The Bottom Line
Pros
- Mint is free and offers money-saving ideas without annoying ads.
- Updates accounts every night automatically.
- Easy to use and continually being improved.
- Sends financial summaries via email or text message.
- Available where ever there is an Internet connection.
Cons
- Cannot enter cash transactions.
Description
- Set Mint email or cell alerts for unusual account activity, when a bill is due, or an account has a low balance.
- Mint.com has won awards from PC World, TechCrunch and Finovate for its innovative approach to managing personal finances.
- For security, Mint.com logs you out of your account if it is inactive for 10 minutes.
- As of October of 2008, Mint.com had over 500,000 users.
- Mint.edu blog provides personal finance education and perspectives.
- Mint uses the same levels of encrypted security that banks do for data protection.
- Mint.com is monitored and verified by well-known online security concerns. Mint Security
Guide Review - Mint.com Free Personal Finance Software Review
What sets Mint.com apart in the ever-growing selection of online personal finance software is that Mint gives you real ideas for saving money without cluttering its pages with ads. Mint.com accomplishes this by securely analyzing your banking and credit accounts and spending patterns, then finding alternatives like a cable provider with a good deal or a savings account with a better interest rate. Mint presents savings opportunities on a separate window accessed by clicking on a tab.To get started with Mint.com, you set up a secure online account, then provide log in information for your financial accounts. Mint takes over from there, downloading transactions and automatically assigning categories to transactions.
The categories Mint.com assigns to transactions may not always be categories you would choose, but categories are easy enough to edit. Transaction splits are supported and you can also assign labels and notes to transactions.
Setting up financial accounts on Mint.com is very easy, and currently over 7,000 U.S. financial institutions work with Mint. I was surprised to find that my regional bank downloaded transactions directly to Mint, but not into Quicken or Microsoft Money. If your bank requires you to answer a rotating series of security questions to log into your online accounts, be prepared to provide Mint with those questions and answers. You may need to log in and out of your bank account a few times to get the complete series of questions.
With account information downloaded, each visit to Mint.com gives you quick stats on your finances, easy-to-read graphical reports to track spending and keep a budget, and account balances.
For ultimate safety, do not to use Mint.com or access online financial accounts from public computers. If you must do so, be sure you log out, clear cookies and close the browser.
