Hellobee Boards

You Need A Budget. Its an app that you can put on your mobile, a PC or a Mac. It communicates between them to keep you current.

You can also download your bank statements directly into it.

I second You Need A Budget. If you can stick with it, it's wonderful! I've been budgeting with it almost a year now and it helps a ton with helping you see where exactly your money goes and limiting myself each month. It has an app too, so I try to stay on top of it by entering receipts as soon as I can.

I actually think it's easier to budget when you use a credit card! That way every penny your spend can be tracked all in one place. Now, you have to have the control to only spend what you can pay off in full each month.

@looch: i like mint because it helps you see where your money is going first. it can be hard to budget if you don't even know where you're spending the money in the first place. once you can see that, then i think it's easy and more realistic to make a budget.

@birdofafeather: we've already done that work though, we have a monthly plan and we need to be able to set up categories with certain amounts. I also want to be able to "use" my budgeted amounts for future months, which I also can't figure out if the tool does.

I need to read up on mint, honestly. My husband is keen to use it, but I am just not seeing the value.
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@babyjmama: I second and third others who mentioned You Need a Budget! I wrote a post/review about it awhile back - http://www.hellobee.com/2013/01/25/you-need-a-budget/

It has helped me so much with our budgeting. Their philosophy is great - they have 4 rules that they abide by, which you can find on their website - http://www.youneedabudget.com. I love reading their blogs because it keeps me motivated and on track and mindful of our spending. You do pay for the software, but they have so many free resources on their site that is super helpful.

Using YNAB has really taught me how to plan ahead, and anticipate expenses before they even occur. It's awesome!

I like Mint but it's not a stand-alone solution. My issue with it is that you can't forecast account balances so you'll know how much money will be in X account on Y date. It only gives historical/current data. I use it in combination with an app called Balance Forecasting, which basically works like a checkbook register but you can put in recurring transactions, single transactions, and forecast out pretty far (2 years, I think?).

I'll admit that I only loosely budget -- I try to keep certain types of expenses under a set amount for the month but have quite a bit of padding so I don't really worry about going over a bit or buying things that don't fall into those categories. But it is really nice to be able to get a snapshot of where I'm at whenever I want, so I know that I really should stop buying lunch during the week and bring food instead for the rest of the month or whatever.

ETA: Mint works best for people who use credit/debit cards a lot. It automatically downloads your transactions when you log in and assigns them to one of your budget categories (May need to be adjusted manually, though, since it sometimes gets them wrong). You CAN input cash transactions manually, but obviously need to keep track of those yourself until you have a chance to enter them. The budgets you set carry over month-to-month, and you can decide whether to roll over any surplus or overage into the following month or to start fresh each month. You can also plan ahead for sporadic expenses, like car insurance if you pay in full every six months -- it just divides the total and deducts that amount from your available money each month, then "releases" it for spending the month the bill is due.

@looch: not that I've seen, but every once in awhile it does go on sale.