Jason Knight, CEO of Wesabe, a money-management website that uses the wisdom of the crowd to help people control their finances, answers the company's customer-service line every day from noon until four p.m. Pacific time. Callers sometimes hang up as soon as Knight announces himself, though. "I think they're calling to see if I really pick up the phone," he says. Well, he does. And he'll even put a journalist on hold to answer your call. Perhaps it's this accessibility that helped Wesabe - founded in 2005 by Knight, who'd been a vice president at Asurion Asia Pacific, and by Marc Hedlund, a vice president at a security-software company - nab $700,000 in venture capital from O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures this past January.  - Tracy Staton

How is using Wesabe different from using Quicken or Microsoft Money?
My joke about Quicken is, you load up all your data, and it tells you that you're broke. With us, you load your data, and we immediately suggest tips that are useful to you. We're not showing you where you are; we're helping you figure out where to go next.

Have you changed your own financial behavior because of Wesabe?
I pay off my credit cards every month. I was pretty proud of myself. But after using Wesabe for six months, I saw that I was paying $43 a month in bank fees. That's more than $500 a year. My wife and I consolidated our banking to a single bank. Now our fees are $15 to $20 annually.

How much difference can one small change like that make?
Take that $500 a year and apply compound interest for the next 20 years. If you get rid of things leeching out money, you have a big long-term impact.

What's your advice for new Wesabe users?
Don't be shocked or dismayed - guilt doesn't do you any good. Don't feel bad about what you've done with your money; be proud of how you'll manage it in the future. You can change, because people do. We've seen it.