You can access your bank account online, and your credit cards, student loans, mortgage payments, etc. In fact, you can pretty much handle all of your financial transactions online these days, which is great. There's just one problem. You have to visit approximately 21,874 websites in order to do it. And that makes it difficult to get a good picture of where your money is really going.

Mint wants to be the one-stop shop for all your online financial needs. You can access all your accounts from one page, and Mint can send you e-mail and SMS reminders when bills are due, and Mint claims it can save you thousands of dollars by offering financial advice. For example if you've got a high interest credit card when you qualify for a lower interest one, Mint will tell you. The basic service is free, the financial advice comes with the paid version.

It's sort of like an online version of Quicken, without the Quicken name. So why should you give your bank and credit account numbers to Mint? We're not quite sure yet. The company's been in beta for a few months now, but it really doesn't have a track record yet that would make us comfortable giving it all of our personal information. We know, it's kind of a catch-22. They won't get a strong privacy record until lots of people reliably use their service without getting ripped off. But people might be reluctant to sign up until the company's been around a little longer.

That said, Mint claims that it found an average of $1000 in savings for each user during the initial beta period. And that might be reason enough for some people to try out the new product.

Who wants to spend time and energy on accounting? Most people would rather wash the car or even scrub toilets. That might change soon thanks to Less Accounting.

The whole goal behind Less Accounting is to make book keeping as simple and easy as possible. The team behind Less Accounting, Less Everything, believes that users will never again use Quickbooks. In fact, they're so bullish, they see themselves changing the accounting landscape as much as 37Signals changed project management with Basecamp.

So how does it rank in real-life? Less Accounting provides users with three main categories, Money In, Money Out and Watch Money. Money In allows users to easily drop in sales leads, notes, proposals, invoices, and deposits made. Money Out has areas to input Expenses and Mileage. In the Watch Money category, users can get an account summary with bank account activity and view all paid expenses and deposits. It does not tie into your online banking; it's merely another tool to use for cross referencing. Through Watch Money, Sales reports can also be generated, as well as reports for both paid and unpaid invoices.

Everything is pretty straightforward to use, and the design is clean and very attractive. A few things that were missing in the beta test included some kind of tutorial or walkthrough of the application, and it wasn't very evident where data could be exported from reports, which I later came across on the top right navigation which might blend in a little too much. Aside from that, it wasn't too earth shattering. I would like to maybe see this application tie into 37Signals for contact and project management the same way that Freshbooks does, now that might be something to get people going on this.

Many digital music stores have a written policy to temporarily remove a certain amount of money from your bank account, to verify your worthiness to purchase music from them. Some stores tie up as much as $20/day when I buy a track. Is it that they enjoy the increased emotional stability of having an extra $20 bucks in their pocket? I know I would. The fact that the money isn't mine to use until the authorization charge is reversed gives me a slimy feeling.

So, you might tell me to never buy DRMed music, because it would be bowing to the man, and I'd concur. What about all the people that do buy music by the track? Should their money be tied up just to ensure they don't run off with a buck or two worth of music? Do any music store representatives care to comment on the policy of tying up $20 any day I decide to make a purchase?

Is this a big deal? No, but it hurts the fragile relationship that we as music lovers already have with online music services; It's a matter of trust. Stores should let customers know up front that this will happen in some sort of statement during the sign-up process, in their own best interest. (Maybe they do, who reads EULAs?)

What if the corner store nailed you for an extra $20 every time you bought a pack of gum? Sure, you get the money back but, in all likely-hood you'd never buy a pack of gum from them again. You could even go so far as to say that it's a practice which promotes music piracy. I'd much rather buy from places who don't act like they don't trust me.

MoneyTwins allows you to exchange foreign currency directly, without the hassle of using a bank. MoneyTwins uses a price for the exchange rate that only the largest top financial institutions use, which is lower than usual, saving a ton of money for end users by not charging commissions, or transaction fees. There is a chart on the site that lists the last 10 orders for transfers which looks rather interesting. It lists the Client, Buying currency, Selling currency, Amount, Place, and a Rating. I would have thought that information like this should be a little more secure then this?

The MoneyTwins service is still in beta, and it is a great idea, however, fixing up the site so that it appeared as that of a financial institution, with a little more appeal and professionalism might make a few more people try the service, and not be afraid that they are getting scammed.

Call it "social money," or friends money, either way it's the same thing: you loan money to people and keep track of it. BillMonk does just that, on the web, and it's pretty cool. Need to split the bill? You can use your cell phone with BillMonk to enter the amount, and later get on the web and split it up. All your lunch buddies can then get online and see how much they owe. BillMonk has lots of clever features, like the ability to export a .csv, so you can import into Excel. This is definitely geared to groups who may share moneyed items or events, and not for personal tracking of your finances. It'll do that, but only in the sense that you are a moneylender. Tony Soprano would be proud, if he could get his Blackberry to work...