Mint: Refreshing Money Management
Have you ever overdrawn an account or just missed paying your bill by one day? Do you want something that would remind you when a bill is due and budgeting based on your previous? Well there is one place that can do all of that. Mint.com is a online resource which helps you avoid these costly fees from banks and credit.
Setting it up
Setting up an account on Mint is as easy as entering your user ID and password for your different bank accounts and credit cards that you can access online (Which, hopefully for all people today's age, is for all their accounts and cards). You will have to enter your "secure" questions, but once this is set up you only have to enter your Mint ID/Password to gain quick access to all of your accounts.
Tracking Money Made Easy
With the click of one button, you can get an updated status on all of your accounts that is summarized and shows you your net worth which includes your assets and liabilities (debt). It will import a few months of data from your card, so it isn't optimal to create a large history. However, any future transactions with your linked accounts will be kept in Mint for future reference.
Trends, Budgeting, and Saving
One of the cool features of Mint is the ability to automatically categorize your expenses when they are imported. Some transactions are recognized, but depending on your needs, you may want to label it differently.
Your information is then compiled and it shows you how much you have spent in every category for any time period that you choose. Then based on this information, it creates a budget based on your previous spending habits.
Also, an handy feature is that it also shows you ways that you can save based on your current cards/banks and what else is available. For example, my Capital One account has an interest rate of 3.25% and Mint tells me that if I switch to Washington Mutual, then I can earn an extra $80 a year.
Fortunately, that is the only recommendation it makes because all of my banking is free and I don't carry any balances on my credit cards. However, for those who are not in this situation, Mint shows you cards and banks that can save you significant amounts of money.
Credit Only?
The biggest problem with Mint is that it only can track transactions made on your cards and bank accounts. But many places don't take credit cards or you have to pay in cash when there is a large group.
This of course creates difficulties if you get paid cash and put the entire bill into your check. Mint will only give you an accurate spending pattern if you charge only your expenses, or if you are willing to do some extra work by breaking down your purchases.
The Breakdown
If you pay for something in cash, or you pay for a dinner and your friends pay you in cash, you will have difficulties making Mint know how you really spent the money. For example, if you spent $100 on dinner for 4 people, it only cost you $25 for your own meal but Mint will think you spent $100.
They designed it so that you can break it down, but then this can be difficult to track where the rest of the $75 went. As you spend cash, you will then have to sub-divide the remaining $75 and categorize it into the proper categories. If you spent $10 on a movie, $20 on a shirt, $30 on two new DVDs, and $15 on a dinner with that cash you got from your friends, it means that you would then have to break it down and itemize each purchase.
My Thoughts
I think that Mint is a great tool for people use to monitor and track their finances related to bank accounts and credit cards. If you use credit cards exclusively, it can give you an extremely accurate picture of your expenses. However, if even a small portion of your cash flow is in cold hard cash, Mint is not forgiving and you must manually break down your purchases to see where all of your money goes.
I personally use Mint just to get a quick overview of my accounts and to get a reminder when my bills are due. I currently use an Excel spreadsheet to track all of my expenses (as described in Your Money or Your Life). Although Mint does a "good job" at tracking my expenses, it does not make it easy to track transactions with cash. Because I am want a very accurate representation of my cash flows, I decided that I would only use Mint as I described above, and use my spreadsheet to track and categorize my expenses.
Although it is far from a perfect tool, I think that any person can find Mint.com helpful in some way. It is a useful tool to give you an overview of all of your accounts, keep you on top of your spending, and help you find ways to save.
Related Blogs:
- Your Money or Your Life - Book Review
- Your Money or Your Life - Life Lessons Learned - Part I
- The Dangers of Shopping
Recommended Books:
- Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence
- Joe Dominguez, Vicki Robin
- Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic (Bk Currents)
- John de Graff
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