Personal finance software has come a long way since the days when you had to manually enter your credit card transactions in Quicken. Whether you are saving for college , trying to figure out where your cash is going, or making a New Year's resolution to save money, the new generation of money management Web sites can help you take control of your financial life.

And they'll do all of that for free: You don't have to buy software or pay monthly fees, though you may have to wade through a few advertisements. But are the sites safe?

Is it worth the time and effort to sign up and overcome the inevitable bugs? Which site is best? I attempted to figure that out by plugging in my own financial data to see how well they work. After taking five sites out for a spin — Mint , Buxfer , moneyStrands , Wesabe , and Thrive — I found stunning differences in their usefulness. Mint earned an impressive 4. These sites are supposed to work pretty much the same way: At some sites, you can also get a running tally of your net worth.

The sites also help you set goals and host online communities of like-minded budgeters offering advice and encouragement. You go to the sites of your banks, credit card issuers, and investment companies, plug in your passwords and screen names, and the money management sites then pull in the data and categorize everything.

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Your ability to use the sites effectively depends on the technology of your banks and brokers. And you might not be able to download your k. This was far and away the most sophisticated and comprehensive site.

It was also exceptionally easy to use. No surprise that MoneyWatch Family Finance blogger Stacey Bradford is also a huge fan.

So Mint averages your spending over a longer stretch, taking into account semiannual and annual payments that look excessive in the short run, but ordinary with a longer view.

Each time you sign on, Mint automatically updates your accounts. My favorite feature is the widget that lets you see trends. Click on it and up pops a full-color pie chart showing details of your spending, assets, debts, or net worth. As expected from any Web site that wants to hang out with the cool kids, Mint offers an iPhone app.

The initial setup will take at least an hour maybe more — not the 10 minutes founder Aaron Patzer claims.

MoneyStrands: Financial Goals, Budgets & Money Manager

The site will also automatically put you on budgets for a handful of things — gasoline and dining out, for example — and will alert you anytime you exceed their thresholds. Mint is supported by advertising, which would be fine, except the promotions are often insidious and sometimes inappropriate.

Before plugging in my credit score, I saw an ad for FreeCreditReport. If you travel overseas a lot, this site — originally designed for a Spanish bank — offers pretty nifty currency conversion features.

Look out, Mint: MoneyStrands worthy money management competition - AOL Finance

But when in comes to software, beats Like Mint, moneyStrands supports its site with advertising, but the products here are largely unrelated to finance. Like Mint, Wesabe has a useful, attractive home page summarizing your accounts and providing a graphical look at your spending. Although you must categorize your transactions yourself, Wesabe makes this process relatively pain-free by saving all your previous tags, so you can type just one letter of a repetitive tag and click to get it categorized.

These are just the sort of scams the Federal Trade Commission warns consumers against. Buxfer categorizes your expenses automatically and generally appears to do this pretty accurately. Kathy Kristof is an award-winning financial journalist and the author of Investing Find out what activities and attractions make these 20 cities and town some of the best places to retire around the world.

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