(You can tell by looking at this graph that living in the city shifts my expenses from transportation to rent).
Expensr puts your spending in perspective. It's not tied directly to your bank account, so you have to enter and categorize each expense through the site (the mobile version makes this easier). Once you've tagged your expenses, it's easy to look at the breakdown of where your money is going and set budget goals to work against.
Expensr also has a social element to it—you can add tags to define yourself and compare your spending to users with the same tag. For example, I spend less than 80% of those who have defined themselves as "young professionals."
ING Direct Electric Orange
ING is an online-only bank. Since they don't maintain brick-and-mortar branches, they keep overhead low and kick some of that money back to consumers through higher interest rates on both savings and checking accounts. Pay your bills through the Electric Orange "Send Paper Checks" feature. Just fill out the virtual check online and hit send. ING takes care of the rest. Simple.
ING Direct maintains a network of ATMs for free withdrawl, and if you do ever run into trouble, they have the best customer service I've seen anywhere—you actually talk to a real person from the get-go.
Tags: money budget banking
