Mint, A fresh perspective on your finances
One of my connections on Twitter tipped me off to this online money management service called Mint. With the risk of really knowing where my money goes (lately paint, Starbucks and wall decorations), I’m signing-up. Mint keeps track of where your money really goes by monitoring your bank accounts, credit cards and investments. The service should be a great tool for not only making sure my shoes:utilities ratio isn’t out of whack, but for making sure I’m growing a nest egg at the same time as saving up for some improvements to the house.
Here’s what the folks at Mint have to say about why you’ll love their service:
- Easy to use: You’re up and running in less than five minutes. And Mint does virtually all the rest.
- Comprehensive: Mint provides detailed visibility into virtually all your financial relationships with a single, secure login.
- Visual and Analytical: Mint gives you powerful insights into your personal finances making–it easier to practice smart financial management.
- Constantly working to find you savings: Mint typically finds users $1,000 in savings opportunities in their first session—minutes after registering. And Mint keeps looking for new ways for you to save every day—continuously comparing your needs to product, service and bank offerings most relevant to you.
- Secure: Mint provides bank–level data security and industry–leading identity protection. Its security and privacy have been validated by VeriSign and TRUSTe.
- Always On: You’re automatically notified of upcoming bills, low balances, and any unusual activity in any of your accounts through one (m)interface.
- Anywhere/anytime access: You can get to Mint anywhere, anytime over the Web.
- And it’s Free!
Any Mint fanatics out there? Anyone with issues with the service? If you’re a skeptic (like me) about security, here is the safety page.
Click here to sign-up and start today.
[Disclosure: I know no one at Mint, nor do I do any work for their company, I just thought this seemed like a great service]
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July 9th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
I wound up canceling my account. It doesn’t distinguish cash back when making purchases, thus I was informed I spent triple what I do on groceries, because I use the grocery store as an ATM to fund everything else.
If you commit to a cash free life, it should be a useful tool
July 10th, 2008 at 9:11 am
I’d highly recommend people try Mint. I’ve been using it for a few months and I find it quite handy, especially for checking balances and recent purchases across a number of different accounts. You can check everything from one login.
They just added loan accounts to the service and added investments just a few weeks ago, so there is now a much more broad list of accounts which can be tracked.
Zak is correct that it becomes more accurate the less cash you use. They are working on providing the ability to split up purchases across different labels. So if you spent $100 at the grocery store on a card, but $40 was cash back you could manually split your labeling. I’ve never seen any kind of credit card statement that distinguished cash back in that kind of example, and that is the data Mint uses.
July 10th, 2008 at 9:19 am
I personally prefer Yodlee ( http://yodlee.com ) to Mint as Yodlee has more features and is actually the technology behind Mint. For more analysis see this post:
http://newlycorporate.com/2008/02/07/3-fast-and-easy-budgeting-methods/
July 11th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Great post, thanks for the tip. I signed up for a Mint account yesterday and already love it.
July 16th, 2008 at 9:12 am
I signed up for Mint a few months ago and it doesnt update fast and doesnt tell me correct data all the time and all of my accounts are with the same bank. Maybe its just me, but I dont see it as being a helpful tool at all.