Mint is an online application for tracking your spending. It has a beautiful interface, and it’s slogan is “We are refreshing money management.” I’d say refreshing is an appropriate description of the way Mint.com looks. The graphics are extremely pleasing to the eye, and the whole application is very intuitive.
The Process
Adding an account to Mint is easy and intuitive. Just plug in your information, and Mint does the rest. When your transactions are updated, Mint automatically categorizes them. If you want to change the categories, it’s really simple to change multiple transactions at the same time. There’s also an option to automatically categorize transactions from a single store into a single category, such as putting all Winco transactions into the grocery category.
In addition to categories, you can put labels on your transactions for easier searching later. I haven’t used this yet, but it might be useful to add labels like “Christmas” to keep track of all your Christmas spending.
Mint really shines in it’s ability to give you a quick snapshot of how you are spending your money. In the Spending Trends tab, there’s a beautiful pie chart, showing you where your money went. In addition, there are bar graphs which shows you a comparison of your spending in each category over the last 6 months. Finally, there’s a running tab of the stores you shop most frequently, the number of transactions at each store, and how much you’ve spent at each store.
If you’re looking for ways to save money, Mint delivers. In the Ways to Save tab, Mint analyzes what you’re spending on things like your phone and internet service, and if Mint knows of a better deal, it lets you know.
What I really like about Mint is that my accounts are always up to date. I don’t have to do anything special to update my accounts. When I log into Mint, I know that all of my transactions are there, up to date, and ready for me to analyze.
The Pros
- Very intuitive.
- Always up to date.
- Automatically categorizes transactions, making the whole process faster.
- Lots of easy to read charts, showing you where your money goes.
- Pretty interface.
- Suggestions on how to save money
- It’s free!
The Cons
- No up-front budgeting support.
Who should use Mint?
Mint is a really great application for anyone who wants a quick and accurate look at their spending habits. Since it’s an online application, you can access mint from multiple computers. If you want an application that’s easy to use, give Mint a try!
Monday I took a look at Wesabe. Tomorrow and Friday I will review Mvelopes and Y-NAB.
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December 26th, 2007 at 7:02 am
What about giving Mint your bank account logon information? That is the primary reason I have not tried Mint or similar services. Was that not a concern for you?
December 26th, 2007 at 9:41 am
Is there a link to this program?
December 26th, 2007 at 10:15 am
Ooops! http://www.mint.com I’ll edit the post to include it!
As far as security goes, I guess I don’t worry about it too much. I’ve been using Mvelopes for over a year and have never had a problem. I think the security is probably the same for all of the programs.
December 26th, 2007 at 10:56 am
I tried Mint but it does require you to “train it.” Like you want to make sure that it categorizes your entry correcty and once you do it a few times, you can sort of set it and leave it. Also to answer the 1st commenter - your password is not actually stored with Mint (see Lifehacker for an in depth discussion on this).
I chose to use Clearcheckbook (hope you’ll review it).
December 26th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Wow, I think I’m going to be reviewing financial services for the next month! I’ve never heard of Clearcheckbook before. I’ll have to look into that one too. Thanks for letting me know about it!
December 26th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Thanks for the info, good site. They didn’t have my bank, but I’ve submitted a ticket to get them added. I’ll try to let you know how responsive the customer service is.
December 26th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Good post as always. I’ll give mint a try.
December 27th, 2007 at 7:29 am
Thanks for the answers on security. I still have my concerns, but I have not ruled out using it either. I will have another look at it later.
January 1st, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Hi Lynnae,
I’m also a wife and mother working on better managing my family’s finances…and I run marketing for Mint.com. Thanks for the thoughtful review. We did introduce budgeting in late Oct…would love to get your feedback on that feature. And we wrote a post on the mint approach to budgeting (http://blog.mint.com/blog/finance-core/secrets-to-budgeting-success/) which might be of interest to your readers.
Anyone interested in Mint’s security should check out our security info and FAQ at http://mint.com/safe.html. Our strong belief is that you’re safer having Mint watch all your accounts for suspicious activity automatically than if you tried to do this yourself. PCWorld expressed the same POV in their article on us last week (http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140863/article.html).
Would welcome your guest post on your path to becoming debt free on our site anytime…just send and I’ll publish.
Good luck with your money goals for 2008. I’m betting you meet them.
donna@mint.com
January 1st, 2008 at 10:08 pm
@Donna - Thanks for weighing in! I will take a look at the Mint approach to budgeting. I would love it if I could make it work for me! I’ll work on that guest post, too! Thanks!