Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Mint.com: A Personal Finance Tool


10/19/12

We all have lots of bank accounts, credit cards, IRA's, 401k's, mortgages, car payments. Because we don't see all of these accounts together, it takes a lot of work to get a full understanding of our personal financial picture. We can create our own spreadsheets to track balances, develop budgets and then use our receipts to label expenses and we can set reminders for bill payments but we have to do this on separate platforms and independent of one another.

Mint.com is a great free tool that organizes, categorizes and presents your financial situation on one website. Here is how it works; you simply add all of your online account information for each financial account you have. It will present your ever changing net wealth, track all of your transactions, let you customize a budget and see if you are meeting your goals. Mint.com is a free service because it looks at how other companies can save you money by offering lower interest credit cards or low fee IRA's.

Mint.com also features customized Goals, tracking expenses over time like "food", bill reminders and tracking the performance of your investments compared to the market. There is also a community blog on personal finance tips from Mint.com users.

I have heard from many people that they don't think this is safe to have all of your financial account log ins and passwords saved with one site. However, you are not able to execute transactions on Mint. Rather, you can just see transactions. Also, Mint has been recommended by "The Wall Street Journal", "New York Times" and "Money" Magazine for safety, security and personal finance tools. It is scanned for viruses and hackers daily using McAfee. Here is more on how they keep users safe : Mint.com/SafetyPolicy

I have used the service for 2 years and I don't know how I lived without it. It has helped me save money by finding online banks that offer the best interest rates, cut down on expenses when I am over budget and helped me figure out my retirement goals. They also have a free mobile app to keep track of finances on the go.

Check it out for yourself at Mint.com

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