Useful personal finance tools
The other day I took some time out to figure out exactly what it was I am doing with the money I earn. I know it’s bad, but usually I keep very poor records and just sort of deposit funds as I get them without doing a lot of personal finance research and planning. When I started reading online, I found out that there are tons of resources that take a lot of the work of personal finance planning out of your hands. For example, there are actually personal finance news websites that are entirely dedicated to helping keep people informed of personal finance issues, possibilities, and developments.
While some of these sites are informational only, others offer useful tools that can help you plan out your goals and aspirations, and then calculate what it will actually take for you to get from point A to point B. One really neat tool I found was called the Millionaire Calculator—what it does is it lets you enter in some basic information, like what your initial deposit will be, how much you plan on depositing on a recurring basis (and you can also specify the time interval for the recurring deposits), the annual interest rate you expect to earn, and finally the average inflation rate. You can then click compute and the program will tell you how many years it would take you to reach a million dollars at the rate you entered, and also what that one million dollars will actually be worth in comparison today’s dollars (PV, or present value, of that money). Remember, a million bucks in 10 years isn’t the same as a million bucks today, because I you got it today you could be earning interest on it for 10 years. Econ 1 
. Anyway, there are some very cool personal finance websites out there like this one that help you with everything from 401k plans to personal accounting. Lots of useful, and free, tools out there!