Whether you’re working on paying off your debt, reducing your expenses, or reaping more rewards from your credit cards, there are several useful tools out there that would help you get the job done, FREE and painlessly. I’ve talked about paying off loans being the first step in your financial make-over in my previous post, but how can you take advantage of the tools to further faciliate the process? This post talks about just that!

First off, if you don’t have a credit card, do check out this website: Credit Card Tune-Up. Plug in your monthly expenses on items like drugs, gas, books, groceries, etc and find the best credit card for your own financial situation. The website also promotes a neat way for students to save money through a service called Upromise. Upromise will automatically scan the transactions on the credit cards you registered and deposit the earnings into your account. You don’t even have to think about it after you’ve set it up!

Also, go to Billshrink to see if your current credit card is earning you the most rewards you should be getting. This online tool is less detailed than Credit Card Tune-Up because Billshrink only measures your top 3 spending categories. It’s good for comparison between your current credit card and all the other credit cards in the market. Other than that, Billshrink allows you to save on gas and cell phone bills by recommending a different gas station or cell phone plan that would improve your financial life.

Also, there’s this website called Mint.com, which is a free online personal finance software. It provides the cloud infrastructure to help you to manage your money, financial planning, and budget planning tools. You can practically import all your accounts: checking, savings, credit cards, CDs, investment accounts, you name it. The new budgeting tool is very helpful in making sure you’re meeting your monthly financial goals, especially on controlling your expenses. You can also monitor your investments on your home page to adjust your asset allocation when necessary. I’ve been using Mint myself and found it very useful in keeping track of my accounts, since I wouldn’t have to go into 5 different websites to see my overall networth (which is a pain in the neck).

These tools are useful in monitoring and managing your financial life, no question about that. However, it all bottoms down to yourself to spend the time to read some personal finance blogs/books and work on your personal finance. If you don’t care about your money, no one else will. So, begin today by giving them a try!

(Photo: Andres Rueda )

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