I’ve used several financial programs over the years, such as Quicken and Microsoft Money, but just recently I have given Mint.com a try.  Mint is fairly new to the financial market, launching in 2007 with its beta release.  The goal of Mint.com is to provide a free online money management system. They offer synchronization with your different bank accounts for easy monitoring of your cash, credit, savings, and investments.

What really stands out about the Mint.com service is that it’s free.  It’s an option that just makes sense considering most people looking to manage their money might not have any extra to spend on software.  The design as well is very appealing, and surprisingly intuitive.  When I first visited the site to see what it was about, I managed to set my account up (including synchronization with my bank) in less than 5 minutes.  That was mostly because they do not give you any setup or layout options from the beginning.  You can take that as a good or bad thing, it just depends on how much control you like to have.

One of my favorite features about mint.com is the Trends tab.  It gathers your spending history from your various accounts and arranges it in charts and graphs so you can better understand where all your money has gone.  There is even a graph that compares your spending to others around you, either from your state or city.

The alerts system is also a nice feature of Mint.  I discovered it while out by receiving a text saying my account had dipped below a certain dollar limit.  I was a little surprised because I did not choose to receive these alerts from the beginning, but it is easy to go into your account page and change the settings.  You can also set it to alert by email, and under different sets of parameters.

There is also a budget builder to help you get in the habit of spending more wisely.  I haven’t played around with this feature as much, but it seems like a great idea that hasn’t been fully implemented yet.  It doesn’t do much more than display the amount of money you hope to spend for a specific category.

All-in-All I think that Mint.com is a great financial service, and could become the mascot of an online financial movement.  It may not have as many options or features as the big name financial programs, but it is great for the average person to get their personal finances in order.  The only reserve I would have about using Mint is security. But since it uses a password system and my bank accounts are already online, I decided it seems safe enough.

What about you?  Had any good or bad experiences with Mint.com?

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Tags: budget planner, financial planning, free personal finance software, online money management

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at 10:10 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.