My Exercise In Futility

Yesterday, the new roommate introduced me to the website, mint.com. I spent twenty minutes on this website and I have decided that it’s my new favorite free online money management site. Here are a few of the reasons why:

Quick and Easy Setup - Within 30 minutes, I was able to quickly and easily connect to each and every credit card account, checking account, and (small) investment account I own. Connecting to one of your accounts is as simple as finding the bank that manages your money, providing your username and password (and the answers to any additional security questions your financial institution may ask for), and allowing Mint to take care of the rest.

When using other financial management softwares such as Quicken or Money, I usually find there’s some investment account that I can’t connect to or a store credit card that I can’t electronically access via the software - or there’s that Discover card that I have that is really funded by HSBC. I was still able to connect to that account by using Mint’s search capability and searching for the website URL for that account vice the bank name. Mint boasts that it has connectivity to over 50,000 financial institutions. I don’t know if that’s true, but they had access to every account I own.

As my first account was initializing, the site allowed me to continue to setup my additional checking, credit, an investment accounts. As I entered information for each account, I was able to watch as each financial institution connected, authorized, and allowed Mint to download transaction history. A progress meter in the top right hand corner of the page displayed the overall progress Mint was making for the accounts I was setting up. Once you stop adding accounts, you will eventually see this meter reach 100%. This means Mint has connected to all of your accounts successfully and has finished downloading transaction history for you.

Quick Analysis - The most useful and most beneficial feature of this website is how it automatically categorizes your transaction data and displays trend information about your spending habits. Do you really know how much you spend at Starbucks on a monthly basis? What are you spending on utilities? What about ATM fees or groceries? Were those all within budget?

This site graphically shows you where your money is going every month so you can determine where you might try and cut monthly spending. After viewing a couple of graphs, I ran out and bought a five pound bag of coffee and a large bottle of french vanilla creamer. Hopefully that will stifle my Starbucks spending that exceeded $200 in October.

Helps You Save Money - After analyzing various information about your accounts such as their interest rates or the APR of your credit card accounts and loans, the site will actually find ways to help you save money. Maybe you can save money on finance charges by switching to a credit card with a lower interest rate? Maybe that high balance you have in your savings account could return a higher yield with a different bank? The website has a lot of different ideas for you.

SMS / E-Mail Alerts - After you’ve reviewed some of the analysis, you might begin to use the site’s budget feature and setup spending limits for different categories; maybe you like to keep track of large transactions against your credit card or your checking account. This site allows you to customize alerts that you can receive via e-mail and / or SMS text message. Imagine how much more aware of your spending you might be if you knew you were already over budget for ‘dining out’ expenses this month. Wouldn’t it be nice to know when that $2,200 check you deposited to your checking account actually clears and is available for spending? That’s the beauty of this site - customize the alerts on individual accounts or spending categories to fit your needs.

Although this site doesn’t allow you to enter your own transactions as to track your ‘real balance’ like you might with Quicken or with Money, it provides crucial data letting you know where the money is going. It helps you see how you might be able to save a little more each month, or how to pay your debt off a little faster. I would highly recommend this site specifically to anyone who is learning how to create a budget for the first time - after all, knowing where the money is going is half the battle.