finance

Simplify Your Finances with Mint.com

I signed up for Mint a few days ago and I am really loving it, I have a few bank accounts and credit cards and luckily I have managed to never be hit with late fees but often times I’ll be thinking “I havent payed my credit card in a while” and end up scrambling online, trying to remember passwords I’ve long since forgotten, to make sure I didn’t miss a payment. With Mint I don’t have to worry about that because all my accounts are on one page and I’ve set it up so Mint will send me a text message a week,3 days and the day before my credit cards due and if my accounts go over or under a certain number

What is Mint?

According to the people at Mint.com…….

Mint is a modern, powerful, easy and secure web-based solution for managing your finances. And it’s free. You register anonymously using any valid email address, and then add the log-in information for the online bank, credit union and credit card accounts you want to consolidate in Mint.

That basically sums it up, they consolidate all your accounts that have an online portal, they have over 3,500 instituations in their database, and display it on your mint account in a easy to read fashion.

Spending Trends

Besides telling you how much or how little you have in your accounts, Mint will tell you how all your money is being spent. Mint places all your spending into categories like restauraunts, shopping, gas, entertainment, groceries and more and displays it in bar graphs and pie charts, so you know exactly what percent of your money is being spent on gas to fill up that suv of yours or how little in my case is being spent to fill up that Ninja.

Ways to Save

Another cool feature is Mint will analyze your spending and your accounts to find you offers that will save you money. For example if you have a checking account that is not earning you any interest, Mint will suggest an interst yielding checking account from say ING. There are also offers for monthly bills, credit cards and general offers.

Also this is where Mint will be making their money. For each time you switch to another bank on their recommendation, the bank will pay Mint a fee. I was worried at first that Mint may recommend products just to collect the affiliate fee but after using it, I believe they are only going to recommend offers that will benefit the user.

Are they Safe and Secure?

They are about as secure as a website can be, there servers are guarded 24/7. They use Yodlee to connect with the financial institutions. The same company that Bank of America, Fidelity and Microsoft Money use. They hack their own site constantly and have been verified by verisign. Read more about Mints security practice’s.

Phenomenal Finance Blog

On top of now having the best online based Financial Manager, Mint also has a very extensive blog on finance containing some of the best articles and tips on finance Ive read in a while. Heres just a sampling of the more

• six-steps-to-teaching-your-children-better-money-skills
• Be Savvy with Credit Card balance transfers
• True Cost of an Iphone, Cars and other things you dont know about
• My Mom stole my Identity
• Stash your Cash at the right places

Disclaimer: I dont make a dime from talking about Mint, I do it because they have kept my finances minty clean and I think they can help keep your finances clean to.