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In your family, who’s the money budget planner? Web 2.0 has made being the fiscally responsible one in the household less of a burden to bear. Consider today’s money budget planner: Web 2.0 suites and software like Mint, Wesabe, Thrive and Quicken Online have taken us leaps and bounds away from the old paper and pencil ledger. And even a relatively lower tech money budget planner (Web 2.0’s older brother Web 1.0) such as a simple online spreadsheet puts a vast amount of power in your hands. You don’t even need a calculator – almost every tool has a budget calculator built in to your money budget planner. Web 2.0 is poised to do for your finances what eBay did for auctioning – everyone’s going to be doing it.

A Friendly Money Budget Planner

Web 2.0 offers a particularly interesting facet of personal finance – it’s made it more personal and less private. Take a highly subscribed money budget planner – Web 2.0 darling Wesabe. Traditionally, your families fiscal health and cashflow was strictly private. No one asked and no one told – it was considered highly embarrassing to reveal anything about your savings and presumptuous and rude to ask to see someone’s money budget planner.

Web 2.0 changes those rules. Wesabe is a fit example of this. It adds an element of community and social networking to the endeavor of saving money. In a Wesabe community, you can share your goals and your progress for saving. This helps fellow savers to compare tips and warnings as well as provide encouragement for people to continue using their money budget planner.

Web 2.0 has also spawned another novel approach to visible savings: SmartyPig. SmartyPig is like a piggy bank the whole world can see. You set up a normal savings account (with a pretty decent interest rate, at that) and name it something like “My Dream Vacation Fund” or “Startup Money for My New Business.” Your SmartyPig savings are then displayed as a percentage of your goal, so friends and family can see your progress and offer encouragement. As a gift, friends and family can also contribute towards your goal. It’s a little bit like that big fundraising thermometer in the middle of the town.

A money budget planner, Web 2.0 or otherwise, is vital to realizing your fiscal goals, whether they are as lofty as buying a cottage on the coast or as humble as getting out of debt. The power of the Internet won’t magically make you rich anymore than an expensive piece of exercise equipment will make you thin and muscular. But the beauty of Web 2.0 money budget planners is that they give you a novel approach to saving money and planning your finances that makes it encouraging, attainable and perhaps even a little bit fun.

If you’ve been thinking of using the power of the Internet to tackle your finances, take some time to browse around for some articles and blogs on the topic. Find out what others got out of the experience and choose a personal finance website that fits your needs and attitudes.