Read my mind…

Maybe it is because I am in the middle of tax season…
Maybe, because of tax season, I always start thinking about charting finances…
Maybe, because when I start thinking about charting finances I start looking around at alternatives to my spreadsheet(s)…

But MSN had a pretty good article on just this topic. And I actually kind of like some of their suggestions, but I will probably sleep on it and see if I really want to break away from my good ol’ free spreadsheets…

Here is a list sites mentioned in the article…

Mint.com The one they like the most, seems well thought out and planned and claims to be 100% free and had some interesting, if not glitzy, blogs/discussion posts.

Geezeo and Wesabe put the power and appeal of social networking sites, along with a good dose of peer review, to help you keep track of finances, and goals.

BudgetTracker and BudgetPulse are for you paranoid and suspicious folks, such as myself (well, maybe not soooo paranoid) that we are not about to give out any personal information. For this you enter stuff in manually. They also give you a “limited free setup” with the hopes that you will pay for more.

Buxfer is a site that specializes in group budgeting and IOUs among friends. They even have Facebook application where you can invite friends and receive credits for upgrades to your account.

I think I’ll set up a couple accounts on these “free” sites and see how I like them and then report back with my own review(s).

As you can see, even this list of free sites has some examples of baiting you with free sign up and then charging for extras, or even the features that you really want.

I think I already know which ones I will automatically forgo signing up and test driving…

One other thing I have noticed over the years is that even the free sites, though they may not charge any extras, when you start tracking transactions online with logins and downloads; some institutions will charge you an online banking fee for this convenience.

Hence my use of spreadsheets….

Anyway, here is the article…