Fortunately I now live in the present with online services like Wesabe, Quicken, Pageonce, Geezo, Buxfer, Mint, and Thrive, which offer ways to oversee all my finances from one website. In October I decided to open an account with Mint, mainly because their logo is a dollar sign inside of a mint leaf, which I find clever. Here’s my review:
Mint, like those other services, automatically separates your debit and credit purchases into categories like bills, entertainment, and restaurants, and displays them in a nifty bar graph. You can set spending limits, get email alerts when you’ve been naughty, and compare how much you’ve spent with the national average.
For those worried about security, Mint is a great service because your account is anonymous. You never enter your name, Social Security number or address, and you can’t actually access your financial institution accounts from Mint. Also, it alerts you to any funny business, by sending you a weekly financial report on your transactions. Learn more about Mint’s security measures here.
But, Mint isn’t without its problems. First of all, for some reason I haven’t been able to input my student loans. When I try to enter my log in information, I’m greeted with an error message. After a few months of paying the loan from my checking account, I was able to budget my payments as an educational expense, but it would be nice to have the bill due date alerts that I have with other accounts.
Another issue I’ve had is that Mint seems to log in to my online financial institution accounts so often that I have been locked out several times. This requires a call to my institution, which means hanging out on hold for a half an hour in order to get access to my account again.
Despite these annoyances, however, Mint has enabled me to watch my spending more closely. You might want to consider a free online service to help you budget also.
–Cody
Check back later for reviews of more Modern Money Managers.
I love MInt! I started using it when it was still Beta, and stopped using it for awhile because it lacked a few features I found convenient. However, they recently released their iPhone app and I LOVE IT. Fast updates about all of my accounts, debt, etc. anytime I need it. (Except when I’m out of service underground on BART :-)
Seriously, I’m a big avoider of my scary financial instution’s website (maybe that’s because I pay my bills through it!), but visiting the friendly and efficient Mint.com is a little more palatable. I recommend the iPhone App. Nice blog Cody!
Thanks for the mention, Cody. Our designer was sad to hear that our logo wasn't as clever to you, but unfortunately, we're going to have to keep focussing our time on building great new features that help people spend less, save more, and increase their financial health before we revisit our logo. ;]
Thanks for posting, Matt. Tell your designer to buck up, I actually do like the logo. Somehow my monotone came through in e-print and I sounded like I was being sarcastic. Maybe that's why no one came to my Super Bowl party... Anyway, "matt@Thrive," which company are you with? Pick a side!
Woot! I'm sure Lynn will be pleased. *grins* Thrive conquers all!
Post new comment