Mint It, Mint It Real Good

Mint.com....So there's been a lot of hype over the past few years about Mint. Admittedly, I signed up for Mint a while ago. I thought it was great because it automatically uploads your banking info, you just have to be comfortable with giving Mint access to monitor your personal accounts. Well, I unfortunately did not keep up with it, so here goes round 2.

Overview:
The first tab you will see is the "Overview" tab. I think I'll be spending most of my time here because it tells me about upcoming bills, I can set bill reminders, and it also shows you how you're doing on your budget. Here's a quick pic of what the "Upcoming Bills" display looks like:

Hopefully this will help me plan on when it's a good time to schedule future payments, or make purchases.

Budgeting:
The budgeting tool seems pretty fantastic. Mint automatically looks at your expenditures and lists them under "Everything Else". If you want you can manually set your own budget for items that aren't variable, like rent, and save them. Or, you can click on "Everything Else" and click on the little + button next to each item. This will pop open the budget setter, and Mint suggests a budget for you. The site says that it generally sets a budget for 20% less than you spend normally. Once everything is set you have a fun little bar chart to look at to track your progress.

I love charts and data, so I definitely geeked out a bit in this section. Now, I just need to be diligent about monitoring, and keeping to my budget. Easier said than done, am I right? Luckily, Mint is also a phone app, so you can easily check how you're doing on your budget. Each time you open the app it refreshes the information.

Goals:
Initially the goals section of Mint seems pretty awesome and validating. I love to check items off lists, so immediately I started setting goals. Since I first signed up I have been able to happily check off "Pay off my credit cards" from my goal list. Very satisfying. Unfortunately the goals failed me this time!

I wanted to add "Pay off my student loans" as a goal. Well, based off of my income-based repayment plan Mint calculated that it will take me over 50 years, and therefore, it's an insufficient minimum payment. This is just frustrating. I know it's going to take that long, but I don't know how much I'll be able to save on any given month. I would have to up my minimum payment to $2,000 a month for Mint to be happy....that's what I make each month. Lame.

So I tried to make my goal just to pay off my loan with the highest interest rate. This so happens to be my largest loan. Again, with the insufficient minimum payment. I then tried my smallest loan. Finally, success! Mint would accept my goal.

I don't know how I feel about an online budgeting tool telling me that my goals/payments are insufficient. I already know that, way to make me feel better.

Trends:
The "Trends" section is a fun one if you're a data geek like me. It shows you where you spend the most money. See:

Clearly, I should cut down on gifts...wait what? Who the heck am I giving to? I might have to go back and reclassify some expenditures so Mint puts them in the right category.

Overall Impression:
Great basic tool. There definitely are some limitations like the "Goals" section, and you may have to go in and manually classify some expenditures. Also, if you are working off of a cash budget Mint will be a pain in the butt. You will have to enter in every expense individually. I don't know about you, but I'm lazy when it comes to that type of thing. I hate health and fitness apps for that very reason.

However, the pros of the budgeting tool and overview tab greatly outweigh the cons. The more you know about how you spend, the better you can evaluate your situation and cut out unnecessary items. Of course, for this tool to help me succeed I must actually work on using it. So my personal goal is to check Mint as often as I check Facebook. This will be easy with the app version. I'll let you know next month about my progress (and hopefully savings!).