I have been asked to review www.mint.com which is an online money tracking utility. Oh yeah, and it is FREE to use. This is a great thing but as always there are pros and cons.
I have been signed up with Mint for about a year now. When I first got it I was frustrated with it. It did not give me much control. EVERYTHING is automated. Seriously. You just type in your online banking info and it pulls all detail, all transactions, all balances, all history, etc. Which for the man that will not spend the time to manually enter things in this is a MAJOR pro. However, for me personally it is a con.
I love being able to type things in manually. I like having control. It reminds me the physical details of where my money is going. When I am FORCED to type my stuff in I am FORCED to look at my sepnding. That is my goal in the first place. If it does it for me, I may or may not look at my spending. Just my thoughts on that.
Already you can tell that it really just depends on the person whether or not mint will be a useful tool. The important thing to remember is that it is important to use something. Each person is different. I do not expect someone to do the same thing I do, which is why I don’t push it on people. But I do push the idea of trying things til you get a system that works.
The other thing that I want to mention is that mint is VERY user friendly and VERY well made. It has a clean website to navigate through your finances. The reporting feature is nothing to write home about. Very generic, not as much control as I like.
However, this is a very fun utility. There is a little bar that says “how mint you are.” And depending on how many of your financial accounts (loans, credit cards, bank accounts, cds, etc.) you have logged into mint that is how “mint” you are. For some reason I really like meters like that, mine is at 43%. I don’t know why I want it it to be higher, but I do.
One major thing is I could not figure out how to split transactions. The help section said it could do it, but it didn’t say how to. I am sure if I played with it long enough I would figure it out. This is very important to me. For instance, if I go to delicious Grilled Teriyaki and I pick up the tab for me and my friends, I do not want the whole $25 bill hitting my food expense. I would want $8 going to food and the other $17 going to generosity. The reason for this is so I could keep more accurate records, which is kind of the point of the utility in the first place.
Lastly, my favorite feature is the e-mail updates. If there is acocunt activity in an account that normally doesn’t have transactions. An e-mail will let you know of it. This is a great feature because you do not normally check these accounts, however, out of personal experience people can steal money from those just as easily (yes someone took money straight out of my money market – I got it back, it was just a hassle).
I would be happy to endorse mint.com for someone to use it. I do not plan on having it be my primary service, but it is definitely worth while to try it out.
The #1 service in my book is still www.mvelopes.com. This service costs money but it puts you in control of your money like no other service does. I am very confident that having a service like this saves you much more money than it costs you.
If you are not currently tracking your money both of these services are great to use.
Proverbs 27:23 “Be sure you know the condition of your flocks, give careful attention to your herds”
In this time, the livestock was everything. It was clothing, food, and a way to trade for other goods. It is what money is today. Proverbs says make sure you give careful attention to what you have. Make sure you are utilizing tools that will help you in this, this is wisdom.
