For money management, I’ve used a site called Yodlee in the past. Yodlee is tightly spun into the majority of the financial world and works as a central hub for my bills / accounts. When I need to go pay my mobile phone bill or check the balance of my student loan, I can type my password into Yodlee once and they will auto-log me into those accounts rather than having to remember several user names / passwords. Yodlee is extremely useful in that respect, but doesn’t offer a user friendly study of my finances or interface for that matter. This is where Mint comes in.
I tried out Mint a few weeks ago and I’m moderately impressed with their offering. First off, it’s absolutely free. Secondly, the user interface is incredibly streamlined. It took me about 5 minutes to get all of my credit card / bank / mutual fund information into my account and start to see my purchasing information analyzed (sample picture below). Mint breaks down your finances to tell you where your money is going. I can see what I spent on shopping, gas, entertainment, etc. without having to compile all the information myself.
I can also categorize any transaction that has been mislabeled (typically few). For instance, a payment to my Chase card was labeled a payment to Chaser’s Grill; a restaurant I can only assume. I changed it manually and set it to assign the correct title or category each time it appears.
In addition to their analysis, Mint offers competitive offers for your banking / credit needs with specific dollar figures on what you would be saving per year. For instance, I look at possible higher interest checking accounts through the site and sign up of one if I choose. While I don’t recommend limiting your search to the banks / credit card companies that are offered on Mint’s site, it does offer some perspective to the money saved by switching.
Unfortunately Mint is still limited in the types of accounts you can watch. While they have nearly all the banks / credit card companies / brokerage firms, they are lacking student loan companies, mortgage companies, and smaller accounts for electric / water / phone bills. It’s still too young to paint your entire financial portrait. They also have no way of importing data from financial programs / sites which forces you to re-enter all your account info. That is a big deal for folks with 30 or 40 different accounts to keep track of.
In comparison to Yodlee, Mint doesn’t have an auto-login feature for your accounts. I haven’t switched completely due to that reason, but rather use Mint as a supplementary tool. The budgeting graphs, spending trends, bill alerts and summary emails are enough to add value to whatever financial program you are currently using. If you aren’t using anything to keep track of your money, this is a fantastic place to start. But don’t blame me when realizing you spent $228 on Starbucks coffee last month. Check out the Mint forums for further information.
