But when it comes to your finances, you may not be as free as you'd like.

Are you buried in debt? Are you living beyond your means? Or are you just caught in the 9-5 world, longing to get out?

Financial freedom means different things to different people. In Automatic Finances (subheaded "17 Days to Your Financial Freedom"), you'll learn to be free from worrying about your money. No more late payments, no more wondering where your money is going, and no more worrying if you're investing to the best of your abilities.

But there's financial freedom beyond that.

So, I want to know: what does financial freedom mean to you?

There's no poll, since everyone has a different answer. Leave your thought in a comment below.

What used to be a small niche topic has turned into a place where regular, normal people are documenting their journeys getting out of debt, saving money and growing their net worth.

But there are undoubtedly a few leaders in the arena. If you have any interest in reading personal finance blogs, you've likely checked out the big-wigs at Get Rich Slowly, The Simple Dollar, or I Will Teach You to Be Rich.

So while these sites tend to top the "best" personal finance blogger lists that seem to always be coming out, I want to show you some blogs you're missing out on.

In no particular order, here are some personal finance blogs you need to check out, a few of their best/recent posts, and their RSS feeds for subscription.

Fiscal Fizzle

• 4 Unexpected Expenses You Can Count On
• Is It Better for One or Both Parents to Work? – The Verdict Is In
• RSS Feed

MoneyUnder30

• Hate Budgeting? 10 Tools to Simplify Your Monthly Budget
• 31 Days of Saving
• RSS Feed

Tough Money Love

• Spenders Get the Gold Mine, Savers Got the Shaft
• How to Probe for Signs of a Market Bottom
• RSS Feed

Financial Nut

• Dave Ramsey Says That Going Into Debt For School Is Never A Good Idea
• Pros & Cons: Moving From Microsoft Excel To Google Docs For My Budgeting
• RSS Feed

20 Something Finance

• How to Methodically Find the Cheapest Airfare Every Time
• The 7 Personal Finance Teachings that could Save our Nation
• RSS Feed

Saving for Serenity

• 5 Reasons Why We Spend More Than We Make
• How to Save Money on Your Commute
• RSS Feed

The Money Hawk

• Why I Switched From Standard Health Insurance to an HSA
• Gold is Worthless and So Are People Who Tell You to Invest in It
• RSS Feed

No Debt Plan

• 10 Steps to Avoid Becoming a Millionaire
• I Like Dave Ramsey, But He Is Still Wrong
• RSS Feed

Man vs. Debt

• Suze Orman Vs. Dave Ramsey: Should Your Financial Guru Be Changing His/Her Advice?
• Debt Tsunami: The Ultimate Method For Paying Off Debt
• RSS Feed

Green Panda Treehouse

• How to Avoid Arguing About Money
• Easy Ways to Get an Emergency Fund Started
• RSS Feed

Have a personal finance blog you want to share? Leave the info in a comment.

June was a great month for the site, with traffic up significantly from May — more than a 355% increase in visits and unique visitors. Our first big pickup came via the Consumerist, which highlighted the number one story in June's best list.

In fact, Nickel from FiveCentNickel recently named the site one of the Top 10 Up and Coming Personal Finance Blogs in a post at blogs.com.

We're  adding to our personal finance and investing coverage with some opinions on the economy and money tips for your business. We've also added a few new contributors to the site — Lee and Louis — and we're looking to expand aggressively.

If you're interested in being a part of the team, contact me now.

The Best of Automatic Finances: June 2009

1. 5 Personal Finance Podcasts Worth Downloading
2. Are You Your Biggest Savings Enemy?
3. For First-Time Homebuyers, Consider This
4. Investing vs. Trading: Which Are You Doing?
5. The Best News Coming Out of the Recession
6. Will Taxing Health Care Benefits Pay for Reform?
7. Sometimes, It Pays to Complain
8. Ask the Readers: Debit, Credit or Cash?
9. How to Manage Your Personal Finances Online
10. Why Cash for Clunkers Will Hurt Low-Income Drivers

If you're looking to get your daily dose of smart personal finance and money management, subscribe to the RSS feed (or via email) now!

And don't forget — download the first three days of Automatic Finances: 17 Days to Your Financial Freedom absolutely free right now!

I haven't gotten too deep into using its spreadsheet or presentation templates (I'm mostly a text doc kind of guy), but I was excited when I saw this tweet from MattJabs, blogger at Debt Free Adventure and a contributor to FiveCentNickel.

"Manage your finances for free with Google Docs Personal Finance Templates" – http://bit.ly/RNXzo

Turns out, there are 33 personal finance templates for use in Google Docs. And you can use them absolutely free.

Some of the templates are:

• Family Budget Planner
• Personal Monthly Budget
• Monthly Household Budget
• Simple Budget Planner
• Credit Card Payoff Calculator

and plenty more.

I haven't yet used any of the docs, but if you have, what do you think of them?

Let me know in a comment below.

Unlike most online savings accounts, SmartyPig is a "goal-centric savings platform," where, instead of being used just to store money, each account is earmarked for a specific savings goal.

The social component to SmartyPig makes it unique in the space, according to Mike Ferrari, a co-founder of the site. Users sign up for the site, then set goals and attach dollar amounts to them.

"I think it actually incentivizes people to do things better," says Jon Gaskell, co-founder.

"It's very goal-centric," he says. "There's a required monthly contribution until your goal has been met."

To contribute money, it's free if you use your own funding. If you're adding money via a credit card, there's a 2.74% processing fee.

Thirty-percent of all goals are public, according to Gaskell, with users able to show either the total or percentage saved. "We have a lot of people that obviously enjoy that feature," he says.

Users can receive contributions from their friends and family toward their goal, but it's not the main reasons people make goals public. Instead, it's moral support and accountability.

"People want to be held accountable. They really like that," says Gaskell.

So what are people saving for?

The top four categories for the site's users, Ferrari says, are:

1. saving to save
2. travel
3. emergency fund
4. home improvement

Who is SmartyPig?

For a relatively new savings account with an above-average interest rate, it's only human to wonder who's behind SmartyPig. The site deposits funds with West Bank, an FDIC-insured mid-western bank.

They're able to offer such a high interest rate, according to Gaskell, by calculating their users' average goals and matching that with the best available offer from West Bank.

The average SmartyPig user has a 51-month goal, and thanks to a 42-month CD offered by West Bank, they can offer the high APY.

Like all online financial services, security is one of the most important factors for SmartyPig. "It is the most critical aspect of our business," says Ferrari.

The Internet has revolutionized how users interact with financial institutions, and SmartyPig is no different. They're constantly Twittering, even holding contests and giving out money.

"The accessibility of people at a financial institution is a rarity at many banks these days," says Ferrari. "I think [being accessible is] one of the pieces our customers really like."

Different Uses for a Different Service

While most high-yield online savings accounts tend to act the same — as storage for short-term savings — SmartyPig is being used differently be different people.

"It's amazing to see how people are using it," says Ferrari.

He recently got a call from a soldier in Iraq who created a SmartyPig goal to save for a plane ticket to get home when his tour is up. He placed a savings widget on his blog, which shows the percentage to his goal that updates all the time.

People are contributing to the goal, and his kids watch the widget to see when he'll be able to come home.

And the SmartyPig blog recently featured a story about a man using the service to raise money to build a church in his community.

Taking Positive Action with Your Finances

When users reach their goals, they have the option to transfer it to another bank account, or redeem it for a retail gift card (if they're saving for a big-screen TV, for example).

They can even get an additional 6% cash boost by getting a gift card from Overstock.com, one of SmartyPig's partners.

SmartyPig recently launched a mobile site, and already they're seeing positive action. A recent Tweet by a user describers how he went to Starbucks, decided not to buy anything, and then transferred the money he would have spent into his account using his iPhone.

As in, if you didn't succeed selling your services and making some money, you're going to freeze to death outside in the cold.

Those of us who've struck out on our own to become freelance consultants, often after years of being employees, love the choice we've made and wouldn't have it any other way. But it's not always easy.

When anyone asks me about going solo, my answer is "Do it!" Following your heart and passion is what will make your mark on the world. However, while spontaneity is great, you do need to prepare.

Being self-employed requires discipline and management of your finances that you might have gotten away with neglecting when you earned a steady paycheck.

For the self-employed, sound finances require you to keep control of three things.

Cash Flow

Now that you're freelance, you eat what you kill. You're the one responsible for bringing in business, managing your receivables and making sure that your clients pay in a timely manner.

When it comes to sales, finding business is job one. Saving and minimizing expenses are important, but earning more income is even more so. No one every made money by saving money; you make money by making money.

If getting business is job one, getting paid is job two. On the receivables side, whether you use accounting software or even a simple Excel spreadsheet, you need to know who you have billed, when you billed them, whether they're overdue, and when they paid up.

Let's be honest: even clients who really like you will only pay their bill when you ask them. Central to having a consistent cash flow is to have well-managed receivables and keep your clients' payment schedules on track.

Savings

A perfectly non-volatile cash flow from month to month would be great, but in the world of the freelancer, it's not always going to happen.

Whether project delays have held back an installment payment or "the check's in the mail," there will be times when you don't get paid when you thought you would. When a graph of your cash flow starts to look like a sine wave, you need to be prepared.

There have been times where I've had loose cash in the bank that more than buffers my monthly budget, and there have been times where I've scrabbled from check-to-check.

Which do you think is more conducive to a good night's sleep?

Having good savings is a pre-requisite to being able to live your dream job and work for yourself. If you don't have the cash reserves to be able to hang in when things are tight, you might be forced to put your dreams on hold, or worse.

Credit

Using lines of credit ought to be a last resort for individuals and small businesses, but the fact remains that access to credit can be a necessity. It has its place in your financial plans, but you need to use it wisely.

Provided that tapping your cash savings isn't an option, drawing on your line of credit to pay the bills isn't a bad thing. Just don't borrow so far in advance of your means that your revolving credit morphs into a permanent balance.

For starters, you'll be paying monthly interest on it, and I know you'd rather spend that money on something else. Even worse, a long-term balance erodes your resources in the event of a serious personal crisis: financial, medical, otherwise.

These aspects of your personal finances are like the three legs of a stool: together they give you stability. But take one away, and your balance is just a little more precarious.

Manage all three successfully, and things will go more smoothly in your chosen profession as a freelancer.

Lee Distad consults with CE integration firms on design, installation and project management processes and Best Practices, and offers provides professional copy writing services for websites, brochures, and marketing initiatives. His freelance work covers topics from CE to global business to finance in both print and online.

Better access to health care includes better access to the knowledge and services of physicians. That would imply the number of new health care graduates should grow as the population grows, but medical school degree data published by the National Center for Education Statistics shows no growth at all.

For the academic year 1985-86, 15,938 Medical School Degrees were reported. The number has not been that high since, although MD degrees reached 15,730 for the year ending June 2007.

In that same period, the resident population reported by the Bureau of Census increased 66.2 million. It was 237.9 million in 1985 but reached 304.1 million in 2008. Despite continuous growth in America's population, more physicians are not being trained.

The High Costs of Becoming a Doctor

Becoming a physician is a long and expensive process that takes four years of college prior to 4 years of medical school. Medical school tuition reported by the American Association of Medical Colleges in 2008 averaged $23,593 for the 75 public university medical schools and $41,235 for the 50 private university medical schools.

In some states, a medical school graduate can get a license to practice medicine after completing a one-year internship, but most states require two years in a medical residency program. During residency programs, hospitals typically define pay as a stipend, apparently to save money paying low wages, so the residency period continues to be a period of financial drain on medical students.

Those admitted to America's service academies at Annapolis, Maryland and West Point, New York pay no tuition. America trains its military officers at public expense. For medical professionals, though, America puts the burden to pay for at least 10 years of training on the individual.

Much of this medical expense comes during a time in life when people usually begin to support themselves and pay their own living expenses. For many in medical training, living expenses are a burden that generates even more debt to pay off later.

As Costs Increase, Ranks Shrink

Some of the strain in the current system shows up in physician employment asreported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Family and General Practitioner jobs are in decline. There were 135,000 reported as recently as 2001, but 106,000 reported for 2008.

It also has the lowest entry pay of reported physician specialties, $73,000. An entry wage of $73,000 will not be sufficient to support a family and pay the debt from 10 years of medical education.

It is time to recognize that a major component in health care reform needs to be more physicians. They need to grow at least as fast as the population. In the current system, it isn't happening and I doubt it ever will.

It's time to train our physicians like we train our generals: at public expense.

Fred Siegmund covers America's jobs as part of work doing labor market analysis and projections for a client base of recruiters, trainers and counselors. Visit him at www.americanjobmarket.blogspot.com

That's up from 5.6% in April, and the highest since December of 1993, when it was 7.6% (according to the Wall Street Journal).

At the same time, spending was up 0.3% in May and disposable personal income increased 1.6%, thanks in part to the economic stimulus package, the WSJ says.

Here's the unedited text, via the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which publishes the data:

Personal income increased $167.1 billion, or 1.4 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $178.1 billion, or 1.6 percent, in May, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $25.1 billion, or 0.3 percent.In April, personal income increased $78.3 billion, or 0.7 percent, DPI increased $140.0 billion, or 1.3 percent, and PCE increased $1.0 billion, or less than 0.1 percent, based on revised estimates.The pattern of changes in personal income and in DPIreflect, in part, the pattern of increased government social benefit payments associated with theAmerican Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The total personal savings in May — $768.8 billion — is the largest amount since the number began being tracked in 1959.

Income, Spending Rise on Stimulus – Wall Street Journal

Personal Income and Outlays – Bureau of Economic Analysis National Economic Accounts

As Automatic Finances grows, we're looking to add even more contributors to the mix.

If you've got something interesting to say about personal finance, investing or the economy (or even something else!), we'd love to share your story with the entire Automatic Finances community.

If you're already a personal finance blogger, we're looking for guest contributions to drive traffic to your site.

If you've never written a lick in your life, we're happy to give you a platform (and some help editing!).

You don't have to write about the ins-and-outs of a particular financial topic — all you need is a story related to personal finance or money management and we'll help showcase you.

Want to share your story? Contact me now and let me know what you'd like to tell.

All of those checks that I ordered way back when are just sitting around, yet to be used.

Probably the only time I'd be tempted to write a check is if I'm giving someone I know money; say I owe a friend for something and don't have the cash on hand or I'm going in on a gift with some relatives.

But that's it. And I have a feeling I'm not the only one.

So, I want to know: do you still write checks?

Answer the poll and then let me know why in a comment.