Spend Less Time Tracking Your Money: Free Software at Mint.com

The following is a guest post from Dana, at Mrs. Moneysaver. She blogs about her family’s attempts at a more frugal lifestyle while being good stewards of God’s resources.

Tracking your spending and keeping up with your budget has the potential to be a time consuming task. I know it takes many people hours to complete this each month. My husband I recognize the necessity of this grueling work, but we would rather spend our time doing other things. (No kidding, right?) So we have found a great website to do most of the leg work for us. Did I mention it’s 100% free?

First, I have to tell you something about how we run our finances though. Confession: My husband and I use our credit card for 99 percent of our spending, excluding mortgage and utility bills. (Gasp!) We very rarely use cash for anything.

We have never had credit card debt, and the idea of ringing up some at 13% interest is just enough to make our stomachs turn. But, we use the plastic as it allows us to easily keep track online of every cent we spend. Bonus- we are able to rack up some air miles! We may do things a little unconventionally- but it works for us.

With that said, let’s talk about Mint.com. It may not be for everyone, but it has worked well for our family over the last year. I recommend it to any family who uses plastic or checks for a lot of their spending.

Mint is a web application that allows you to combine all of your accounts- checking, savings, credit cards, even mortgage, into one Mint account. In real time, all changes to all of your accounts are uploaded to Mint, available immediately to you.

Here are the benefits:

1. Time Saving– Instead of signing into each individual bank or credit online banking account, you can view everything from one website. You can sign into Mint and make sure everything is as it should be- no unauthorized transactions, no banking mistakes, withdrawals, payments. It’s easy to keep tabs on everything in one place. And the layout of Mint is user friendly, so even a computer amateur could use it quickly.
2. Automatic Budget Upkeep– This is the real beauty of Mint. As your spending gets loaded into your Mint account, Mint will label each transaction per the type of expense. Mint will label a transaction from a gas station as “gas”, a purchase from Gap as “shopping”, and a purchase from a grocery store or restaurant as “food”, and so on. While the labeling isn’t perfect, it’s close. You can correct any labeling mistakes manually if need be. (It “learns” correct labeling for your specific account over time, so it will improve the more you use it.)
3. See Where Your Money Goes– Mint will also total each category for you by the month, year, and grand total. The figures are charted to show income percentage by each expense. It will also allow you to see how you compare month to month or year to year. For example, I was able to see that between May and June, we lowered our food spending by 4%. Good info to know!

While Mint has its flaws and won’t work for those who steer clear of plastic spending, it can still be a great time and energy saver for many.