Visabuxx and Paytrust can teach kids about credit and help you manage your bills, respectively. Paytrust also ideal for managing your elderly parents' money.

1. Pay bills with Paytrust
We pay all of our personal and family bills with this service. Please see our 2007 Review of Paytrust Bill Management Service. All bills are received over the Internet. All data are easily transferred to Quicken or Microsoft Money. The company has been bought by Quicken so we expect to see improvements in integrating this product to Quicken and Turbo Tax.

Paytrust is also a great way of managing the finances of our parents who may live far away. I used it to pay bills for my mother (now deceased). I lived in Virginia and Mom lived in Florida. She could no longer deal with paying bills and balancing checkbooks, etc. Before using Paytrust, I was literally drowning in paper. My bills and my mother's just overwhelmed me.

When I opened my account with Paytrust, I had my own check book and my mom's on the account. All bills were received over the Internet. The paper disappeared and I was able to keep better track of my own bills and those of my mother. When paying a bill, I could choose the account to pay it with. I was also able to see when checks cleared.

2. Manage your finances with Quicken or MS Money
Both of these personal financial packages are easy to use and will get you organized. Quicken has been a main stay for us. The product is easy to use and can easily be integrated with other software packages such as Paytrust and income tax software.

MS Money has improved greatly. In some respects, it has a much better interface and is easy to use, especially if you are tracking investments.

3. Calculate income taxes with TurboTax
We have used TurboTax to prepare our Federal and and Sate income taxes since 1998. The program just keeps getting better. We have not used the online version of the TurboTax yet. However, we do use Quickbooks Online Accounting software to maintain our business.

4. Kids and Personal Finance
Newspaper articles in the Mercury News and Los Angeles Times discuss some great ways of teaching your kids financial responsibility. This is a good concept. They are a great way of keeping tabs on how that allowance is being spent.

Unfortunately, the M2Card mentioned in the Mercury News article is no longer available. However, VisaBuxx is.

Visabuxx is not a credit card or debit card. It is what's called a stored value card. You transfer cash (your child's allowance) into the account and that's the limit.

The fees for exceeding the limit are high. We think this teaches kids to be more responsible. This is especially relevant if you require kids to pay the $15 fee for exceeding the limit. That for each time it's exceeded. Ouch!!

We ordered a VisaBuxx for Ryan, our youngest helper (14 years old). He was so eager to get it that he took the VisaBuxx quiz. You might find it useful too. Also check out Visa's primer on credit and on debit cards for kids of all ages.