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

There are so many tools you can use to set a budget. There are programs for your computer that you have to pay for, then there are free programs on the internet where you can set you and your family’s budget.

When you set a budget, make sure that you budget enough money for the essentials, but also make sure that you have money left over at the end of the budget period. If you have a hundred dollars left over, that is money that you would have not had otherwise.

Some people are really fond of an “envelope” method to budgeting. The envelope method is a very low tech way to set a budget for your family, but when the money is gone from the envelope, that’s it for the month or week or however you are setting your budget periods.

The more you budget now, the more money you will have saved for the future, which is pretty obvious.

I just don’t think that anyone should overlook the power of the budget. Since we have started budgeting, we have been able to save thousands of dollars versus when we didn’t budget. The best part is, we don’t feel as though we’re skimping out on anything either, we’re just not buying all the things that we really didn’t want to begin with. Before budgets, we would go to the grocery store and buy things that we thought we wanted, but it always just sat in the cupboard gathering dust because it was just an impulse buy.

If you’re looking for a more high tech way to set your budget, you can visit Mint.com. That site has all the features that you could want in budgeting software, but it’s free!

There are a few things that are important to making sure you make the most out of your financial future. Responsible spending along with money management is one of those steps. With the right amount of money management, you can save up enough to retire on and live comfortably through your golden years.

To get started with money management, it would be advisable to find a firm to help or even just online or computer based software that could ideally take your budget and help you save the most amount each month.

Budgeting is extremely important when it comes to money management. I believe that this could be the single most important part of any money management program or offering. Also, being able to implement the budgeting software into as many of your electronic devices as possible is quite helpful for money management on the go.

One firm that offers money management is United Kingdom based Kublax. The company lets you see all your finances with graphs and charts so it’s really clear and easy to understand. This way, even if you’re as inexperienced with money management as I am, you would still be able to see exactly where all your money is going and where it should be going. Kublax also pulls information from your local area to help you save money on deals and things. The budgeting system Kublax offers lets you set limits on your spending and will tell you when you’ve gone over what you have set as a budget. These way financial goals are obtainable within the time frame you have specified.

A good money management program will help you set budget limits on expenses and help you allocate your funds appropriately. Personalization is also a nice feature of online money management and computer software money management programs. When you can enter in information, like your local area, and the program is able to tell you how to save money where you live, it is so helpful in making good financial decisions. Another feature of a good money management program is the ability to set up due dates for bills and have the program alert you to when they are due. The program could send alerts to your email address or send text messages to your phone. I believe that it would be a very good program if it were offered as an application for BlackBerry, Palm, or the iPhone, again to offer programs on the go.