Essential Web Resources for Managing Finances

Personal finance and money management is one of the most complex things you simply have to do.  Nobody wants to deal with taxes, credit scores, budgets, and bills, but they are necessary parts of life.  Luckily, it's become a whole lot easier for individuals to take control of their finances without having to hire professional help.

In the last few years, a slew of great online tools have popped up to provide practically anyone the resources he or she needs to effectively create a budget and stick to it with minimal work.  Not only that, but online banking has made it easier than ever to pay bills, analyze spending trends, and track expenses.

The following ten online finance tools can help you do everything from check your credit score to help plan out your retirement.  And don't just limit yourself to these tools - there are many more for you to discover and integrate into your financial plan.



1.    Mint: All online personal finance management should begin and end with Mint.  This amazing tool, recently acquired by the makers of Quickbooks, syncs with all of your online bank accounts, credit cards, PayPal accounts, and investment accounts and provides you with a single dashboard view of the state of your finances.  

• Mint will automatically tell you how much you're spending on shopping, gas, and bills, help you create a budget, and plan for the future.  It helps analyze trends in your spending so that you make better investments.  And finally, it automatically alerts you if you go over budget or if weird charges pop up.
  
  
• If you could only choose one free personal finance tool to use, Mint should be it.  
  

2.    Wesabe: Wesabe is similar to Mint in that it also connects to your bank accounts and analyzes them.  Its community features differentiate it, though.  Not only do you get an overview of where you're sending your money, but members of Wesabe are free to give you general advice to help you with your financial decisions, specifically on ways to save money on your credit cards.



3.    Billmonk: This tool is ideal for when you are sharing bills with co-workers or roommates.  It allows you to submit shared bills or loans and split them up automatically between a group of people.  For example, you can put in last month's electric, gas, and water bills and evenly divide the cost between roommates automatically.  There's even a debt shuffle feature so that you don't have to write as many checks.



4.    Gosimplifi: Need to plan out your finances and investment future, but don't want to pay the thousands of dollars a financial advisor will cost?  Just answer a few questions from GoSimplifi and you'll begin to understand the state of your finances and, more importantly, what you have to do to achieve them.


5.    LendingTree MoneyRight: A newer tool from the people at LendingTree, MoneyRight has some similar features to Mint (it syncs with your bank accounts), but it doesn't focus on providing you an overview of your finances.  Instead, it analyzes the information you have given it to provide specific financial advice, planning tools, and specific milestones you have to reach in order to make your financial goals.



6.    Evernote: Evernote is an online social note-taking tool. So what does it have to do with personal finance?  The answer is simple: receipts and bills.  You can use Evernote to record all of these expenses by taking a snapshot of a receipt.  You can then easily organize it via Evernote's tagging and organization system.  It's just easier than lugging around receipts everywhere.



7.    Scottrade (or another online trading tool): If you're serious about online personal finance management, then having the ability to invest, trade, and create funds for your retirement is vital to proper financial management.  In the end, picking the right tool, whether it's Scottrade, E*Trade,
TD Ameritrade, thinkorswim (for options), or another service, boils down to your comfort level and trial-and-error.

8.    CreditKarma: You need to know your credit score, period.  There are a lot of sites for it, but most cost money and most are very painful or complicated to use.  If you want painless checking though, our recommendation is CreditKarma, which is simple, free, and gets you a quick assessment of your credit score.  Note: it does ask for your social security number, although CreditKarma doesn't store it on their servers.



9.    Freshbooks: Most of the tools I've discussed focus on personal finance, but especially if you're consulting, speaking, or receiving multiple income streams, you need to manage business finances as well.  Freshbooks is one of the best online invoice and bill management tools out there for small businesses.  You can track your time, manage contractors, track expenses, bill clients, and even sync up with other project management tools, such as Basecamp.



10.    Investopedia: Look: you can have all of the great online investment tools out there and still mess up your finances if you don't know what you're doing.  Taxes, 401(k)s, budgeting, and the stock market are not simple subjects, and you shouldn't be tackling any of them without some strong knowledge in your camp.  

Investopedia (owned by Forbes) is one of the best financial knowledge centers around.  Not only will it help you define the finance terms you'll stumble across, but it has some great features, guides, and tutorials to quickly make you a savvier investor and financial planner.

Top image credit: yomanimus

What personal finance sites would you add to this list?

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