This might be obvious to most of us, but the WSJ feels it's fit to print: while Steve Jobs' reimbursed budget for his private jet has been fairly considerable over the past year or so -- $580,000 for a six-month period a year ago and $30,000 during a quarter period, the past few reports have seen the budget much, much lower. For the first three months of this year they didn't pay him at all, and for the previous six months before that they've only reimbursed him for $4,000.

What does this mean? Nothing, really -- while the WSJ points to it as evidence Jobs hasn't been traveling overseas to help bring the iPhone to China and carry out other big Apple deals, we've already known that Jobs wasn't involved much in the day-to-day business anyway; besides, it's hard to recuperate at home and fly around the world simultaneously. There are lots of other reasons for the budget to be down -- that $580,000 period would have been right around the manufacturing point of the iPhone 3G, and since most of the focus lately is on software, it's not like Jobs needs to be jetsetting off exotic plants to make sure production is on schedule.

And of course gas prices are back down quite a bit, and companies are under a little more scrutiny and pressure in this economy, so teleconferencing may be just as good as a plane ticket these days. Apple is still saying Jobs is expected back in June, and though these plane figures are interesting, the fact that Apple is still confident of his return says more about the company's future.

I've been using Mint.com (not to be confused with Shawn Inman's great Mint web stats tracker) to track my financial information for a while now. It's very nice -- completely free, and hooks right into your bank accounts, investments, or other financial accounts online (securely, of course -- they've got over 7,500 institutions in the system) to let you know what you're spending, when, and where. I'm lazy when it comes to budgets, but Mint will automatically make budgets for you based on what you spent the month before, so I can see if my groceries, bus fare, or, ahem, iPhone app budgets go over one month.

And now they're released an iPhone app, so you can have access to all of that information on the go. It's pretty much a portable Mint -- you've got all of your usual account information, alerts are pushed off onto their own screen, so you can see at a glance where you're overspending, and you can flip through and see your expenses for the month, where your cash is going, and any budgets you've programmed into Mint. The app is quick and easy to use -- like Mint.com, but in the palm of your hand. It's free and on the App Store right now (though of course you have to set yourself up on their website first).

One security issue: the app wisely recommends that if you don't have a passcode on your phone already, you put one on it, since your financial information will be available to anyone using your phone. The Mint.com folks also tell us that you can disable iPhone app access from their website, so even if you do lose your phone, you can keep unwanted users from reaching your information. But as with everything, there's a tradeoff of convenience and security -- while it's helpful to have this information anywhere you are, the flip side is that it's that much more likely to fall into the wrong hands.

Cha-Ching, the streamlined money manager that aims to put the fun back finances, has made a minor update to v1.0.3 with some truly useful new features and fixes. At the top of the list is a database migration to Mac OS X's built-in SQLite to boost performance, as well as search enhancements for using multiple tags and searching both To and From fields, but that's not all. Included in the update are:

• OFX and QFX support added
• Can now sort transactions in Print Panel
• Printing now uses already filtered list of transactions
• Source pane can now be expanded much more

The update can be had either by running Cha-Ching (chose Check for Updates from the app menu if it doesn't check automatically), or by heading over to the Midnight Apps site.

Yesterday AAPL continued its upward growth. The stock gained 36 cents to $100.76 according to Forbes. Apple was one of several Internet stocks trading higher yesterday including Real Networks and Amazon.com. So will investors continue to hold onto their AAPL stock or will they cash out for profit? TUAW remains completely agnostic on the matter so we turn this over to you. What are your thoughts, stock-investing readers?

Cha-Ching, Midnight Apps' handy Quicken-killer that takes the pain out of managing your money, has received a minor update to v0.5.2. While the notable changes like UI improvements, bug fixes and confirmation dialogs when deleting items aren't much to write home about, the third change from the emailed press release is what has me excited: "upgraded database in preparation for version 1.0." I spoke with Juan Alvarez, lead developer of Cha-Ching, about an ETA for 1.0, and it's apparently slated to land before the end of April with some rocking new features and changes. Cha-Ching itself has received a major overhaul in preparation for the big 1.0, so stay tuned for more details and some pre-release screenshots as soon as we can publish them.

Juan Alvarez, developer and CEO at Midnight Apps, gave a CocoaHeads presentation at the Apple Store Thursday night of the new 0.5 version of Cha-Ching, his slick money app that brings financial management out of the stone ages with the beauty of Mac OS X and Cocoa. While Cha-Ching is still in a half-1.0 beta status, it's a pretty impressive app powered by some slick innovation. Read on for some sexy screenshots and feature highlights of this latest version.

No. I'm not traveling to Macworld. But I was mentioning to the husband that I was probably going to buy an iTV after it gets announced and/or introduced at Macworld. "Right," he replied. "And how much is that going to end up costing us?" So I sat down and started to figure out exactly how much that $299 gadget (assuming free shipping) would make a dent in our finances. Here's how it works out.

If you give a girl an iTV, she's probably going to want to be able to hook the iTV up to the TV with some good quality cables. So figure another $50 for those cables...

And if you give a girl an iTV and cables to hook it up to a TV, she's probably going to start thinking about replacing that old 27-inch unit with a shiny new high def widescreen plasma or LCD system that would run, oh say, maybe $1500 on a good sale...

And if you give a girl an iTV, with a cable to hook it to a shiny new HDTV, and you really think about it, she's probably going to want need to get a rockin' sound system for another two grand or so, right?

And if you give a girl an iTV, with cables, HTDV and a rockin' sound system, she's going to totally need at least a new $2500 Mac Pro with tons of disk space and 802.11n to connect to that iTV and a year's worth of (high def?) iTunes movies and TV shows, at say $500-ish?

And if that girl is rockin' out with her iTV, cables, HDTV, sound system, Mac Pro, and iTunes goodies, she's totally going to need a new, more comfortable couch. So let's say about $500, give or take.

So at just 300 smackeroos, that iTV is quite the bargain in comparison, isn't it? And that doesn't even begin to cover the $49 for the iLife 07 upgrade. And the iWork 07 upgrade, and... So anyway, how much is Macworld going to cost all of you?

Moneydance 2006 (awkward name and all) is a well-rounded personal finance app with a nice selection of features including: online banking and bill payment, budget management, recurring transactions, investment tracking, report generation, Quicken/Money import, database encryption and a whole lot more.

It might be missing a few features when compared to big dogs like Quicken 2006, but it's priced accordingly: a license is $30 no matter what OS(es) you need it for, and when I say cross-platform, I mean it: Moneydance 2006 works on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS/2, and Unix.
A fully functioning demo is available that allows for entering up to 100 transactions - so what are you waiting for? Go grab a copy and stop making excuses for ending up budget-less and broke every month.