I’ve never been a fan of spending a long time tracking my money. I have not balanced my checkbook in over five years, but I have not once bounced a check or overdrawn my account. Most of this is due to the fact that I’ve been using Quicken for a while.

But I even got tired of using Quicken. My bank doesn’t play well with Quicken, so anytime I wanted to update it I would have to manually download the transactions and import them. I would typically do this for a couple months, but then get tired of doing that. I really needed something automated.

Mint.com has filled that role for me. It’s a free service that makes money through partner ads that are designed to help you get a better interest rate for your savings accounts or credit cards. It’s an incredibly easy service to use that automatically updates all of your accounts that have web access and then gives you a financial snapshot of your money.

I’ve been using it for a few months now and have been very satisfied. If you’re paranoid about online security you’ll probably avoid it, but I’ve read enough reviews from reliable sources to know it’s a legit service. Check it out.

See also: Why Mint works