I’ve never been a guy who liked to make a budget. Most times, if a purchase seems necessary, my thought process goes something like: Can I afford it? If I can’t really afford it, can I live without it? Yeah, I can live without it, but my life would be more fun if I bought it, so I’ll get it anyway.
I only really check my bank account on payday or if I think I’m starting to scrape the bottom, and I get that information from the informal running tally I keep in my head. Savings? That’s a nice idea but not really a serious commitment.
And then I signed up for Mint.com.
The free website – which was recently bought by the company that owned Quickbooks for $170 million – is an online budgeting tool that pulls your information directly off your online bank site and gives you detailed information on your balances, your debt-to-income ratio, your net worth and your spending habits.
While I didn’t have any problems linking my Mint.com account with my bank account, I do have a friend who required several attempts and some e-mail back and forth with Mint staff to get his First Market Bank account up and running.
Once you’re in, it’s a cold dose of reality but a huge help. Plus it’s really easy to use and can pull data from most local banks.
When you click on the “trends” tab and the pie chart of your spending habits pops up, you’ll be shocked at how much of it is taken up by what you do to blow off steam.
Although it’s nice to have your transactions categorized so you can see where you are spending, be sure to take a closer look. Mint doesn’t recognize every purchase, so you may end up looking like you spend a lot of money on “Other” when it is actually being spent at restaurants or on bills and other personal services.
Be prepared to spend a little extra time putting some purchases into the right category if you want get an accurate picture of your spending. Luckily, this is fairly easy to do, and it takes less time than if you were to chart your spending yourself.
And it’s way easier to use than Quicken.
If you click on the “transactions” tab, you will receive a list of every transaction you have made on either your ATM, checking or credit card. And the site works with your bank’s website, so the information is as good as the information you might have had to get from two or three sites before.
So, why has Mint changed the way I look at my financial situation? It provides clear, graphic information about where I stand financially. And although this is common among 25-year-olds who have financed their own education, it is a wakeup call to see that the amount of cash you have on hand is greatly outweighed by the amount of debt you hold. (Damn my expensive education!)
Mint is a kind of financial adviser without the perceived judgment you feel when you relate your less excusable expenditures to him or her and try to justify them. (Why did I run up that bar tab to $80? Umm …)
But I found a few flaws. Mint seems to make its money by selling advertisements to financial institutions. If you say that you don’t know your credit score, it will direct you to a pitch for FreeCreditReport.com (a tricky little site that says it’s free, but you sign up for a paid service if you get that so-called free report. Stay away. You can get that info for free elsewhere.). But these ads are not all bad — I received a letter Sunday from Navy Federal Credit Union to say they were jacking up the interest rate on my credit card because of the new credit card legislation, so I can shop around for the new card I’m getting when I cancel the old one. Mint displays several offers with interest rates lower than what Navy Federal wants me to pay. Go Mint.com!
There is a problem with this, though, because companies such as Chase, Charles Schwab, Citibank and American Express, which are offering you investment and credit card products, are listed under tabs that offer investment advice and a tab called “ways to save.” This is a slightly shady business practice, because the tab should say “paying our bills.” But if one goes into it with eyes open, Mint is an incredibly useful tool.
Plus, it sounds a lot cooler than Quicken.
David Larter is a BizSense reporter. Please send news tips to David@richmondbizsense.com.
Full Disclosure: Great review of Mint, they are an excellent product and looking forward to seeing the direction they take with Intuit. Budgeting takes time, patience, and motivation. It is something that needs to be a priority now especially with the times. I want to introduce you to BudgetPulse.com. A free personal budgeting software. We do not access bank accounts. Our users manually input their daily transactions or import their financial bank statements in minutes. It’s international compatible and so easy to use, people of all ages can use it and get budgeting right away. We have a new release coming out soon. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Craig Kessler
Marketing Director at BudgetPulse
craig@budgetpulse.com
@Craig. Mint succeeded exactly in the area you outlined as a core benefit of Budgetpulse. In an ideal world, people would have time to reconcile their finances daily and weekly manually into a spreadsheet, notebook, Quicken, etc. In reality that is way too time consuming. Mint gives you one place to look at your financial picture: complete with transactions and graphs. You spend less time on data entry and more time on understanding your financial picture.
Thank you for writing this article on Mint. I have signed up and it’s a great tool. I had a little bit of a problem with one of my accounts but I got it straightened out. It saves a lot of time by having your financial picture easy to see and budgeting process seamless. I am a little worried about what is going to happen down the line. I used to use Yahoo finance for the same functionality but after 2 years they pulled the plug. Wachovia used to offer a similar service powered by Yodle but they canceled it overnight without notice. I became so dependent on Wachovia as a single source of sign-on that I couldn’t even remember all of the accounts I had once they pulled the plug. I was so mad that I almost canceled my banking relationship with Wachovia. I am hoping that Mint doesn’t cancel the service or make it a pay service. I will enjoy it while it lasts.