My husband and I have been trying to stop spending money and save for the past 5 years, but we just recently got serious about it.  There’s nothing like taking a look at all of your debt added up and realize that you owe more than you make in a year!  We started using Mint.com, a free online financial software website where you can see all of your accounts in one place.  This free tool has helped us both analyze our financial situation and create a budget.  Other free features include creating and managing goals, free tips on how to save money, and charts that help you track your progress.

We’ve been using this free financial tool for about 2 years now, and they’ve been making it better and better as time goes on.  They’ve added tons of free resources to help the user plan for their financial future.  It suggests what credit cards would be the best for you based on your spending habits.  It suggests retirement funds and other investment accounts in order to plan for your future.  I think my favorite feature, though, is one they just introduced, and that’s the free credit card debt elimination plan.  You can customize a goal/plan for paying off all of your credit cards and other debt.  Then, Mint will track your progress and help you stay on track.

This tool will be especially useful for us, since we just got done with a major home improvement that went way over our budget.  We have racked up quite a bit of credit card debt, but we hope to be able to pay all of that off by the end of 2012.  Mint has helped us to see that light at the end of the tunnel. 

So, if you need a bit of help getting started on the road to saving, then check out all of the free tools at Mint.com.