Wesabe

So, since we decided to start a family, I have gotten more....well you could say obsessed with saving money. Since Jeremy and I both have good jobs and we keep our expenses modest this should in theory be easy...and yet some how it's not just that easy. To better track how we spend our money - i.e. where it goes... I created an excel spreadsheet where I track monthly expenses like groceries, dining out, gas, and other misc. categories. This really helped to see where our problem areas were. So each month I would download my bank statement and do this manually. Anyway, along with that I like to read articles on msn.com's money section on saving tips and there was this article on "how to save $10,000 in 2009" - in reading it, it suggested a website - www.wesabe.com. This website is awesome! Basically, you are able to upload your bank statements and then assign titles to your expenses and it tracks them for you. (It doesn't link to your bank data to keep it secure, since you upload a statement you have saved on your computer) So for example every time the program sees that I spend money at Giant, it puts it in my groceries category. I can then also set a spending target for any of my categories to more easily gage where I am month to date on spending in that area. After you get it going, and place the appropriate category tags on your expenses, it really does all the work for you! It saves so much time for me, rather than going through my statement and highlighting all my grocery charges and then adding them up and putting them in a spreadsheet. It has a lot of other great functionality as well, too much to list here. I totally encourage anyone to check it out. www.wesabe.com
Its my favorite 2009 find so far... :-)