Hi Folks,
Today I wanted to share a bit about a money management resource that I’ve been testing out for a bit to offer some feedback to our readers. I’ve been on Mint now for around a month now and here are my two cents worth.
Key Features
At a Glance Finance Management. Mint offers an easy to see, at a glance, look at your finances. This means that it shows all transactions, on any number of credit and debit accounts, all together. This, in and of itself, makes it a great resource to help in your financial management. It also shows you pie charts of your spending and so forth.
Weekly Reminders. Mint also sends you an at a glance reminder of your finances, which can be helpful to take a peek regularly.
Investments. They also have a trail section to look at your investments. This is somewhat helpful, but would be better if it allowed you to also include mortgages and so forth. It’s kind of fool hardy have a finance management system but not to include homeownership as part of the bigger picture.
Drawbacks
Mixing of Funds. It takes manual manipulation to edit out work expenses and so forth. My line of work calls for a great deal of mixing of funds, making it an added complication and less accurate in terms of my spending.
Transfer of Funds. It also counts transactions in different ways that are harder to manage. For instance, when a payment comes in from James for our mortgage fund, this shows as income.
Restricted Fields. This is perhaps the most annoying part. It seems like it would be really easy to allow you to change the categories, but it isn’t. So I have to put our condo payment under some bogus category like home expenses. I also send money to James each month, which any way you slice it, looks like spending on consumer goods, even if James ends up investing it.
Overall I’d have to give Mint a thumbs up. It doesn’t take long to set up and can be a helpful resource.
Readers: We’d love to hear from you if you’ve checked out Mint or have other suggestions.
Cheers,
Miel
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