With everyday spending on consumers’ minds, startup companies are trying to capitalize by offering unique ways to track spending.

From Web sites that aggregate all your bank accounts and credit cards to services that let you call in your purchases, all are betting that now, more than ever, consumers want to stay on top of their spending.

“People are out of control with spending. They need to get back to their roots and track spending and know where all their money goes,” said Eric Tippetts co-founder and vice president of sales at VOICE2insight of Draper, Utah, which offers the Expense Tracker service.

The timing for these services couldn’t be more fortuitous. With the financial markets in a tailspin, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting a low not seen in four years and unemployment rising, personal finance has become a main topic among consumers.

“Three or five years ago nobody talked about finances. They would spend, refinance their house, pay off credit cars and spend again,” said Tippetts. “That’s over and now everywhere you go people are talking about the need to make more.”

According to the Federal Reserve, consumer debt stands at $2.6 trillion with the average household carrying close to $8,700 in credit card debt alone.

For about nine months VOICE2insight has been beta testing its new service called The Expense Tracker, that lets users track their spending via phonecall. While there are many services that let you input spending on your computer, Tippetts is betting consumers want to log purchases while they are fresh in their mind. The service also lets users create a budget so the person will know if he or she is overspending on groceries for example.

Visitors to theexpensetracker.com are asked how much they make a month, and based on expenses the Web site generates a monthly budget to follow. Users can call the service to see how much money they have for each budget item and call in the purchases they make. The company recently added text messaging and e-mail to the service.

“The phone part is the silver bullet,” said Tippetts. “Most people are out and about and want to know before they spend. They hit the speed dial say meals and know how much they have left.”

The service costs $9.95 a month, but Tippetts says consumers are willing to pay for it. Tippetts claims expense tracker can save consumers 1% of their annual income on misspent items. For example Tippetts said one customer, a truck driver who makes $24,000 a year, needed to find a way to save an extra $180 a month for his daughter’s college. The truck driver started tracking his expenses and found he spent $11 a morning at 7-Eleven.

“Anything around $10 isn’t considered real money,” until people start tracking expenses, said Tippetts, noting the company already has more than 2,000 customers, but expects that to grow exponentially by the end of this year.

Another new Web site that’s gaining traction and taking on the incumbent Intuit is Mint.com. Mint.com aggregates all of a customer's financial data, including credit cards, savings accounts, mortgage loans and investment portfolios. The service, which is free, automatically updates when a user buys something, withdraws money or makes a payment. The purchases are tracked so users can see graphs and charts of what they are spending their money on. They also can compare their spending habits to other users in cities across America. 

The upstart Web site has racked up nearly a half million users in less than a year underscoring the growing interest in staying on top of spending.