Intuit-owned Mint.com is heading to schools today with the launch of a free, online program designed to educate middle-school students about personal finance and financial management.

Mint has partnered with educational publisher Scholastic to develop materials that parents and teachers can use to teach children the ins and outs of personal finance management. The materials includes lesson plans as well as an interactive game, to teach children money management, budgeting and goals.

For example, the program teaches children the concept of compound interest with real-life math problems, and encourages children to set goals and budgets with their own current work opportunities (i.e. babysitting).

Mint says the curriculum will be expanded to 30,000 classrooms nationwide early next year. Considering the state of the economy and credit, teaching children financial literacy and sounds personal finance practices at an early edge is an incredibly important initiative. In terms of branding, this is a big win for Mint, which can start building awareness of its tools among students at an early age.

Five Best Mobile Personal Finance Tools

It's easy to convince yourself to spend and save responsibly when the numbers are right in front of you, but it's a different story when you're on-the-go. These five great mobile personal finance tools keep your money goals nearby at all times.

Photo a composite of images by neernijus and mellowr.

Smartphones have brought nearly every aspect of desktop computers to your pocket; it only makes sense they'd bring money management, too. Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite mobile personal finance tool. Now we're back to highlight the five most popular options.

Mint (Android/iOS, Free)

Popular web-based personal finance tool Mint has an equally as popular mobile application for Android and iOS devices. It sports the same simple design as Mint's main site and makes it easy to track your spending, receive alerts about bills and budget issues, and monitor your savings goals. It's polished, the graphs are easy to read, and the total-overview that Mint provides helps keep you on top of your personal finances in ways other tools don't.

Pageonce (Cross-Platform, Free)

Pageonce isn't only about personal finance, but it does personal finance well, and it's available for nearly every mobile platform around. On top of a web-based interface, they have highly polished apps for Android, iOS, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile (including the newly released Windows Phone 7). It's easy to get real-time updates via email or push notifications on your phone, set alerts to warn you about impending bills or overspending, and view all of your financial stats in eye-catching charts and graphs.

EasyMoney (Android, $9.95)

EasyMoney is an Android-only personal finance manager that includes a home screen widget for speedy transaction inputs, bill notifications, graphs to help you analyze and chart your past and future spending, and a host of small but very useful features like the ability to split transactions between multiple categories. Easy Money also includes a tool for photographing receipts and importing data as well as a checkbook register and easy import/export to .CVS files. EasyMoney offers a 30 day-trial if you're on the fence about spending $10 on the app (consider also, many of the features in EasyMoney are paid upgrades on similar applications).

Pocket Money (iOS, $4.99)

Pocket Money puts a sweeping view of all your accounts and transactions right on your iPhone or iPad. You can manually enter transactions, create repeating transactions based on cycles or dates, create custom filters to view your money the way that is most useful to you, and more. On top of the plethora of features in the stock app you can expand the feature set with in-app purchases like the $0.99 Photo Receipts plugin that allows you to photograph your receipts and import the transaction data off them. Pocket Money has a companion desktop application available for Windows, Mac and Linux—a nice break from the common pattern of iOS apps having Mac-only desktop companions.

ProOnGo (Cross-Platform, Starting at $0.99/Month)

ProOnGo is the most distinctly business-oriented tool in this week's Hive Five. You could use it as a personal finance manager if you desired but the feature set is weighted heavily towards business users who need to track things like automotive mileage, business-related expenses, and generate reports for tax purposes and submission to their company. The basic package runs $0.99/month and is limited to manual entires and expense report generation, the premium package runs $4.99/month and includes web-based access, backups, custom spreadsheets, and synchronization to your American Express business card.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the five most popular mobile finance tools, it's time to vote for your favorite:

Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Shoot us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line and we'll do our best to give you idea the attention it deserves.

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

surface encounters macomb surface encounters macomb

BREAKING NEWS: Anna Nicole Bombshell -- All Charges Dropped ...

In a stunning development in the Anna Nicole Smith drug trial, a judge in Los Angeles Thursday dropped all charges against Smith's former confidant and attorney Howard K. Stern. Judge Robert Terry told the court that there was no ...

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Latest news. For the latest news, check the homepage, or our Atom feed. Archives by year. 1998 � 1999 � 2000 � 2001 � 2002 � 2003 ... News Archive - 2010. Here are the most important news items we have published in 2010 on PHP.net. ...

Thursday, January 6, 2011

personal finance budgeting