There are numerous ways to manage your money, Wesabe, Mint, just to mention a few but I have always found these to be a bit limiting. Mint for example requires your bank account information which is a major drawback.

I always speak up against all this privacy obsession, but while I don’t care if someone gets to my personal thoughts, I do care if they get to my money. There is a heated debate about Mint’s safety and policies and even if you don’t mind that part, if you have bank accounts outside the US, Mint won’t work anyway.

Five highly-automated online services to help you out with your daily life and new year resolutions. Nothing complicated or time-consuming, only apps that truly deliver.

FINANCES

Mint - Get control of your budget and finances with minimal effort. Mint is a fully-automated, all-in-one online personal finance tracker.

Here are some of the things that Mint can do without your intervention:

• Track and organize your spendings by category (utilities, grocery shopping, entertainment, etc.).
• Alert you about the account payment due dates.
• Analyze your credit card and bank accounts and tell you if there are any better (more rewarding) alternatives.

Being the type of guy that burns through money I jumped at the opportunity to review Mint. Mint is a finance tracking and budgeting platform much like Microsoft Money or Quicken. But the main difference is it is Online – if you don’t have a problem adding your banking information to Mint.com you can have access to a complete financial overview from any web browser.

Mint has been in Beta for about 3 months now and is showing somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 early adopters throwing in over 2 billion dollars of their hard earned accounts into Mint’s databases. 2 fricking billion dollars? That’s a lot of moolah…

From simple, personal and shared expense tracker to feature-filled, budget tracking tools. All free, enjoy!

(1) BillMonk

Features: Demo

• convenient for tracking expenses between friends, roommates, college students, etc.
• track, manage, split and settle bills (via Obopay) online
• get reminders (via email or SMS)
• use tags to categorize your expenses
• integrated system to keep track of stuff you lent and borrow i.e, books and DVDs

(2) BillQ

Features:

• add, track and manage bills.
• set ‘to pay’ reminders and deadlines
• create groups and assign bills to them

It’s all about money today. Here are a bunch of services for quickly settling shared bills/debts among friends using the mobile phone, and a couple of services for express international money transfers directly from your PC.

(1) Send/Receive Money on your Mobile (via Text Messaging)

These are relatively new services that let you instantly transfer money to someone from the convenience of your Phone. All you need is a mobile phone and your friend’s (or …) mobile number. Most of these services are currently available only to US, UK, Canadian and European residents. Some carrier restrictions apply.

1. Bitwine.com | Ether.com - sell your knowledge by offering consultancy services

2. About.com - become a guide (publisher) on about.com, and get paid for writing content. Based on your performance, your salary can be anywhere between $500-$8500/month. Check out the list of available
topics here

3. Chacha.com - chacha is a human powered search engine that’s maintained by search guides. It has more than 10.000 guides already and pays them between $5-$20/hour depending on performance.

If you are a college student living in a dorm, or sharing a flat with your friends, or do lots of borrowing and lending or simply not blessed with an amazing memory Billmonk offers something you may find useful. It is a free application that helps you keep track of things you borrow and lend. While mainly designed for tracking money transactions among friends, you can also track other things like books, movies, CDs and etc. As Billmonk states, Track Money and Track Stuff.

The way you can track moeny transactions is really well thought through and straightforward. Check out simple illustration of the service below:

I am sure that once in a while everyone needs to do some kind of currency conversion. Whether you are comparing prices on non local shopping sites or checking balance in your offshore bank account, The Universal Currency Converter from xe.com can make it much easier.

UCC provides free and up to the minute conversion rates. Service is extremely user-friendly and fast. All you need, is to select amount, base currency and currency to convert to.