Budgeting is one of those things that we all know we should do, but how many people really live by one? I’ll be honest, for most of our married life we just make purchases and check the account every now and then to see if we still have enough money to keep buying stuff . Which is definitely not the ideal financial scenario, especially when you want to pay off debt, save for a car, and make sure you have enough to pay your bills.

Therefore, I’ve been in search of the best financial software to make our budget functional but not have to pour hours every week to make it work. I searched for software high and low, reading articles and testing demoes, and was still left without a viable solution. Until….

I FOUND MINT.COM!!! It absolutely blew my mind how incredible this website is. Its everything I’ve ever wanted from a budgeting solution and more. Now I know you’re thinking at this point, “Is Dave really that big of a dork that he gets this excited over a financial website?” But there’s so much freedom when you know where your money is going! That’s the beauty of a budget–no more living in fear about paying bills or feeling stressed about debt. Mint helps you get everything out there to see and then make decisions about how to spend your money.

I would highly recommend going on their site to read about it, because they’ll do a much better job than I explaining it. But here’s my one sentence summary: Mint aggregates (or combines) all your financial information (checking and saving accounts, credit cards, loans, investments, assets, etc) all in one place that is continually updated and automatically categorizes every transaction for easy budgeting. And its completely safe because all the info is read only, even if someone hacked into your account, they couldn’t make any changes. UNBELIEVABLE!!!

So for everyone out there who hears the word “budget” and cringes, I recommend you check out Mint.com. I couldn’t imagine an easier solution to managing your money.