on dates.

For a long time we were pretty similar to the second couple. We alternated who paid for things when we went out and we both wrote separate checks for rent and utilities. This worked while we were dating and when we were engaged, but as we were getting ready to get married and really start a life together, we decided we needed a new system. After discussing some different options (total combination, partial combination, zero combination) we came up with our plan:

Joint Income, Joint Account PLUS Individual Accounts

1. We decided to do some math on how much money we spend on rent, utilities, cable, food, eating out and entertainment in a typical month.
2. We took that total and divided by two. That’s how much money we each put into our joint checking account each month from our paychecks.
3. I get paid monthly, so I put the whole amount in on the 2nd of the month, he gets paid bi-monthly, so twice a month he transfers half the total.
4. We kept our individual accounts for savings, gifts, and our own decisions for what to do with it.

The main problem with combining our finances entirely was that we have different spending patterns. I love to buy shoes and clothes, he’s much better at resisting and only buying things when he needs, though every once in a while he “needs” a new golf club. I like to have dinner or lunch out with my girlfriends; he’s less likely to meet the guys for a similar event. He’s more likely to play round after round of golf in the summer, I am generally uninterested. While it’s possible that our various spending patterns would even out, I didn’t want to feel like I couldn’t buy things I wanted because in essence he was paying for them. Likewise, I didn’t want him to feel guilty about playing golf or grabbing a game with the boys since it was my money too. And, a biggie, I didn’t want to be able to look at our account online and see where he’d gotten me presents from, or vice versa.

In the end, we opened a joint-checking account with Charles Schwab because I’d heard great things and because they do high-yield checking, which was somewhat exciting to us. Interest on a checking account?! There have been some pros and cons to using Schwab checking, but overall we like it. In any case, we each have a check card, so we can use it whenever we need for whatever we need. I’ve come to realize that money is something we need to be able to talk about, so we’re working on that front. We discussed what we thought were appropriate things to use the check card for and we’re both pretty good about sticking to that. I do use it if I’m picking up groceries; I don’t use it if I’m buying lunch out with my girlfriends. Sometimes, by the end of the month we’ve overspent and then we each use our personal checking accounts to make up the difference on rent or cable or whatever it is. We’re still working out some kinks and reigning in our spending, but overall this system works for us. He always gets to pull out his joint-checking card and pay when we go on dates, letting him maintain a feeling of being a provider (he does after all provide half of the money in that account). I get to buy outlandish shoes out of my personal account and not feel guilty about spending his hard earned money on them. Mine, yes. His, no. When we’re buying things for our apartment we generally use the joint account, and when I take a weekend trip with my girlfriends I use my personal savings.

Communicate Openly About Money

One thing we’ve learned in this process is to talk pretty openly about our finances. We discuss large ticket purchases that might be coming up (house, furniture, international trip) and how we plan to pay for them and what sort of savings strategy we need. We hash out how to best attack out debt rather than keeping it as some hidden shame. Our system is not perfect, and I know it is far from the only one out there, but it works for us. We have our combined-life financial plan, but we also still maintain some freedom to make independent purchases without answering to one another about them. And, he never knows when I buy him presents because they don’t show up on our joint statement!

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Use Your Calendar to Schedule Out Blocks of Time

I use a very simple, but extremely effective, method of planning out my day that has helped me immensely when I worked in the corporate environment using Outlook’s calendar feature, but also will be an essential part of my success as an entrepreneur.

I wanted to share it with you, because whenever I have told others about it, they find it very different and a helpful way to organize their time to be the most efficient.

Schedule Out Your Time Visually – Here’s What I Do:

I plan out my week ahead of time, by putting blocks of time on my calendar labeled with “tasks” or “big picture” labels for what I need to accomplish. I have been consulting long enough now, that I have a sense of how much time it takes me to accomplish things. Though it is not fail-proof, it works. This time management technique also helped prevent me from having my calendar TOO filled up with appointments and meetings when I worked in the corporate world. Not that it completely prevented it, but it helped others respect my time when they looked at what I was doing on my calendar to schedule appointments.

Schedule Out Your Time Visually – Here’s What You Can Do:

1. Determine how long on average it takes you to accomplish your work in 1/2 or 1 hour increments
2. Schedule your time out ahead of time in blocks on your calendar (Use tasks or simply appointments)
3. Adjust as required

To some, this concept may seem to simple or maybe you already do something similar. We all manage our time differently. There are many advanced task options, categories, and other time management options in Outlook and other office clients that help immensely as well. This technique that I listed above has been the single most helpful way to manage my daily work load that I have found. Now, to manage multiple clients and multiple time frames for projects, I use a project planning tool.

A Note on Monitoring Your Email Inbox

One last thought that I have heard  from many works wonders in freeing up your time to be more efficient with the workday.

Only check your email at certain intervals in the day.

Let’s say you block off 15 minutes in the morning, before lunch, after lunch, and about 1-2 hours before you leave. If this is a possibility for you, it can extremely help you focus your time and stop allowing for constant distractions.

What other techniques do you use to organize your calendar?

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Since I began this blog I have narrowed down my focus towards determining that I want to start more businesses that are product rather than service based. I have now taken that leap with my new, still working out the kinks website; ontimelines.com.

Based on the wonderful feedback from this website, I have realized an area that I really want to focus on further and offer help to others: Planning and organizing. I love the simplicity that a time line can offer for planning and visualizing your goals.

In the short term, this site will offer custom, beautiful templates for PC and Mac office tools for everything from wedding planning to childhood milestones to fitness scheduling. The site will include packages of timelines, checklists and plans for every day use. My long term goal is to offer an online tool as well.

So, you may notice a slight decrease in my blogging on this site, but it is not because I am not working on my journey to financial freedom, I am just redirecting some of my efforts into action!

If you have suggestions on what to do or add, I’m happy to hear them.

Happy planning!

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Photo from Apple.com

Alright, this post is just a shameless plug for my iMac on the Leapord OS X. But really, this computer has allowed me to use so many organizing and helpful tools so that I can expand both my business and improve my use of time. I know this is a bit off topic, but I just have to share some of the reasons why my Mac has made it possible for me to progress my quest for organizing, budgeting, and overall happiness since I have owned it.
For years I have wanted a Mac. I just never was ready to take the leap until Parallels (and Boot Camp) arrived. I bought my first laptop mac, but was quickly scared by my failure to get Boot Camp working and quickly returned it and went back to the comfort of my PC.

Now, I know that most Mac converts already know this stuff, but a lot, and I mean a lot, of PC users don’t. So, I’m going to share my version of what you’re missing out on if you still own a PC.

Photo from Apple.com

What PC Users are Missing:

• I can use my mac and PC software at the same time
• I don’t have to buy or install virus software all the time, that comes with the mac worry free
• I don’t have to worry about backing up my files. I just plug in an external hardrive and Time Machine does all the work without me thinking about it. If you want to revert, its actually FUN to enter into the time machine which looks sort of like a star wars show and go back in time to a previous edition of a file, etc.
• Built in video, fun tools, iPhoto, and so much more. I’m not kidding, the list goes on and on with the features that PC’s are leagues behind on.
• Expose is awesome to be able to view multiple windows that you are working on at once and the dashboard widgets are also an easy and simple way of keeping your workspace clean, but allowing for quick access to widgets of your choice.
• There are many applications that come standard with the Mac and many free or cheap ones to install that just run, there is very little to do to get your apps running.

Trade Offs – What Will I Loose if I Switch from a PC?

• Old software that isn’t compatible may not work. Its unlikely though. You can get Parallels to work with XP or a newer version of windows, which works with most old software.
• Add on software tools do have an upgrade cost associated with them, such as Parallels. For some reason Parallels tells me I don’t have enough 3D video memory for optimal performance, which surprises me as I got my mac not 6 months ago.
• You have to adjust to folders and icon sorting, as well as a slightly different way of using applications, but the newer version of PC operating systems like Windows 7 and Vista are moving in that direction anyway.
• That’s all I can think of off hand. You can still use Microsoft Office if you are addicted to that. However, I have also become a large fan of iWork and the Mac Office tools. UPDATE: Please see the comments below about compatibility issues if you are an avid Microsoft Office and software user. You may not be able to make the switch if you are, because it just plain wouldn’t be worth it.

If you can, I say ditch the PC. Its worth it.

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If you haven’t happened upon it, check out the site Wordle.net. Its a great free tool for fun, or to use as part of your process to visualize your goals. Somehow making a nice picture out of words from what you are working on can really help you focus.

The one above is a tool that categorized weights not to TAGs like a TAG cloud does, but as a word cloud from the most frequently used words on my blog feed. Guess you can tell what I’ve been writing a lot about lately: GOALS.

You can enter words, a blog feed or a de.li.cio.us bookmark list and it will automatically add frequent words. You then can sort colors, direction of words, and play around with the settings on the fly. After which you can print, save or share the wordle publicly if you want to.

Pretty fun tool to get the creativity started! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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A recurring theme that I have heard and read from ALMOST ALL of the books on wealth and prosperity involve one consistent thought: Documenting and staying focused on your vision.

This is taught in many ways. Some people prefer to clip pictures together from magazines, etc to have a visual representation of their future desires. Personally, I want to write it down, them set goals and visual representations through things such as timelines to chart and hold onto my plans.

Many businesses write their vision in the present tense, to add weight to the vision. I am consciously not going to do that, as it doesn’t jive in my head. I’d rather write about the future in a clear and precise outline format.

So, Here Goes. Hopefully this will also give you some ideas for getting started as well.

1 Year Life Vision (Personal & Business)

• Work to find preferred neighborhood to live in for at least 5 years
• Continue to learn and improve relationships with my daughter, husband, family & friends
• Feed my mind with wisdom and knowledge
• Transition to additional entrepreneurial business ventures (product vs service based)
• Begin to focus on health industry as I have realized that this is where I want to focus my life’s work

3 Year Life Vision (Personal & Business)

• Move to neighborhood close to jobs in our field and with good schools
• Have second child
• Transition to PT work after 2nd child, with focus on entrepreneurial ventures
• My husband will have a successful personal / athletic training practice
• Continue to work on balance of mind, body & soul
• Develop solid business relationships with a broader range of colleagues

5 Year Life Vision (Personal & Business)

• Spend more time being a mom
• For business, we’ll begin to think bigger. Invest in larger business opportunities in health industry.
• Increased efforts towards balance of body (more exercise & diet choices)

10 Year Life Vision (Personal & Business)

• Move to somewhere humid near the ocean with lots of greenery. I want to walk on the beach every day.
• Increased efforts towards feeding the soul (meditation, gardening, down time)
• Continue to learn and build business ventures in health industry

All of these tie in with what I have been blogging about so far, getting your mindset in the right place, getting organized, and setting goals. Oh, and my free and simple timeline template is a great tool for visualizing your plan. Next, action, action and more action. Followed by planning, monitoring, and adjusting as you go and learn.

What does yours vision look like?

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Review of The Best Online Goal Tracking Tools for Personal Use

There are many online tools available for keeping track of and measuring progress on your goals. Many corporations have started to incorporate goal systems (Success Factors is one example) and S.M.A.R.T. goals. Not all goal systems utilize this method, however, it is widely accepted as an excellent way to achieve results with your goals. The following is a look at how to measure your personal goals and a review of some of the best online tools for measuring your goals.

So, what are S.M.A.R.T. Goals?

S – Specific (the more specific the better)
M – Measurable (The criteria that you will use as measurement that you have completed a goal, such as getting your degree, etc)
A – Achievable (Do you currently have the skills and resources needed to reach this goal?)
R – Relevant (How does this goal tie to your passion or purpose?)
T - Time-dimension (When will you aim to start and finish the goal, will there be milestones to reach along the way?)

Many of these goals start with the questions (that you then fill in the blank for):

• Why do you want to achieve this goal?
• Next ask yourself, what specific benefits will come with achieving it?
• When will you achieve it by? (time factor)
• How you plan to achieve the goal?

There is a growing philosophy that if you share your resolutions or goals with others, your friends, family, or a social community can help encourage you to stay on track and keep your goals alive. The same often holds true for other areas in life, such as getting in shape, isn’t it more fun to do when you have a friend that will meet you at the gym and hold you accountable for sticking to your work out goals? So, some of the online tools focus on the social sharing element of goal tracking.

Best Online  Goal Tracking Tools of 2010:

GoalsOnTrack.com Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars $48/year subscription

This simple, easy to use tool does a great job of allowing you to track your goals, visually chart your progress and see reports, create specific action plans, manage daily tasks associated with your goals, track specific time spent, as well as keeping a journal for your additional thoughts and inspirations that you want to capture. You can assign visual pictures with your goals, set overall categories with specific goals beneath that category, and assign any type of progress metric you want to show your measurement (dollars, percentage, etc). It follows the S.M.A.R.T. goal model. You can print out your goals, your daily tasks, and really use this tool to get on track. You can set email reminders, import and export your tasks to CSV or for iCal format, and much more. Just check out their full list of features on the site. This tool costs money, yet I believe its worth the investment if you want a full suite of highly effective goal tracking tools.

SuperViva.com Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Free
SuperViva is a social sharing goal or “life” tracking site that allows you to create  goals to share or keep private. SuperViva was created in 2006 (runs ads and accepts donations to support it). It allows you to set up weekly reminders to check in with your list of goals. Super viva offers something closer to the SMART goal method by allowing you to group your goals, set specific goals within an overall list, assign what “Life Dimension” your goal applies to (Personal, Family, Finances, Community, etc) and also set the start and completion dates, priority, effort needed and budget needed. You can mark a goal as completed, on the backburner, or remove it. There is a section to find ideas from the community and ‘get inspired.’ Nice overall concept for a free tool, however, I find it difficult to navigate and you cannot visually see and chart your progress on a goal.

Goalmigo.com Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars Free

Goalmigo is also a social sharing goal tracking tool. You start by adding your goals, and adding who is going to help hold you accountable or your ‘Supporters’ for your goals. You enter your completion date, and can set up reminders in day, week or month increments. A great feature is that you can assign a tracking log (they have some already listed such as weight, calories, etc). You can assign tags to help you to share your goal in the social environment. Once you set your goals, you can mark them as complete and also add milestones in your “Log” which display in a bar chart format. Beyond that, you can visually see a reminder of how long you have remaining to complete you goal such as “One Month Remaining”. You can also add notes to your goals. There are ads on this site, but otherwise its a pretty clean and user friendly interface.

eLifeList.com Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Free

eLifeList is another social sharing tool which allows public or private goal tracking. What’s awesome about this tool, is that it has very useful categories and goals already entered in it. I’m not sure if there are from the community or were created ahead of time, but they can help you get started. You can add descriptions, photos or videos to your list, and also set reminders to be sent to your email. The site is pretty user friendly, though some of the features you don’t edit until after you’ve set the goal, such as reminders. I would think you’d create everything when you are creating the goal. You can mark the goal as complete, and see a progress indicator (from 0-100%) of how far you are toward reaching your goals. From the design of the site, it appears to be focused on a younger demographic (perhaps college students?). Overall, it does the job for simple goal tracking.

LifeTango.com Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Free
LifeTango is a very clean and effective goal tracking tool. As the other tools, you can choose if you want public or private goals. You can sort by priority, date, and other categories. You have to manually update the progress you are at in your goal by a percentage from 0-100%.  Ongoing, periodic goals are considered “Tasks” and are tracked using their “Task Tracker” (as opposed to goals that you want to assign a specific due date for). And example of a Task Tracker goal would be to workout every day for 1 year. You would then set these recurring tasks and mark your progress daily. They assign stars that you click on to indicate that you have completed your recurring task goal (kinda cute like when you were a kid and got stars for getting something done). There is also a fun little sticky note for “reminders”. Overall, I like this site for their Task tracking but I think it is a little confusing for tracking larger picture life goals.

Stickk.com – Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Free

Stick is a tool meant to motivate you to stick to your goals through the use of accountability with other people and putting a bet or monetary value at stake if you don’t meet your goals. It is much more focused on coaching and pushing you to achieve your goals than any of the other tools. You start by setting a goal (Referred to as a Commitment Contract, much more formal and committed sounding!), then setting the ‘stakes’ or what’s at risk to complete it (You literally have to pay out money to your selected charity or person if you miss your goal deadlines), then you ‘get a referee’ or a person in your life to to push you meet your goals, and you can also add friends to help you achieve your goals. Many of their pre-set goals are around losing weight, quitting smoking, or other life-changing habits that it often takes a ‘coach’ to help with. However, it can be used for other goal tracking as well. You can set the category, whether it is a one-time or recurring event, get reminders and view your progress. Oh, and you don’t HAVE to set a “Stake” of financial value, you can still use this tool without the pressure of a stake. For many people though, I can imagine that this method (fear of losing your money!) works great for actually getting them motivated and on track. This is by far the most unique of the tools I’ve seen.

GoalsTogether.com Rating: 2 out of 5 stars Free

This free social sharing site offers the ability to create and track your goals, and share them with the community. You can choose to have private or public goals. You can search for other goals for people in the community. It allows ‘basic’ goals which are manually updated for progress, and ‘checkpoint’ goals which you set the checkpoints or milestones needed to attain the goal at the beginning of the tool. When you have completed a task in the goal, you mark it as complete by checking it off, like you would on a to-do list. Overall, I would say that this tool is very basic, and not all that useful for the serious person trying to implement a SMART goal process or anything much more than a task list. There are ads on this site.

43Things.com Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars Free
I saw this mentioned often as a goal tracking site, but it really isn’t. This site is really just a simple social site to measure trends for goals and resolutions with the answer to 1 question: “What do you want to do in the year 2010?”. To me, it seems similar to Twitter and many other social sharing tools, so who knows if it will be used a lot. Cute idea, but not that helpful for achieving your goals.

Which one to choose?
You decide. Just keep in mind, when searching for a goal tracking tool, I would recommend determining if you simply want to have to do lists, or if you are ready to have specific goals with associated tasks. Goal tracking is about all of the small tasks (from your TO DO Lists) that add up to one overarching goal. Sometimes, you may have random TO DO’s that don’t really seem like they fit into any goal, but you feel that they have to get done anyway. Go ahead and add them to the list and perhaps even do them, but first consider: WHY am I doing some task if it doesn’t help me reach any of my goals? This can lead to the type of self reflection that will ultimately help you to reduce the amount of mindless, or purposeless tasks that you are doing, and help you to find the best use of your time.

Let me know your thoughts on these tools or if there are some great ones that I have missed.

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Best Envelope Budgeting Software: You Need a Budget YNAB 3.0 for PC or Mac

Just when I thought I had it all figured out by using online tools like Mint, I repeatedly saw mention of one of the top rated budgeting software for download on your PC or Mac, YNAB 3.0 (You Need a Budget). YNAB is a budgeting software that incorporates the envelop method of budgeting. This may just be the next step for me in advancing my money management and control of our finances. The tools that I am currently using are easy to import my financial information and great for big picture trending, but we still haven’t really done well at isolating how to break some of our patterns and stick to our budgeting goals.

One of the goals of this tool is to help you get off of living only paycheck to paycheck. This is accomplished through the “YNAB Buffer” or by organizing your money in a way that you are able to save enough to off set one month of bills.

Your YNAB Buffer is the equivalent of one month’s income which, once saved, will allow you to use paychecks received during the current month for the following month, removing you from the “Paycheck to Paycheck” cycle.

This tool is not for the faint of heart. It is for people that are truly committed to managing the budget and investing the time and energy necessary to do so. When your are ready to get serious, give this tool a try.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Type of  Tool: Downloaded Budgeting Software for PC or Mac, imports .OFX, .QFX or .CSV files (Download from your online banking)

Price: $59.95

Compatiblity:
Windows 7 / Vista / Vista 64 / XP / 2000
Mac OSX
Linux

Pros:

• Simple, user friendly interface includes “Accounts”, “Budgets” and “Reports”
• Intuitive categorization
• Flags for follow up
• Excellent reports for trending with ultimate control of what you are looking at and exportable to Excel or to Print
• Helpful how tos section and blog for getting started
• Helps set up and manage your funds for one time expenses
• Helps save for larger 1 time expenses
• It can help you track EVERYTHING you spend – even cash which I hate because its usually disappears without a trace.
• Very helpful for people with variable income
  

Cons:

• Getting started can take a long time to set up. Unlike some other tools (Mint.com) that auto categorize the majority of your expenses, you need to manually categorize all of your expenses, at least at first.
• Cannot auto-import your information, you must download it and import it into the tool (This could also be seen as a PRO for some that are weary of the online only methods for security reasons)
• Not as full featured as Quicken or MS Money for investment and business tracking

Screenshots:

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Free Timeline Template for iWork (my Mac) or Word

I love and recommend the goal tracker site for setting and measuring progress on your goals. However, I still have a desire to use a high view time line of where I want my life and plans to go in the next few years.

I have had a hard time finding anything decent without paying hundreds of dollars, so, I’ve created my own and decided to share it for anyone that wants to use a visual, big picture format for planning out events, projects or milestones in their own family or business.

UPDATE: Please visit OnTimelines.com for additional cheap ($3.50+) timeline templates for Mac or PC for life planning, wedding planning, childhood milestones, blank timeline templates and more.

Screenshot:

Free Timeline Template:

3 year monthly timeline on (11″ x 8.5″ horizontal)

• Timeline Template (Secure Download on Box.Net) iWork Pages 2009 Version (11 x 8.5 Inch Horizontal)

• Timeline Template (Secure Download on Box.Net) Microsoft Word 2003 Version (11 x 8.5 Inch Horizontal)

HOW TO USE:
To adjust the timeline, simply copy and paste the markers and stretch or format them to fit your needs. Change the text, colors, etc to whatever you’d like. Add notes for additional date specific details.

If you are having trouble with overlaps, select the item that you most recently added, right click and select “Bring to Front”.

I plan to use this and move the big ‘ol “NOW” along as I go and set it as my desktop or something so that I have a visual reminder of where I’m at and where I’m going. Of course my life WILL inevitably vere in different directions, but this way I can acknowledge that change and document what happened and what I’m going to do with the next phase. As I mentioned, I think it really complements the planning work that you can do in the goal tracker online software to get yourself organized!

Here’s to Planning!

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Easily Keep Track of Family Addresses, Birthdays and Events Together

Around the holidays, I always send out emails to family members and friends alike in a frantic attempt to mail holiday cards. Why do I keep repeating this process? Because people move, or I get forgetful and don’t update the many places that I store addresses.

I was thinking about starting a Google Doc to share a long list of family contact information, but before I did, I did a quick search to see if there were any useful online tools that already solve this issue for me.

And of course, there is! FamilyCrossings.com

At Family Crossing you can get a free or premium account. You can ask your family to join, and then everyone can store their addresses as well as pictures, videos, and also very handy, a family calendar of events. I’m very much hoping I can convince my family members to at least use the address and events calendar. I’m thinking that if I put videos of my daughter on there and share them, that might just be enough to entice them to start using the site.

Beyond those features, you can also store family history, recipes, chat, and more. I don’t know that my family will utilize ALL of the features, but it will be a huge help if we just can all update our addresses, birthdays and key events on the family calendar!

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Not long ago, I admit that I wanted lots of “things” for birthday and holiday gifts. It is really nice to get something that you wouldn’t ordinarily buy yourself for the holidays such as lotions, electronics, books, etc.

Lately I’m a big fan of practical gifts. When you are on a tight budget, things that may once have seemed normal to spend money on such as socks, nice shampoo, getting your hair done, going to the car wash, etc, are all pushed out and minimized. What once seemed like a norm to purchase has become a luxury.

For my birthday this year, I asked my parents for a gift card to a hair salon. I just got back today and am very pleased with my do. I couldn’t think of a better gift, as I really can’t make myself justify spending the money myself, but I really, really want to get my hair done every 4 or so months.

I have had a difficult time taking care of my ‘wants’ vs. ‘needs’ list since I have had a child and we are only on my income. However, it is so great to have those things that I have had to let go be given to me on occasion.

So What’s a Practical Gift?

If you are still searching for a meaningful gift for the holidays for your family or loved ones, I suggest something creative-ly practical such as:

• A full service car wash
• Contribution to someone’s specfic savings funds
• A gift card for a restaurant + offer to baby sit
• Gas card gift certificate or auto maintenance service
• Gift card to their hair salon
• Gift card to a specialty grocery store
• Some of their favorite, but expensive snacks such as nuts, dried berries, etc

Any other creative but practical gifts that you can think of?

photo by kevindooley

Related Posts

• November 18, 2009 -- Budgeting for the Holidays and Avoiding Holiday Impulse Buys

Top Habit Changes That Help You Stick To a Budget

It can be a struggle to stay within your budget, especially around the holidays. I’ve been more actively monitoring my budget and income/expenses for a while now. I’m proud to say we did decrease our spending significantly in November. We also shifted some spending to more quality things such as education and investments.

However, unfortunately, on one income, we still spend more than we make. Not good. I’m confident our plans will take us where we need to go with this, including lifestyle changes, awareness & monitoring, conscious spending, and increased income from other areas.

1) Watching the Little Dollars – For us, its not about ‘skipping the latte’ specifically, but instead the things that you buy as habit that there are alternatives for. For example, making lunches and cutting back on eating out, even if its fast food, is healthier and cheaper.

2) Sharing the Knowledge – One of the most significant changes has been a true evaluation of what’s important to us, and a family goal of working towards our future. I have previously been managing the money more than my husband, and he is now playing a more active role. Sharing the ‘burden’ helps us be more aligned with our goals together, and has significantly minimized some of the confusion or disagreements.

3) Gotta Love Coupons – And of course, there’s nothing like the good old fashioned coupon. Its my personal belief that I have to save at least $1.00 off of something to make it worth my time. And I only use coupons for something I would have bought already.

4) Awareness & Monitoring – I’m actively monitoring my spending and money habits on Mint and Thrive, and I have weekly email reminders and alerts being sent to me. Even if I wanted to forget, too bad, I have now made it a habit not to.

5) Conscious Spending – I wrote a post about How to Curb Impulse Shopping, and for me, the online shop-a-holic, unsubscribing from tempting emails was the trick. It has significantly helped me from thinking about or wondering if I’m missing out on a good deal. Its helped me from justifying why I just have to buy something because of the bargain, since I don’t actually know about the bargain. My husband is great at sticking to the grocery list, and this saves a lot on impulse grocery buys. Overall, I’m trying to wait at least 1 day to 1 week on purchases outside of the norm to determine if they are impulsive or not. I’m not perfect at this, but this is my goal.

6) Setting Expectations with Friends & Family - This is a tough one, but it helps. I talked with my family and friends this year about cutting back on holiday spending, most of us are in the same boat, so it makes it easier. Its almost a relief when you talk about it that everyone says you don’t have to spend too much. This doesn’t mean you can’t do something thoughtful. I’m already finding that I have more quality time lined up with friends and don’t have to worry about the gifts, but instead can spend a little on the event itself.

Finally, I definitely recommend that you don’t push too hard and cut yourself some slack with changing habits. You can’t change habits overnight, or you won’t stick to them. I know that I’m too hard on myself about this, and it is okay to slip as long as you stay true to your goals overall.

Anything I should add to this list?

photo by girlonaglide

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moneyStrands Free Online Budgeting and Money Management Software

The last in my series of online budgeting evaluations, moneyStrands, provided by Strands Labs, Inc. (developed social recommendation and personalization technologies), combines a modern approach to personal finance with widget style designs, and a personalize virtual spokesperson, Monica. Its a secure and free online tool, and auto-imports your accounts.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Pros:

• Customizable dashboard for RSS feeds and other interests
• Printable PDF summary (I love this feature, even though simple, a lot of other tools don’t allow you to print!)
• iPhone App
• Personalized recommendations
• Ability to customize your categories
• Community options to share and discuss with others, compare your spending with other people that have similar habits to yours

Cons:

• For the way my mind works, it was hard to know what some of the icons were for, and how to find what I was looking for
• A lot going on, too much information unrelated to budgeting, saving and investing. Why would I want to have retail offers if I am interested in saving and budgeting? This product must be geared at a demographic that wants more than just money management
• In my opinion, the boxy widget style design is not as user friendly as other tools such as Mint or Thrive

Overall, moneyStrands has a lot of functionality for a free tool that may appeal to many people. For me personally, I am not interested in the format of thier special offers for retail stores, credit cards, or tips and I don’t particularly like the design of the widget format, or the icons that they use. I want SIMPLE and to the point, and this interface does not offer that.

For Your Reference: Here’s another nice review and how to:
http://personalfinancesoftwarereviews.com/moneystrands/

Check it out for yourself and see what you prefer.

Related Posts

• November 15, 2009 -- Giving Mint a Run for Its Money? Just Thrive
• November 21, 2009 -- Review of FiLife: Your Financial Lifeline
• October 30, 2009 -- Review Free Online Budgeting Tools: Yodlee MoneyCenter
• October 28, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tools: Mint.com
• October 27, 2009 -- Top Free Online Budgeting Money Management Tools

Review of Free Online Money Management Tool: Thrive

A refreshing design and helpful tips gives Thrive an advantage that Mint does not offer, namely: Advice.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Pros:

• Auto imports (almost) all of your accounts
• Simple, user-friendly design
• Awesome customer service (This is a huge plus for a free tool!)
• Does a better job auto-updating accounts and accounting for multi-factor authentication than Mint
• Easy to use and remember categories of your expenses and income
• Credit Compass – estimates your credit score and gives you recommendations for improving it
• Budgeting tools and debt management tools that allows you to set specific goals for and calculates how much to save per month to reach that goal within a certain time period
• Once you have a few months of trending, it can predict how much you would need to live per year on your current expenses, as well as an interesting one of how many days you can survive without a job given your asset/liability and income/expense ratios

Cons:

• Does not yet import all of my credit union loan accounts (neither does any other site, so what do you do?)
• Does not allow you to manually enter any asset or liability accounts if they cannot find your online account
• It learns your categorizations, but I would prefer to also have an option to manually save re-categorized transactions for the future like Mint does

I’ve heard that many people are fleeing to Thrive or alternatives since the purchase of Mint by Intuit, and the speculative rumors that Mint may switch their back-end system from Yodlee. I would say that there are definitely some great alternatives to Mint out there, but there is no 1 answer that fits all needs. In fact, I’m think about using a combination of Mint and Thrive, as they both offer different perspectives that can help me organize and simplify my finances.

Update: In hearing back from Elisa at Thrive, I was made aware that the suggested products that Thrive offers are not based on affiliate commissions, but are truly intended to fit the needs of the user. They find matches for savings and loan products that are based on what is available in the marketplace, not on their commissions. To me, this is a very useful distinction from other companies.

Another Update: I have used this for a while now, and I do find the categorization difficult. Also, they give some real tough love advice. It may not be something you want to hear

Thrive website: http://www.justthrive.com

View the tour at: http://www.justthrive.com/tour

Related Posts

• November 19, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tool: moneyStrands
• October 30, 2009 -- Review Free Online Budgeting Tools: Yodlee MoneyCenter
• October 28, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tools: Mint.com
• October 27, 2009 -- Top Free Online Budgeting Money Management Tools
• November 21, 2009 -- Review of FiLife: Your Financial Lifeline

Acrylic has made an excellent Mac or iPhone password storage tool: Wallet

Just when I thought I was done, I found a great desktop app for password storage. The catch? Its only for a Mac or iPhone… (Sorry PC users, you’ll have to stick with Mitto.com or alternatives).

If you aren’t a PC user, Wallet presents a really nice interface for secure password storage on your Mac or iPhone.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Cost: $20 for Mac $4.99 for iPhone App

Compatibility: Mac OS X or iPhone

Pros:

• Can sync with your mobileme account
• Simple, user friendly
• Search feature, alphabetizes entries, custom folders and icons
• You can export for CSV to print or to a database to import elsewhere
• Password generator

Cons:

• As opposed to an online version, you won ‘t have easy access to your logins if you don’t have an iPhone and aren’t near your computer.
• Slightly hard to figure out how to delete entries
• I wish I could copy the passwords directly without having to open up an entry

This is it, this is the tool for me!

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Review of Online Personal Data Organizer Tool: Orggit.com

As part of my journey to get financially fit and organized, I found an online tool, Orggit. Orggit provides a secure platform for storing your personally sensitive information such as passwords, wallet information, health information and also a ‘filing cabinet’ which can be organized by folders for documents that you keep in your ‘off-line’ filing cabinet such as tax information, legal paperwork, etc. In theory you could shred all your filling cabinet documents once you uploaded them to this. (as long as you could find the time to upload them all, a daunting task for me). What I was suprise about when searching online is that

I cannot find another product that matches the features that they offer. Their fee is $50 annually, which seems pretty reasonable to me.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Pros:

• User friendly interface
• Aggregates and cleanly categorizes a TON of personal information options (Even your family medical records, Insurance card infomration, social security number, immunization records, basically anything I can think of.
• Secure filing cabinet for any and all documents that you want to keep safe
• Emergency ID / Contact information (they mail you a copy of this to keep on hand)

Cons:

• I was hoping to use this for my password storage as well as the other features it offers. However, the other password tools that I reviewed offer so many more features (sorting, import/export, categorizing, etc), that I am tempted to use a separate tool for passwords.
• I am so tempted by the filing cabinet option, but also overwhelmed by the idea of having to scan in and upload my important files into my computer, then delete them from my computer. The amount of time committment for this is large and I would need to be pretty committed to it. However, its probably sort of like iTunes, its hard to upload all your old CD collections, but once they are there, you have them for good!

Overall I am so impressed with this innovative product, even though it doesn’t meet all of my needs for password storage. I heart Orggit.com!

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Day 9: Review of Free Online Password Storage Tools: Clipperz.com

Clipperz.com can be used to safely store your password and sensitive personal information online, generate secure passwords to use, as well as create passwords for one time use. The purpose of one time use passphrases are if you are concerned about using a public computer where there may be spyware or adware that could steal your login information. You can store web passwords, wallet data like bank account and credit cards and create your own custom ‘cards’.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Pros:

• Free
• Direct login configuration and browser ‘bookmarklet’ tool to easily and quickly use your passwords while browsing on the internet
• Import and Export of your passwords securely
• Password generator (that’s helpful!)
• It lets you delete your account completely
• One time use passwords

Cons:

• Initially I was confused by the navigation of the site, I didn’t realize that a “card” referred to any type of password/data. My bad, sorry about that.
• Folders or sorting of your ‘cards’ / passwords would be helpful
• You cannot yet share information with trusted people in your family, etc, but this is coming soon

I especially like the the feature that it lets you delete your account entirely. For the type of industry they are in with security and privacy being the most important feature, this makes a lot of sense.

View a Video of Clipperz.com

Related Posts

• November 2, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Password Storage Tools: Mitto.com
• November 1, 2009 -- Safely Store Documents Online: Review of Best Online Organizer and Password Tools
• November 4, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Password Storage Tool: Passpack.com

Review of Free Online Password Tool Mitto.com

Pros:

• Easy navigation, simple, clean design
• Free
• Offers “enhanced security” for your cell phone (possible cell phone charges, but free for Mitto use)
• Many security measures (detail below)
• Allows “auto-login” for many top retail and popular websites (Amazon, Target, etc)
• Adds a browser plugin or ‘bookmarklet’ for easy access to top sites that you login to

Cons:

• Can’t print information (Update: Mitto’s CEO informed me that a secure version of this will be available soon)
• Mainly limited to passwords (not other personal data or info)
• Folder based categories would be a nice addition to the tags
• Slow loading for me from my home computer

There are many very innovative security features with Mitto.com. These include:

• Multifactor authentication (additional verification questions)
• Email verification phrase set by you to ensure that any emails sent from them are legitimate
• Display of your name, IP address, date, time, brower, operating system and country of last login
• Private and public computer settings
• And more I’m sure!

Now that I have used it a bit, I love the features of the mitto interface. Initially I had a difficult time getting my personal email address to work, and was not sure that I could use Mitto, but Arsen at Mitto.com found my Twitter review and worked dilligently that same day to correct the issue. I don’t currently use Mitto, instead I opted for Wallet (view my review) that is a desktop application on my Mac. However, I do think it is a good option for a free, secure online password storage tool.

What other password options have you used? I’d love your input.

Related Posts

• November 3, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Password Storage Tools: Clipperz.com
• November 1, 2009 -- Safely Store Documents Online: Review of Best Online Organizer and Password Tools
• November 4, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Password Storage Tool: Passpack.com

Review of Online  Password & Document Tools

I need to get organized! This includes everything from better back up of my computer hard drive, to cleaning out my house of clutter, etc. Right now, I have important passwords stored all over the place and I don’t always use the best ones in the world for the sake of remembering them.  If I can get all my password information easily track-able and safely stored, I will be able to do more with my time moving forward.

Here is my criteria:

• Free (or minimal fee for value add)
• Safe (obviously!)
• Easy to manage and organize different passwords

Nice to Haves:

• Auto fill and auto import of new passwords from other websites
• Ability to store financial data as well (wallet, important paperwork)
• Prefer online tool (not downloaded software)

I decided not to review desktop tools (such as the popular Password Safe). The latest online password tools are advanced enough that they do not have access to your information. Simply put, they securely connect you with a database that stores your password information, but other people, browsers, etc are unable to access that information. Marco Barulli of clipperz.com refers to this concept as a “zero-knowledge” password manager.

Reviews of Top Free Online Data and Password Storage Tools:

• Mitto – View My Review Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
• Clipperz – View My Review Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Reviews of Top PAID or SUBSCRIPTION Online Data and Password Storage Tools:
(Make sure to check if back ups are for a Mac or a PC… I’m on a Mac running Bootcamp so I may need both)

• Passpack – View My Review (Annual fee for over 100 passwords) Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
• Orggit – View My Review. (Store Password, Wallet, Health and File Cabinet Data online, $49 per year). Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  This one is the only one that looks like it offers document upload and storage.

Paid Password Software Tool For Mac & iPhone

• Wallet – View My Review (Not Free – $20 for software and $) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

In the end, I ended up opting for a paid software download for my Mac with Wallet, its easy, safe, and the most user friendly for my needs.

Related Posts

• November 4, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Password Storage Tool: Passpack.com
• November 3, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Password Storage Tools: Clipperz.com
• November 2, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Password Storage Tools: Mitto.com

Review of Free Online Money Management and Budgeting Tool: Yodlee MoneyCenter (moneycenter.yodlee.com)

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Pros:

• Free
• Automatically import your accounts (including my credit union account!)
• Calendar spending view (this is my favorite feature!) Helps show when I’m spending money, not just totals.
• Excellent reporting for spending, expenses, budget vs actual spending
• Import real estate, investments, rewards accounts, manage net worth
• Share account feature that allows you to show limited information to other users (such as your tax accountant)

Cons:

• Slow loading time
• Hard to navigate, not very intuitive user interface
• Pay bill feature doesn’t have a lot of bill payers, doesn’t allow payees that aren’t already in thier system
• When you re-categorized a transaction, you can’t easily save that category setting for the future

Yodlee Calendar

I was initially impressed with Yodlee MoneyCenter based on the amount of investment and account options that you could manage in the interface. However, a certain key feature that Mint had is lacking in Yodlee. As I mentioned above, if a transaction is imported in as un-categorized or had the wrong category, I can re-categorize it. In order to have similar transactions categorized correctly in the future, you have to create a rule in the “custom categories rules” tab. For me, this would involve a lot of going back and forth that I’m unwilling to do.

My Choice:
Although I love the calendar spending view chart, I have decided to use Mint for the simplicity and ease of use with importing my account information and trending. It has a few less options than Yodlee, but overall meets my immediate needs for budgeting. I recommend you give Yodlee a try if you are looking for a lot of features as mentioned above in my Pro list, and Mint or Thrive for a something a little more user friendly.

Related Posts

• November 15, 2009 -- Giving Mint a Run for Its Money? Just Thrive
• October 27, 2009 -- Top Free Online Budgeting Money Management Tools
• November 19, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tool: moneyStrands
• November 21, 2009 -- Review of FiLife: Your Financial Lifeline
• October 28, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tools: Mint.com

Review of Mint.com Online Budgeting and Account Aggregator Tool

If you are searching for a free online money management or budgeting tool, mint.com offers a very nice interface. It’s popular for a reason, its user friendly and easy to use. I thought it went without say, but perhaps not for everyone, you have to use online banking to use Mint and all of the online budgeting tools that I review.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Attractive, Interactive Charts

Pros:

• Easy of use, nice design
• Easy to securely import financial information (accounts for multifactor authentication, or in other words those extra questions in your online banking)
• Best online tool for remembering your rules for categories (Saves LOTS of time)
• Nice charts and graphs for trending, with drill-down options for more detail
• Great over all picture of your monthly net income and expenses
• iPhone App

Cons:

• Hard to account for one time or future planned expenses
• Budget tracker color codes are misleading for recurring exact expenses
• Budgeting tool isn’t that user friendly or helpful for sticking to a budget
• Intrusive partnership cross-sells with big banks (etrade, scottrade, etc)

I’ve imported my financial information into Mint.com and re-categorized my expenses. Overall, it serves the basic purpose of seeing where I’m spending my money, and will be good for showing my trending. It’s a very user friendly interface, easy to use and nicely designed.

Budgeting Indicator Bars

So far I’ve already realized quite a few things about where my money goes. I am way over budget on things that I didn’t realize like groceries. I thought we had that down to about $300 a month, but after a few Costco trips, that went down the drain. That being said, I have a hard time accounting for 1 time expenses in Mint. Its possible, but not that easy. Additionally, I am over budget on shopping by well a lot since I don’t really have a shopping budget. This will be the hardest thing to kick. I don’t really buy that much for myself anymore. But I’m always justifying something I need to buy for my toddler.

What I’m not impressed with is their way of managing one time expenses. They have a way to budget for 1 time or recurring expenses in intervals, but it doesn’t seem very realistic for my lifestyle. So, overall, I’d say that I like the design, ease of use, and simplicity of mint.com, but I feel like something’s missing. It just isn’t as ‘robust’ as I was hoping for.

Additionally, the budget tracker is nice, but it is distracting to see your budgeted categories in yellow or red when they are actually recurring exact expenses that you budget for each month. It shows that you are over budget if you have something that was a planned for large expense, but it happened to fall in a certain month. It would be pretty neat if it allowed you to adjust your budget on a monthly basis due to planned and unusual expenses, but also kept an expected budget. Or at least adjust the budget threshold percentages so that what you think is “yellow” or “red” could be set by you. As it is, you’d have to be way under budget every month to stay in the “green.”

Also, I realize that its free, so they have to make their money from advertisements and partnerships with financial companies, but its all over the place. It’s just a little too much for me. I’m all for obvious ads, or ads that aren’t totally intrusive, but when its interruptive, I get pretty annoyed. I get asked every time I click on the investments tab if I want to move my money to somewhere else. The way they say it is that they can help you save certain amounts of money by switching, but to me, its somewhat misleading that they design it to look like they’ll easily help you, but the true intention is to get you to open more bank accounts so that they earn a profit from their partnerships.

Related Posts

• November 15, 2009 -- Giving Mint a Run for Its Money? Just Thrive
• November 19, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tool: moneyStrands
• October 27, 2009 -- Top Free Online Budgeting Money Management Tools
• November 21, 2009 -- Review of FiLife: Your Financial Lifeline
• October 30, 2009 -- Review Free Online Budgeting Tools: Yodlee MoneyCenter

Review of the Best Auto – Import Online Money Management Tools

I signed up and tried out various online money management tools that manage your finances. Here’s the list of the top 4 reviewed and my main criteria for my decision. (You have to use online banking to use these tools!)

My main criteria are:

1. Free
2. Import majority of my financial accounts automatically (no upload, manual, etc)
3. Easy to use, simple interface
4. Easy to interpret budgeting
5. Doesn’t require a lot of manual work to sort through the categories

Top Free Personal Finance Sites that Import (Almost) All Accounts:

• Yodlee – Read My Full Review Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
• Mint – Read My Full Review Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
• Thrive – Read My Full Review Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
• MoneyStrands – Read My Full Review Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

A note on a few other popular tools: Geezeo is now only for private Financial Institutions and Wesabe look great, but won’t auto import my credit union accounts (bummer!)

Update: I’ve been using a combination of Mint and Thrive for a while now. Great start, but I’m going to be on the look out for another budgeting tool. Neither of these give me all that I want for setting easy budgets.

Related Posts

• November 15, 2009 -- Giving Mint a Run for Its Money? Just Thrive
• October 30, 2009 -- Review Free Online Budgeting Tools: Yodlee MoneyCenter
• November 19, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tool: moneyStrands
• October 28, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tools: Mint.com
• November 18, 2009 -- Budgeting for the Holidays and Avoiding Holiday Impulse Buys