Managing your finances and balancing your checkbook can be a hassel sometimes if your bank account balances change on a daily bases and if you are a really busy person. Luckily there are a few good software applications out there that can keep track of your finances by logging into your bank accounts and downloading updates. It may sound scary to give a program your bank account login information, but these two top programs use the same level security as your bank does.
The first personal finance program that I recommend is Quicken. Quicken does a great job of connecting to all sorts of accounts include banking, credit cards, and even brokerage and retirement accounts at other places. All you need to do is input your logins to each account that you have and then Quicken will automatically login to each one and bring all the updates to one place for you. Quick also has really good tax planing, savings planning, and net worth calcualations. Quicken offers a number of different versions for different purposes, check them out at Quicken.com.
A good, and free, alternative to Quicken is Mint.com. Mint.com does a number of the same things that Quicken does except for a few things such as taxes. Mint.com is completely web based, so you will have to login through the website each time instead of starting a program from your desktop. Mint.com will also recommend other financial services to you such as credit cards or savings accounts if it sees that you could get a better interest rate. Check out more info and features at Mint.com
