For a while now I’ve wanted a good personal finance application for our Mac. PC users often like Quicken, but Quicken for Mac apparently doesn’t work nearly as well, and I couldn’t find a good alternative. Then I discovered a free personal finance website called Mint.com.

What I wanted most was a tool to do two things: track our spending against our budget and gather all of our financial account data into one location for easy viewing. With a couple of exceptions, Mint.com does both. I can set a budget for any number of categories (pharmacy, electric bill, groceries, etc.), download my credit card transactions, and easily (often automatically) map the transaction to the category, giving me a running total for each month. If I exceed my budget for a category, the site emails me an alert message. I can rollover my budget from month to month if my spending varies. Sure, it doesn’t have all the advanced features of some programs, but it’s FREE, it’s secure, it works, and I can access it from anywhere.