I’m home sick today, and I have no real desire to come up with a Novel Idea for a blog post, so instead I’m just going to mention my favorite budgeting site again: Mint. What do I love about Mint? Honestly, what’s not to love? Before Mint, I always struggled to stay on top of a budget. All of those receipts, keeping track of what went with what, how much was left in which category–it just was too much work for me. I remember when DKC and I bought our house and were suddenly saddled with all of these extra expenses, things looked grim for a while. It was tremendously difficult to know how much we could spend and still stay within our means.
Enter Mint, stage right.
You sign up for a free account, enter in your bank account log-in information, and it automagically imports all your transactions. Every credit card purchase, every check, every deposit, every withdrawal–everything. It also categorizes it all for you (although it needs some help every now and then figuring out what should go in what category). Not only that, it also allows you to set budgets for a plethora of categories. It’ll let you roll over a balance from one month to the next. It finds great savings rates for you. It keeps track of your investments (stocks, IRAs, retirement accounts, etc.). It shows you fantastic graphs and charts that illustrate where all your money is going. It keeps track of how much you’ve spent vs. how much you earned. Honestly, there’s nothing it can’t do.
At first, it seemed a little sketchy to me–enter my bank account info? Isn’t that . . . dangerous? But it doesn’t store that log in info. There’s no way people can break into your account and find out your passwords or anything–worst case is they’d break in and know how much you spend on television each month. Or how much savings you have. That’s it, though. You’re totally safe. If anything, it’s made my money more secure, because now I pay attention to each transaction I make.
Can you tell I love this thing? Anyway–if any of you are out there trying to make sense of a budget, you know what my vote is. If you have questions, please ask. Happy Monday!
Hmmm
Quicken does the same thing, and it’s stored on my computer,but it does cost… I can see some advantages to your fancy Mint.
H
Re: Hmmm
Use it. You’ll like it!
Did you know (and I’m almost certain you do) that characters that enter from stage right (house left) automatically hold more power and are seen as virtuous? In opposition, characters that enter from stage left (house right) are automatically sinister. It’s because we read from left to right and anything going against that give us sub-conscious heebie-jeebies.
I’m not sure what the rules are for cultures that don’t read from left to right.
Also, I agree, Mint is swell.
Oops. I didn’t mean to be anonymous on that last comment.
Interesting, Margot–I’d forgotten that!