Free Tools for Tracking Your Spending

If you're having a difficult time keeping up with your expenses, there are some free tools available to help track your spending. By entering account and expense information, the tools do the calculations for you. Buddi (buddi.sourceforge.net), voted best by Money magazine, is downloaded to your computer, features a two-screen setup, pull down menus for categorizing transactions, and creates graphs and charts to help you analyze your spending.

clearcheckbook.com

If you want easy access to your information anytime and anywhere, Clearcheckbook () stores your information online so you can add expenses as they happen. The downside of this program is that the budget resets monthly with left over cash not carrying over to the next month's budget. Gnucash (gnucash.org) resembles a check book and offers stock and fund price tracking; however, the program may be too complicated for some users.