At least, for those lucky enough to reserve one before AT&T’s Website crashed and Apple ran out of stock last week.

But if you’re throwing down for a new iPhone, buyer beware: AT&T, still the iPhone’s exclusive U.S. wireless network, is going to wrap you in their tentacles tighter than ever before.

Effective June 1, 2010, AT&T has increased the early termination fee for netbooks and smartphones (including the iPhone), from $175 to $325. (The change only affects new two-year contracts, and AT&T will reduce the fee by $10 for every month of the contract you complete). Still, $325 is steep.

The increased early termination fee is just one more line item in the real cost of an iPhone.

But why’d they do it? Perhaps AT&T knows something we don’t. For example, maybe the age-old rumors will materialize and Verizon or another carrier will also offer the iPhone soon. Either way, based upon many customers’ disgust with AT&T’s service of late, it’s no surprise the network will go to lengths not to keep customers happy, but to keep them trapped.

What do you think? Are you buying an iPhone 4? Do you care that AT&T can basically make you pay whatever they want you to pay? Share your thoughts.

Emily Cesta contributed to this post.

Google and the Open Handset Alliance have made life much easier (and cheaper!) for everything from weekly budgeting to debt reduction to day trading. If your cell phone is powered by Android you have a lot of app choices for your smartphone. To help you narrow the field, here are my five favorite and most useful Android apps available today.

I have rated them by ease of use, personal finance help, and cost.

Mint for Android

The wildly popular free online budgeting tool Mint.com has a free app for Android.

The easy-to-use and in-depth free financial application makes keeping track of personal checking and savings accounts, reducing debt and tracking investments easier than ever. The best feature of the Mint app is the budgeting tool that allows you to enter personal finance information like monthly bills, savings goals, income and weekly expenditure.

The Mint app is available for Android versions 1.5, 1.6, 2.0 and 2.1 so almost any phone is compatible. This app is also password protected so no worries about losing the phone and all of your financial info at once!

• Ease of Use:
• Personal Finance Help:
• Cost: Free
• Link: Mint for Android

Debt Snowball

The Debt Snowball app for Android is a fantastic and really simple way to reduce your debt by using the debt snowball technique.

Debt Snowball allows you to enter all outstanding loans and credit card balances into to app including information such as interest rate and monthly repayment amounts.

You enter the amount of money you can afford to pay on a monthly basis (a lump sum) and Debt Snowball allocates the funds in order to reduce the debt in the fastest and most efficient manner, saving money by creating a faster repayment plan, thus lessening finance and interest charges.

• Ease of Use:
• Personal Finance Help:
• Cost: $2.00
• Link: Debt Snowball on AppBrain.com

PageOnce Personal Assistant

PageOnce Personal Assistant is just what it says: a personal assistant mobile application.

It allows you to enter personal data that you need on a daily basis, such as bank account information, including up to the minute balance, credit card accounts, stock and investment portfolios. My favorite feature of the PageOnce Personal Assistant is the fraud alert feature, which sends instant email alerts if there is any abnormal activity happening in your accounts. You can also see all of your personal finances at a glance, which is handy for quick review.

There is a free version and a more in-depth version for $9.99. Try the free version first to see if you want to invest in the full version!

• Ease of Use:
• Personal Finance Help:
• Cost: Free or $9.99 for full version
• Link: PageOnce for Android

Google Finance

It’s no surprise that Google Finance tops the list of best financial apps for Android.

Most of us are familiar with Google Finance as a website. The Google Finance app is nearly identical to the .com and includes market summary info, top finance news and the ability to search by company name as well as ticker symbol. If you have a Google finance account you can sync your portfolio information to the app.

The best thing about the Google finance app for Android is that it is an app: instead of trying to access Google Finance through your phone’s web browser, this light and fast app organizes all info in a readable and user friendly manner.

• Ease of Use:
• Personal Finance Help:
• Cost: Free
• Link: Google Finance for Android

OurGroceries

This is my personal favorite app!

OurGroceries is a free grocery list app for Android phones, also available for iPhone and BlackBerry.

My husband and I both have it and it has made our weekly food budget a stable and more fun task than it used to be. OurGroceries lets users create a weekly shopping list that can be shared with other household members. (If we are out of milk and I put milk on the list my husband actually remembers to pick some up!) It makes saving money on food and groceries easy because there is no accidental purchase of multiple items and with a list impulse buys are easier to resist.

You can enter or download recipes and add items from the recipes to the shopping list as well as create lists for multiple stores to save money. For instance, if you buy toilet paper and household cleaners once a month at a different store than your local grocery store to save money you can create a separate list for those items.

• Ease of Use:
• Personal Finance Help:
• Cost: Free!
• Link: OurGroceries download on Androidlib.com

What about you? What do you think are the best Android financial apps? Let us know in a comment! (Note: If you’re promoting your own app, rather than trying to provide a false testimonial, please be honest and say “I’ve developed this app that does xyz. Please check it out here…” Thanks!)

It’s good news for those who absolutely refuse to use use credit cards: A new company, PerkStreet Financial, offers a free online checking account that pays users one percent cash rewards on all non-PIN debit card purchases. (Even better, you’ll earn two percent cash back for the first six months).

What is PerkStreet?

PerkStreet Financial has partnered with the Bancorp Bank to offer a free online FDIC-insured checking account, similar to ING Electric Orange and others. It works just like any other checking account—you can:

• Write checks
• Use a debit card against the account
• Withdraw cash via a nationwide network of free ATMs
• Make electronic or mail-in deposits

You just won’t find a branch on your nearest street corner!

What Makes PerkStreet Unique?

Although some other online checking accounts pay interest (usually far less than one percent); PerkStreet offers a one percent cash back rewards debit card; that’s ten times the rewards the average debit card offers*. Just like rewards credit cards, PerkStreet users collect rewards as they spend that can be redeemed as cash back or for free coffee and music. PerkStreet also has no minimum balance requirement and will send you free checks.

Is It Really Free?

As with other checking accounts, PerkStreet may charge you a fee if you bounce a check, overdraw your account, or use a non-network ATM. Also, if you don’t use your account at least once a month, you’ll be charged a $4.95 monthly inactivity fee. But the account remains free as long as you make at least one deposit, debit card purchase, or ATM withdrawal each month.

PerkStreet does not charge any of the fees that many pre-paid debit cards charge (everything from monthly fees to per-transaction fees). And, since its a rewards debit card, not a credit card, you’ll never pay interest or risk going into debt.

But I Already Have a Checking Account and/or Rewards Credit Card

In my opinion, PerkStreet is a perfect compliment to a local checking account. If you already have direct deposit and online bill pay set up with one checking account, you can open a PerkStreet account and transfer money once a month that you designate as spending money. You’ll have an easy way to budget for discretionary expenses, and you’ll earn rewards as you do it.

If you’re already happily using a rewards credit card (and paying the balance in full each month), you might not be interested in PerkStreet. But their rewards debit card is absolutely perfect for anybody who chooses to live credit-free or can’t get approved for a credit card at the moment.

How Do I Sign Up?

Getting started is easy at PerkStreet.com.

• It takes $25 and about five minutes.
• You’ll receive free checks and your debit card in the mail.
• Get 2% cash back for the first six months, 1% thereafter.

Signup for your free PerkStreet account now

*The average debit card offers .04% rewards vs. PerkStreet at 1%. 17% of debit cards offer rewards (Source: BAI/HItachi 2008 Study of Consumer Payment Preferences). Of debit cards that offer rewards, the average value provided is 0.23% of spending (Source: Survey of the top 10 bank holding companies by total domestic deposits, as ranked by the FDIC). The resultant value provided by the average debit card is 0.04% of spending compared to PerkStreet at 1%.

1. SmartyPig: Goal-Based Saving

SmartyPig is the place to save for specific goals. Launched at Finovate 2008, SmartyPig has collected over a half billion dollars in deposits without spending a dollar in advertising. SmartyPig features a competitive interest rate on your savings, widgets to encourage friends and families to contribute to your saving goals, and the ability to receive up to a 6% “boost” on your savings when you withdraw money via a retail gift card (for example, if you were saving for a specific item). SmartyPig also announced today the ability to link Twitter and Facebook accounts to your SmartyPig account so they automatically send an update whenever you contribute money to your savings goals.

2. MShift: Deposit Checks with Your Cell Phone

MShift is a leading provider of mobile banking solutions to financial institutions nationwide. MShift already lets banking customers check their account balances and pay bills from most mobile phones (not just iPhones). Today, MShift demoed how users can deposit a check with a mobile phone simply by taking a photograph and texting the image to the bank. To use MShift, you’ll have to wait until your bank or credit union adopts their technology.

3. Home Account: Making Getting a Mortgage Easier

For every ten mortgage applications in the U.S., only four close. Home Account can help the forty percent of Americans ready to buy a home find the guaranteed lowest cost mortgage and help the 60% of home buyers who can’t yet qualify for a mortgage take specific steps (like paying off debt, improving credit scores, or putting more down) to become qualified. Users pay either a one-time fee of $49.95 or $10 a month.

4. Tile Financial: Connecting Advisers with Young Investors

In the next 10 to 15 years, young generations will inherent over $1 trillion. Problem is, young people aren’t identifying with today’s financial advisers and institutions. Consequently, 90% of the time money changes hands, it also changes banks or brokerages. Tile Financial aims to help banks and financial institutions connect with younger investors, especially those ages 15-25.

Through participating banks, Tile provides an online personal finance management tool that allows users to see their money in three distinct “spheres”: Spend, Grow, and Give. As users view each sphere, Tile pushes content—but not ads—to help users learn about money.

5. Credit.com: Credit Report Card

Look out CreditKarma, there’s a new “totally free credit score” option out there: Credit.com’s Credit Report Card. The report card lets users see not only range estimates for all of their credit scores, but also a letter grade indicator of their overall credit health.

The report card then breaks down and grades you in the five areas that contribute to your credit health: payment history, debt usage, credit age, account mix, and number of inquiries. The credit report card is totally free for users and counts as a “soft inquiry” so there’s no impact on your credit score for checking.

6. Outright: Free Small Business Accounting

Did you know that 75% of U.S. small businesses are one-person shops? Outright.com is striving to be the free Web-based accounting platform of choice for those 20 million sole proprietors. I’ve written about Outright before and, in fact, I use them myself for my accounting for my own blogging business. They’re everything you need, and nothing you don’t. (If you’re not an accountant and ever tried to use Quickbooks, you’ll know what I mean).

Today Outright unveiled the ability to import expenses form credit cards and bank accounts as well as partnerships with PayPal and eBay. PayPal users can send or receive money directly from Outright, and eBay sellers can use an integrated version of Outright right from eBay. Not for everybody, but if you run a small business full- or part-time (or someday hope to), keep a keen eye on Outright.

7. BancVue: Kasasa—Power to Small Banks

BankVue is a company that will soon give hundreds of small community-based banks and credit unions the power to compete with the largest national banks through a joint product and marketing campaign: Kasasa. Banks that sign onto the Kasasa program will offer interest-bearing free checking, high yield savings, unlimited ATM fee reimbursements, and even monthly rewards like free iTunes credits when you do things that “make the bank’s life easier” like pay bills online or enroll in e-statements. Power to small banks!

8. Kapitall: “Elegantly Smooth” Investing Research

Investors simply must check out Kapitall. This feature-rich, elegantly smooth web-based application does for investing what the iPhone did for cell phones. Kapitall looks a bit advanced for real newbie investors, but should please everyone else. Sign up for the beta version today, and soon you’ll be able to trade within Kaptiall using an integrated TDAmeritrade brokerage account.

9. Mint.com: Budgeting Widget Now on Yahoo!

Online budgeting tool Mint has about 1.6 million users, but they’re hoping to blow that number out of the water now that the Mint budgeting tool is available on Yahoo!. Now, you can check your budget just as easily as you check the weather. Despite the budgeting tool’s recent success and acquisition by Intuit, however, Finovate shows that there should be plenty of formidable competition for Mint in the personal finance manager space.

10. BillShrink: Building a Better Decision Engine

There are a lot of sites out there that give users the ability to compare bank accounts and credit cards, but BillShrink is raising the stakes with a customized deposit search tool that can even show you, for example, how many ATMs a particular bank offers in your region (and how many are free). Shopping for a new credit card? BillShrink lets you see how credit card companies are doing with complying with recently-enacted consumer protection legislation. It’s often hard to say why one comparison site is better than another; BillShrink is certainly trying.

That wraps up my picks for today, but I’ll probably be giving shout-outs to a few more Finovate participants soon. Have experiences with any of these companies or services? Do share!