Managing your finances is a complex and crucially important task, but fortunately, there are many money management tools available on the Web to help you cope. Budget templates, investment advice, and financial software are only a few of the options. Your age, work situation, and lifestyle will all factor into what tools will work best for you.

Money Management Tools: Budget Help

Setting up a workable budget is the first step to managing your finances. Among the many money management tools available are several styles of budgeting plans. Some are very simple, using only a few general categories for your expenses. Others have lots of bells and whistles, such as graphs and charts for visual representation of the relationships among spending categories.

Most budget aids use a simple spreadsheet format, but there are some variations. One of the most original of the money management tools online is an "envelope budgeting system." This program is an electronic version of the basic old-fashioned system of putting cash in separate envelopes for each category of expenses. While that worked fine when you took your paycheck to the bank and got cash for it, in today's cashless society, it would be impractical. This system divides your income among a number of "virtual envelopes" and keeps track of how much you have spent in each category. You don't even have to enter your expenses, since the program is linked with your various bank accounts and credit cards and enters the information automatically.

Online bill paying services are another very useful category of money management tools. You can either visit the site of each creditor and set up a system for electronically paying that creditor's bills, or you can set up a system that manages all bills at one site. Bills are received electronically and you are notified when they are due. Then you can choose to pay each bill separately or set up a recurring payment.