Don't Quit Your Day Job…

I feel it necessary to shill for Mint for a bit… and no, this is not a paid post (I just like it a lot)…

Mint.com is a financial website in the vein of Quicken Online or Yodlee which allows you to aggregate the information from the vast majority of your financial accounts in one place.  I’ve been using Mint for 13 months now, and have seen a number of the improvements to the service in that time.  As an aggregator, Mint is very good at what it does.  Going beyond a financial snapshot, Mint even has some analytical features that I find useful.  I’ll take a look at some of the good features – and the caveats in this article.

Advertising

At the core of Mint’s online business is the pay to play advertising.  Personal finance is a field with universal interest and lots of money to be made… it is only natural

The Mint Logo

companies will compete for consumers on sites such as this.  The way advertising works in Mint is through a series of suggestions… the Mint software calculates, for example, how much money you would make in a different savings account, or how much money you would save on a specific credit card.  With numbers in hand, Mint’s advertisers make the case that you will save money by switching to their product.

The advertising is a small piece of Mint, for now.  We will see how it progresses in the future… it’s easy to see how this can be a conflict of interest.  I, for one, applaud Mint’s efforts right now to serve up useful advertising, with some interesting products.  The system has its drawbacks… sometimes my more obscure accounts don’t calculate percentages correctly, and I end up seeing some ridiculous ‘savings’ numbers.  One time the system recommended I get a credit card I already have in my wallet.  Still, the advertising is small, and actually integrates in a way that you will check out some of the offers.  Just click the “Ways to Save” tab.

Financial Transactions

The bread and butter of Mint’s software is it’s financial transaction tracking.  All of the accounts you add to Mint are queried for transactions, and they show up in one list.  Filtering is simple- you can filter by account and by category.  Most categories are accurately entered the first time, which is a nice bonus (most other ones can be trained simply… sort by ‘Uncategorized’ ).  Finally, the bottom of the page allows you to export your transactions in CSV format, for easy import into your favorite spreadsheet system.

Me vs. San Jose Average, Gas Spending (Mint)

The section of the most interest to Personal Finance lovers is definitely the trends section.  You can fulfill your need for knowledge in easy to manage pie charts which break down your spending habits for all the months you have been using the site.  Another nice piece of infoporn is the closely related ‘Spendspace’.  Here, you can compare your spending in various categories (From ‘Books’ to ‘Food’ and beyond) to people located in various locations in the United States… or the US in general.  So what did Mint users in San Jose spend on food in June?  $684.  I spent less… nice.

Investing

Investing is a section which recently got some love after lacking for a while.  While it won’t compete with most brokerages, it’s great to see your brokerages in one place (if you’re like me and you have accounts spread out…).  Of course you have features like comparisons to benchmarks like the S&P 500, but you can also get a glimpse at your asset allocation, your account values by month, and even your cost basis and unrealized gain (or loss).  Also, when separating by actual security, you get a nice view of transactions.  Useful during tax time?  To say the least.

Miscellaneous

Sadly, not every account is able to be aggregated.  My HSA doesn’t make the cut.  One of my checking accounts uses image verification and a virtual keyboard, so it also misses the list.  However, even some of my rarer accounts are in Mint.  The odds are a majority of your accounts are already supported… you just need to get past the initial hassle of filling in security information and questions.

Accounts that aren’t featured don’t have to be frozen out. Under the link ‘My Accounts’ you can add random cash, possessions, vehicles, even accounts which aren’t aggregated.  If you have gold bars and apocalypse money in a waterproof safe (with freeze dried food packets?), go ahead and enter it.  If you have a nice guitar (that’s more like it), enter that too.  It all factors into your ‘Net Worth’ calculation, which Mint conveniently places on the overview page you get when you log in.

That’s Mint

As you personal finance wizards know, automation is the key to the game.  Let mint handle the boring tasks of the money flow and concentrate more on reducing your utilities and driving more efficiently.  Mint will be there to keep you honest.

Used Mint.com or one of the other aggregators?  Tell me what you like!

Cash roll sourced from www.flickr.com/photos/85473033@N00/3367543296, shot by Andrew Magill.

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