Mint.com

We've been using Mint.com to keep track of our finances since about December. For the most part, I really like it. It's free, and very conveniently tracks everything by accessing our accounts online. I used to use Quicken, but they stopped updating it for Mac so it wouldn't download all our accounts. This is the first time in my life I've really had a budget and followed it, and actually I think having a budget helps me feel less guilty about spending money on certain things. And I like monitoring things like our spending in certain categories, or our income on the different graphs they have. We also have created goals, like having a certain amount in our emergency fund, and a travel fund.

Here are just a few things to be aware of, when using mint. Number one, they create a budget based on your past activity (how much you have been spending, on average in certain activities). It took me longer than it should have to realize that the budget they suggested for us involved us spending more than we were making. It's easy to adjust, but that's something to look out for.

Another thing is that our retirement goal doesn't predict interest. We have a certain amount we put in to our ROTH, etc. each month and that's accounted for in the goal. But since it doesn't understand interest, it thinks we can't retire until we're in our 90s. I looked at what our interest has averaged around, and adjusted our contribution to add that, but I just basically have to ignore the predicted goal date for our retirement fund.

I also have not been able to find a way to graph expenditures in just one category over a series of months, to find an average. Any suggestions?

Edit: I figured it out: in trends, go to expenses over time and then there's a search bar where you choose a category. At the top, select "all time" and it will show you that. Now if it could calculate the average for me : )