Earlier this year my wife and I decided we would organize a monthly budget into a Google spreadsheet so we could both collaborate and make sure we stayed within our means. This worked for about 3 months because of the pain it was to manually review our monthly transactions and plug them all into the budget spreadsheet. I first saw Mint.com back when it launched as a beta site, but chose not to sign up on the service because I wanted to wait until it was out of beta. Well about 3 weeks ago I signed up on Mint.com an “intelligent online money management” (Mint’s About section). 

There are so many very cool things about Mint.com, but the biggest thing for me is that I no longer have to spend 2 to 3 hours a month manually figuring out our budget. Signing up was extremely simple and having the site auto categorize my expenditures was amazing! This site is definitely in my top five cool sites!

With the advent of this summer I have several hikes and a high adventure backpacking trip to look forward to. My first objective has been to get in shape and My Fitness Partner and a great workout program from Outside.com my co-worker Glen (check out his site: glenerd.com) recommended have set me off in the right direction. My next objective is planning the hikes and the backpacking trip. While browsing the Internet to find trail maps etc, I came across Backpacker.com and a free map tool called Trimble Adventure Planner. This software program is not super robust but provides some great tools for planning the hike.

Also Backpacker.com has it set up so you can download hike details from the website an import it into the Adventure Planner. So even if you don’t own your GPS unit you can benefit from the hiking and backpacking community on Backpacker.com to get some great details about the adventures you want to go on.

So for all you adventure hungry techies out here are some great tools to making your summer gnarly!