Personal Finance Tools Review: Mint
February 10, 2014Mint is one of those financial tools that I have talked about so much since they appeared on the online budgeting scene that I often take for granted the fact that not everyone out there knows about their service. This week, we will look at Mint and review some of its most popular features. Mint has been around since 2007, boasts over 10 million users and has numerous awards, which is great and all, but all that really matters if you have an account is one thing – are you taking control of your money and making the smartest decisions possible? Here is a little more information about how it works and how you can potentially use Mint to help you reach your most important financial life goals.
What I like about Mint. The primary benefit of using an online tool like Mint is that it allows you to budget and setup goals with relative ease and simplicity. With just a small investment of time upfront, you can create a detailed spending plan. Mint allows you to connect your accounts using an aggregator system that allows you to see all of your financial accounts in one central location. If you are tired of using spreadsheets and the old school paper and pencil method of tracking your personal finances, you can essentially create a view of your total net worth by linking bank accounts, credit cards, investments, real estate, and retirement accounts. Expenses are automatically tracked and categorized every time you log into your Mint account.
Email and text alerts can be helpful reminders and mobile apps for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices make it easy to use to track your finances on the go. These alerts can include late fees, bill reminders, interest rate changes, unusually large purchases or my favorite – reminders your spending is over budget in a particular category (that is often “dining out” in my household). You can even arrange to have weekly summary emails sent weekly to help you take a hands-on approach to monitoring your finances.
Most good intentions in our financial lives fail to become goals because we don’t have a written plan and they aren’t SMART enough. You can choose to add specific SMART goals like paying off your credit card debt, eliminating student loans, saving for college, or buying a home. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about setting specific savings goals and tracking them on a regular basis.
Well, Mint offers this feature and you can even customize goals with your own uploaded pictures or images if you need that visual reminder. The goal setting process can be difficult when we have multiple goals competing for the same financial resources. That’s why I like the ability to put a specific name like “car replacement fund” or “home down payment” to help give our savings more purpose and make them easier to track our progress.
What I don’t like (or think could be a little better). No matter how effective a budgeting tool may be, it is only useful if you actually use it. I have spoken with countless people over the years that signed up for Mint in the past but never used it (or stopped using it due to frustration during the setup process). Mint is no different than other budgeting tools like Easy Spending Plan spreadsheets or old school scribble scrabble plans on paper. Budgets and spending plans only work if you incorporate them into your life on a regular basis. Perhaps the biggest problem that many users have with Mint is that it takes a little time on the front end to set things up. However, when you do get things set up, they can provide you with a way to simplify your finances over the long haul.
Mint is a free site and a robust one at that. In order to offer all of these online budgeting tools they have to generate some revenue. Throughout Mint, there are ways that “ways to save” partners can help you implement various goals. For example, when I recently setup a college savings goal, Mint pointed me in the direction of tax-advantaged 529 college savings accounts. This is a convenient feature but doesn’t necessarily always lead you to the best option. In my family’s case, we live in a state that provides an income tax-deduction that I would have missed out on if I had not researched all of our college savings options and simply gone with the convenient resource.
I also found their investment planning tools are too basic. For the simple opportunity to see all of your investments in one place and track your total portfolio values over time, this isn’t necessarily a major problem. But, if you are seeking more advanced asset allocation tools from a site that also offers an online budgeting tool, you may want to check out sites like Personal Capital. If you are content with the budgeting tools on Mint but want another approach to review your investments, you can see if your retirement plan offers automated programs like Financial Engines or Guided Choice. In the event those aren’t available to you, check out sites like Betterment, FutureAdvisor, or Wealthfront for some investment management ideas.
The more and more we move our personal and financial lives online, the more concerned we must be about protecting our wealth and account information. Mint boasts bank-level security and their engineers stress the fact that it is a “read-only” service that doesn’t allow anyone (including you the user) to move funds around while using Mint. I was a little skeptical about putting all of my information on one site at first. But in the end, the awareness of what is going on in all areas of your financial life can actually help protect yourself against identity theft since you can get alerts on any unusually large purchases. You can learn more about their security technology and privacy policies here.
In conclusion, Mint is a great start to the budgeting process or even a great “kick in the budget” if you’ve neglected to track your income and expenses recently. It really depends on how you plan on using it as to whether it will be helpful in getting your spending plan up and running. If you are seeking a budgeting system you can access from any computer with Internet access, this is a good place to start. Just be sure to use it and tell your money where to go before the month begins by customizing your spending plan. That works much more effectively than getting to the end of the month and wondering where all that hard earned dough actually ended up.