Free: Yodlee

Alternate Dimension Andy (ADA):

Lemme tell you about something that will eff you up for life. There's this website called Yodlee, and it's truly, rockin' awesome.

Yodlee puts all of your online financial shit in one place. Online services you can manage via Yodlee:

• Checking accounts
  
• Savings accounts
• Credit cards
• Bills
• Brokerage accounts
• Retirement accounts
• Insurance
• Loans
  

Basically, if it's about your money, and if it has a website, Yodlee will aggregate it and put it all on one page for you.

While that is an amazingly impressive start, Yodlee does much more than just let you look at all your accounts:

• If you can pay your bills online, you can pay then via Yodlee. You pick the checking account from which you wish to pay, and Yodlee manages the rest for you.
  
• Yodlee automatically sets up a calendar telling you when all your payments are due.
• Yodlee knows what you're spending money on, and can generate a spending report. Without you entering any information (except in rare cases), Yodlee will know that you spent 25% of your income on rent, 12% on pet supplies, and 5.3% on gas.
  
• In tandem with the spending report feature, Yodlee will let you set up a budget and track your ability to stick to it. If you know you only want to spend 60% of your income on pets, Yodlee will give you an honest approximation of how much you're spending at Petco and other pet supply stores.
  
• Even though you probably don't want to know the numbers, Yodlee can tell you what your net worth is (minus things like the value of your cars and home).
  
• Yodlee is also a webmail aggregator. You can check Hotmail, GMail and Yahoo! mail directly from the Yodlee site.
• Yodlee will send you email reminders. You can set it up to send you an email when you go over budget on pet supplies, when a bill is due, and when your bank accounts have large transactions.
  
• Even if Yodlee hasn't already integrated one of your billing accounts -- a student loan, for instance -- you can still track the student loan via Yodlee. You just tell Yodlee what your balance is and when payment is due and Yodlee does the rest.

Okay, you are probably not geeking out as hard as I am right now, but there is one more aspect of Yodlee that I think might sway you:

• Yodlee is free to use.

So here's my recommendation to you, ADA: Sign up for Yodlee. Start checking your Yahoo, GMail and/or Hotmail accounts from Yodlee. Make it a habit to give a shit about your personal finances; make caring as automatic as checking your email.