Overview of Mint.com as a Money Management Tool

A little over a year ago, Mint.com officially launched as an online money management tool.  At the time, I was a little surprised because I’ve only known Mint as a personal finance blog with good articles and a great design.  A year has gone by and after signing up 100,000+ users along with winning numerous awards, it makes me wonder whether using it will easier than my current method of expense tracking using excel.  Adding to the fact that I agreed to start contributing to their blog on a regular basis, I decided it’s time to try it out.

Over the weekend, I logged onto the site and the first thing I noticed while trying to signup was “I can’t find the sign up page!”  I looked around and the only thing I could find was the login section up at the top of the screen.  On a leap of faith, I clicked that link and there it was, the sign up tab.  To be honest, if I didn’t find out how to sign up after clicking login, I probably would’ve given up.  It’s probably just me that cannot find the sign up page easily since 100,000 other people found it too but I wonder if the member count would be 200,000 if the sign up page was more prominent.  This is a minor issue as a user though since we only have to sign up once so let’s move on.

After you find the actual sign up tab, it is actually extremely easy to get an account.  All you need is your email address, zip code, password and read/agree to the Terms of Use.

Once you log in for the first time, the accounts screen shows up where you can add all your financial accounts.  On the right are reminders of what types of accounts you can add and the top “How Minty Are You” is basically a measure of whether you’ve looked at all the types of accounts to import into the tool.

Adding an account is quite easy.  You can either search by name or just click on popular choices at the bottom.  As you can see on the main screen, I added my Wells Fargo checking account on there.  One thing to note is that it will need to store your online username and password for that particular account.  Although Mint is TRUSTe Privacy Certified and McAfee Hacker Safe, those that are uncomfortable with sharing this information should be beware of this “feature” because putting in your account information is an integral of how Mint.com works.

The overview tab shows all the accounts you’ve imported on the left with a nice little alert and budget widget on the right.

Alert System

A nice little system, alert lets Mint either email or send you a text message when certain events happen.  These little reminders can be setup to send you a text message when your bill is due or when you go over budget for example.  I find this very useful as I can specify which alerts to send myself and can also control whether it is sent to me as an email, a text message or not alerting me at all.  I will definitely start tweaking this to send out useful alerts without spamming myself.

Alerts like these are automatically populated into the system.  The alerts I’ve seen so far are ones where I’ve spent over budget in a certain category or if the system thinks I’m spending abnormally.  One thing to note is that the analysis and alerts are only useful if the data in correct, which brings us to the transaction detail screen.

Transactions Detail

One of the main benefits of electronic money management tools is that transactions are entered automatically.  For the most part, Mint even tries to automatically categorize each transactions into the correct category.  The tool does a pretty good job with the categories but I still had to tweak a few transactions to make sure they fall under the correct category.  For example, I bought two golf clubs from the same store in which one was for a gift while the other was for myself.  Luckily, changing it is easy, a few clicks later and they are organized into their respective categories.

When you first import your financial accounts, take caution that institutions have different rules with archiving transaction history.  For instance, I use my checking account to pay my credit card bills.  When I transfer money from my checking account to my credit card account, the transaction appears on my bank account once as a outflow and once in my credit card account as an inflow.  These two transactions will cancel out because I’m not making or losing money.  However, my bank didn’t keep my transaction history in April and as a result, my credit card account has an extra $7,481.04 balanced charged as credit card payment.  Fortunately, Mint offers a way to exclude certain transactions from being tracked so there is a workaround.

Note: I don’t know if Mint keeps all the transaction history downloaded from our financial accounts or else this will keep happening as transaction details are deleted from the financial account.

Budgeting Help

This widget shows the budget categories that you set for yourself to see whether you were under, inline or over budget.  You can easily add, delete and edit categories.  If you are over budget, you will see a on the right side of the widget.  As an example, it quickly shows me that I’ve spend $327 more than my budget already this month!  This allows me to quickly see which areas I need to reduce and adjust before I fall way behind.

Spending Trends

Clicking the trends tab shows you a pie chart of all your spending by category.  I’m not sure why clicking “This Month” shows July 1st to August 1st as opposed to July 31st but I’m sure this will be fixed in the near future.

Although the pie chart lets you quickly see which categories make up most of your spending, I was surprised that this screen did not show me a graph of my spending.  I believe that the most important feature of an expense tracker is the analysis and so far, Mint is still a little lacking.

How They Keep All This Free
So far, Mint is free for public use.  The way they make money is by suggesting different financial products to you.

For example, underneath the section that asks you for your credit score are two offers to sign up for freecreditreport and myFICO.

Mint also have a whole section of offers called “Ways to Save”.  In it, the tool suggests different financial products which is designed to help you save money.  For example, Mint suggests me to sign up for the Chase TravelPlus Visa Card, claiming that it will save me $663 a year!  If I decide to sign up through this screen, Mint will no doubt get a referral fee.

Keeping Your Information Safe

A nice feature of Mint is that it will automatically log you out if you are idle for 10 minutes.  This is for safety reasons in cases where people forget about the page and leave the computer.  This feature could be perceived by some as annoying but better be on the safe side with your financial information at risk.

As mentioned previously, Mint keeps your information safe and meets multiple certifications for online privacy and safety.  Mint also has a page dedicated in explaining how your information is kept safe so head over there if you feel uncomfortable with sharing your financial data.

Final Thoughts
I cannot emphasize the importance of keeping accurate data in order for any of these tools to be useful.  Since data is automatically imported, the error of data entry and missing transactions become a non-issue.  In order for Mint to be effective however, it is crucial to look at each transactions and make sure they are recorded in the category you’d like them to be in.

The alert and budget system is great.  In the short time I’ve spent with these features, I can already see so many benefits in using this system.  After everything is setup, I should be able to reduce my spending and also be reminded when bills are due!

The “trends” feature is a nice start but it could use some work.  Other than a simple graph, I want to be able to compare my average spending against each month’s overall spending and also in each category.  I hope that Mint continues to improve upon this feature and I look forward to seeing updates to this section of the tool!

In my opinion, not enough emphasis is done on most tools in the eye-candy department but Mint is certainly an exception.  By having a great looking interface, it draws people to come back more often.  Long story short, the Mint’s interface is gorgeous.

My first reaction after using Mint is that it is better than my excel expense tracker.  Ultimately, the sky’s the limit for excel spreadsheets as it is ultra flexible but the personal finance software is so much easier to use.  At least I don’t have to keep my receipts and remember to input all the expenses now since I pay everything with a credit or debit card which allows Mint to track each expense.  If you still haven’t yet, I suggest you sign up at Mint.com and give it a spin.

Tagged as: Budgeting, Expenses, Review, Spending, Tools