Do you do your banking online? What about using sites like Mint.com to keep your family’s finances in order? Have you been shopping around for bigger savings online rather than running around to local stores ?

If there was any question about the growing relationship between money and the Web, a new report from The Pew Internet & American Life project shows without question that more and more, people are relying on the web to handle their money – and help cope with the effects of the recession.

One interesting side note: The report found that 69% of Americans are using the Web to get information about the recession.

But not everyone has the access to broadband that allows them to use the web at a speed that’s useful for managing money and / for financial news and information. Patchwork Nation’s Dante Chinni writes that this may allow newspapers in more remote areas to survive.

“Less-connected places may allow newspapers to stick around longer, since more people in these places prefer to get their news on paper rather than wait for slow Web connections.”

Conventional wisdom says the income divide prevents connectedness, but Chinni says the Patchwork Nation research suggests the digital divide is largely geographic:

“Maybe most interesting, these numbers suggest a different kind of digital divide in the US – one based less on economic issues than on ones of physical place. This kind of digital divide mirrors America’s urban-rural split.”

Perhaps this divide will be lessened by the $7 billion broadband stimulus package, meant to build infrastructure in rural areas. The USDA maps the areas in rural America that are eligible for the Broadband Initiatives Program, which is distributing those stimulus

It can be a challenge to see where stimulus money is going – and how the the government is using the web to track it. ProPublica examined the accuracy of the federal government site Recovery.gov and found that tracking those funds is “a job worthy of Sherlock Holmes.”