We recommend Mint.com to organize and automate your finances.Mint.com, a FREE online service, will transform your financial life. The very first step of the journey to financial freedom is creating your own financial reports. The first one is called the Cashflow Statement. This statement starts with the money that comes in and details all the expenses. The second one is called the Balance Sheet. It is simply a listing of your assets (what you own) versus your liabilities (what you owe). A house you own is listed under your assets, whereas the mortgage is a liability. It is imperative that you keep track of both of these statements on a regular basis. You have to know your financial status every month. And, if you are going to be creating these statements every quarter, there has to be a way to automate the process so that you know where you stand at the click of your mouse. Mint.com is the perfect solution. It does all of the above and best of all, it's FREE! I have been a member of The Motley Fool for a long time now, and this service is a great addition to their roster of financial services and products. It took me less than 1 minute to set up my account and another 30 minutes to input my login information for all our accounts - checking, savings, credit cards, investment accounts. Now all I need to do is click update and it will update all our accounts in less than one minute. Once you set up your accounts, it imports all the transactions data and organizes it using pre-defined categories and sub-categories (Groceries, Fast Food, Gas and Fuel etc.). Most of these transactions are well-defined (such as expenditures at McDonald's automatically tagged as Fast Food). Many others are recurring (Groceries and Gas being two examples). I spent about an hour going through the labeling of transactions. I had to set up a few categories of my own (Work Lunch etc.). But now my list of transactions is well-organized. I will need to do this about once every other week to keep it organized, and it should not take me more than 15 minutes. I have also set it up for email reports on all our accounts at the end of each month. Now I know where we stand every month automatically. Once the system is all set up, you will really start seeing its power. You will be able to see all the hidden patterns of your expenses, such as how many times you eat out on an average and what the trend of your grocery expenditures is. Mint lets you compare your expenditures from month to month. It also lets you compare your spending with others in your area (or somewhere else in the US, for that matter). As it gets more and more data, you will start seeing more useful patterns and ideas for playing better money-defense. Mint.com needs to be the first stop on your journey to financial independence. It will be the most useful one hour you will spend on your journey!
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