With at least ten free financial budgeting tools available and many others with low up-front costs on the marketplace today, small and large companies are trying to figure out how to reel you in. They have succeeded and they have failed.
Blog posts such as A Meeting of Minds: Ten Personal Finance Bloggers Talk About Money and Are Personal Finance Tools Ready To Go Web 2.0? suggest that personal finance leaders are still looking to develop a budgeting tool comparable to the iPod of portable media players or the Google of Internet search engines. The tipping point or the moment of critical mass has yet to be found. No budgeting tool clearly dominates the market.
Having talked with many friends about financial budgeting tools, I have yet to find one that has developed a budget - online or offline. The most common response I hear is, "I don't make enough money to need a budget, "I manage my money by reviewing my online bank accounts from time to time, or "I keep a budget in my head."
Change, especially radical change, often results from trigger event experiences that cause a shift in thinking. Learning that a friend who has similar spending habits has been forced to file bankruptcy or finding out that a baby is on the way may fundamentally change how you choose to manage money.
Events like these can cause a personal budgeting tipping point, and while learning about or using a particular tool has the potential to have a similar effect, it hasn't happened to me. I budget because I hope to buy a house in the not too distant future, and when I decided that 20% down is the best way to go considering the housing market collapse, I knew that a budget was necessary.
If you are not budgeting, let us know why. If you are budgeting, did a specific experience convince you that a budget was worthwhile?
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