Retire Young and Wealthy

In tough financial times, often the only thing that you can do to stay above water is to be very careful about how you manage your money. Usually what causes people to get into trouble isn’t recklessness, but absent mindedness. It’s not always easy to be able to do, but fortunately there are tools that can help you to make sure that what you’re spending doesn’t break the bank.

1. Mint.com - The granddaddy of financial management websites, Mint.com started out strong and has only gotten stronger since. They began as a small startup with basic budgeting tools and only two years later they were purchased by Intuit, makers of Quickbooks and Quicken. Since then, they have only gotten better, offering an incredible variety of ways to keep track of what you’re spending, establish budgets, and set up alerts that can go to your phone or email when your bank account shows certain activity. The interface is slick and very easy to use, and if you have questions it’s simple to find and read their documentation.

2. Evolvemoney.com - One of the best systems available for online bill pay, you really can’t beat this site. It’s incredibly fast and secure, gets your bills paid quickly and easily, and has a number of great innovations. One of the best aspects of it is that it’s easy to pay cash for a rechargeable RELoadIt card and use that to make payments. Their mobile app makes it easy to pay anywhere. You can pay bills to more than 10,000 different providers, which makes it easy to find the ones that work for you, and it’s a free service.

3.Yodlee Moneycenter - Yodlee is the back end to Mint.com as well, and while MOneycenter does a lot of the same things as the former, there are some features that are all its own. With Moneycenter you can link any number of bank accounts, credit cards, debit cards, investment accounts, insurance, loans, mortgages, online news, and a ton of other things to make sure that you keep all of your financial efforts focused and in one place. You can even add offline assets and manually track your money through their site.

4. ReadyForZero - This is a debt-reduction-focused service that has a ton to offer. By inputting all of your budget information, you can easily see how long it will take you to pay off your debt at various payment levels, it can give you tips on how to continue to do that, and it will contact you as you reach certain milestones to continue to encourage your debt payment. When you finish repaying a debt, recognition of your efforts in the form of trophy icons and congratulatory messages appear. Mostly, though, it is a great tool to help you find a way out of debt and helps you develop a plan that will actually work.

Money management can be a real challenge and it’s not always easy to handle on your own. Not knowing what’s happening with your money is a huge problem, but it’s one that can be fixed pretty easily and often without spending a dime. Finding the right combination of money management tools can help you live the life you want, confident that you will always be able to afford to live it.