Across the internet it looks like customers and users of the Mint.com are pretty irate about the buyout from Quicken software maker Intuit. Intuit has a reputation for being a not very consumer friendly software. Once upon a time Quicken was the go-to software for budgeting and personal accounting, but now it has become bloated with offers for more expensive software. Quicken also cost only $10 at one point in time and now costs somewhere around $250.

Intuit is the company that also does TurboTax and it caused quite a stink when it raised fees this year.

For these, plus a number of other, reasons customers and users of Mint.com’s budgeting software are jumping ship.

The owner of Mint says that things won’t change too much on the site and definitely will only change for the better. However, many users are taking this with a grain of salt and leaving to other programs or just going back to a simple Excel spreadsheet to manage their finances.

There are plenty of free personal finance websites on the internet that you may want to check into if you’re thinking about jumping the Mint ship.

These are 8 free programs that were suggested by the Consumerist after Mint and Intuit made the announcement:

Money Manager Ex (Windows and Linux)
MS Office templates (MS Office Suite or Open Office)
GnuCash (GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris and Mac OSX)
Pear Budget (all platforms)
Buddi (all)
Yodlee (online)
Wesabe (online)

Source

What you can learn from this booklet

The Consumer’s Almanac will help you gain control of your financial situation by:

1. Organizing your income, savings, living, expenses, and credit obligations so that you are in a win-win situation.

4. Managing your credit wisely.

To download this e-book, or any of our current e-books, please visit the ebook page where you may choose the e-book(s) you wish to download. *Download an e-book by clicking on it’s title.*

Budget cuts in the nation’s public schools means that many states are having to find ways to limit what it spends on public schools in their budgets. I find it ironic in a way because it seems like taxes have increased at the same time that budget cuts for public education is being introduced. However, in places where homes are being appraised for much less, property taxes are much less and therefore, schools have less money to work with.

So where will your children be feeling the pinch?

Many schools will be saying goodbye to band and other music programs. At many schools, extracurricular activities like band and art clubs may be eliminated. Many curriculums are being cut down to the minimums because of teachers being laid off. This has been going on for years in many of the more rural areas of the country. At the same time, most (if not all) states have a requirement for a fine art class in high school. So, some of these classes will have to stick around.

Classes will become more crowded. In California alone 27,000 teachers have been laid off with more expected to be soon. This accounts for 15% of California’s public teacher pool. And fewer teachers means bigger classes. Many classes are having to bump up the number of kids to a class. Some classes are even going from 20 to a class to 30 to a class. This is what the San Jose Unified School District is doing and it will end up saving the district nearly $6 million for the year.

Summer programs will be, if they haven’t already been, cut. Summer programs in places where budget deficits have led to more cuts in schools, like California which is suffering from a $24 billion budget gap. Parents who usually enroll their children in some kind of public funded summer program will now have to find child care for their children. This also means cutting summer school. So when a high school senior needs that “one more credit” to graduate he or she will be out of luck.

Finally, bus services will be hurt. The number of schools that cut bus transportation routes for the 2009-2010 school year rose to 23%, up from 14% the year prior. If a school decides to cut bus routes, it can obviously save thousands of dollars (per school). However, many students (again, in more rural areas) may be finding themselves without a way to get to school. I can see where this would lead to serious truancy issues.

I think that it is important to cut money from other areas than public schools. Personally, the money should come out of anywhere else first.

The car is anticipated to cost (at its base price) $57,400, but there is a federal tax credit of $7,500 to offset some of the cost. It is more expensive than other comparable, but its price is similar to those sedans when you factor in “relatively inexpensive maintenance and refueling,” says Tesla.

Tesla hopes to make and sell 20,000 of these sedans a year. One of the best parts of the car is that it only takes 4 hours to charge.

As a comparable car, the Chevy Volt only gets (as of right now) 40 miles to the charge. If I wanted to drive to the nearest major metropolitan area, I wouldn’t be able to in the Volt (I may not even be able to drive to school, Wal-Mart, and home). In the Tesla, I could…However, I just don’t think this car is in my budget right now.

From Reuters:

Because market conditions had changed significantly, Chevron delayed the unveiling of 2009 capital spending plans until later this month from December. It made $15.8 billion in capital and exploratory expenditures in the first nine months of 2008, out of $22.9 billion budgeted in December 2007. -Reuters

I am not surprised to see the decline in earnings…after all, oil has tanked in the last few months. Even with its increase in the last couple of weeks, oil still won’t see the highs it saw last summer for at least a year, or until the recession starts to loosen its grip on the country.

Source

Again, I’m sitting in a very condensed 2-week intersession class about advertising and promotion. The very first day of class, my professor talked about FedEx cutting the ad from the Superbowl. She asked the class what we thought about FedEx since it decided to back out. The answer was simply, “it is weak.”

We also talked about how companies cut their marketing budgets during an economic downturn. Usually advertising is one of the first things to go, but if when they stop advertising, consumers see them as weak…perhaps cuts should come from somewhere else first.

This means that Walden Media, the owners of the franchise will have to look elsewhere for a company to fund the movies. Supposedly 20th Century is interested.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is rumored to have a $200 million budget. With the performance of Prince Caspian, Disney probably just couldn’t see themselves throwing away at least $60 million.

Citigroup has already announced it was cutting 22,000 jobs; that announcement was made in October.

All of this news comes after Citi has gone around buying up, and attempting to buy up, failing banks.

The cuts would save the company between $700 and $800 million a year.

So many people are losing their jobs right now, and this is just one of the several making headlines. Between this, the near collapse of the auto industry, and all the stock market ups and downs, this has been a generally bad week for the economy.

The company said that it plans to scale down marketing, development, and technology advancements to help with the budget cut. As a result, most of the 7,000 employees to be laid off will be management.

Here’s another big company that has to reduce their workforce to cut the budget. It seems like this scenerio is happening more and more. With retail sales down and people more focused on not using their credit cards, American Express is likely not to be the only company to resort to huge layoffs.

As a consumer, I don’t think I could buy a high end gadget from an electronics store that is going into bankruptcy. How would warranties be handled?

On the other hand, like in my post about Mervyns, this could give budget stretched consumers a break for the holidays.

The economy is so bad that one of the largest broadcasting companies in the nation has to cut back. I suppose Americans don’t have the time to spend watching tv anymore…or they shouldn’t be?

In the report about the cut, it did not say whether NBC was doing poorly with the current economic conditions, but if it is doing o.k. then why would it start firing employees? To me that just adds to the downturn.

$454.8 BILLION.

The previous record was $413 Billion in 2004. Last year it was only $161.5 billion. So what made the deficit skyrocket in the last year?

The government’s efforts to combat the housing crisis and financial system collapse.

Analysts are saying next year the budget deficit could top $700 billion and could be a serious problem for the next president.

One example is the “DiGiornonomics” ad being put out by Kraft for their DiGorno brand frozen pizza. They have a ticker type thing that says a Digorno costs $6.69 while a take out pizza costs $16…They’re just trying to get into the consumer’s fears about rising food costs. It’s understandable, but what my husband and I have realized is that if we’re going to go out for dinner (say at Chili’s or something comparable) we’re going to spend at least $30 for both of us…if we stop at Domino’s or another pizza place we can get a pizza and have left overs for days. mmm… pizza

I try to be a cost conscious consumer, but when Kroger slow churned ice cream is sitting right next to Edy’s for half the price…I can’t turn down the Kroger brand.

Good try though Kraft.