Mint.com

[SoonerTexan]

I just started pulling our accounts into there. Anybody else use it and happy with it?

My parents still have me on their checking account (I told them I'd gladly get off, but believe it or not, they'd rather have me on so I can pick up groceries, etc when I'm over there) and I'm having a hard time excluding their purchases/income. I marked the account as "closed" but all the history is still there.

The goals feature is cool, but isn't working quite so well either. I set a vacation "goal" to keep track of saving for our ski trip in January--it makes you choose an account, so I chose one of our savings and it automatically said I met the goal because of the amount in there...not helpful!

Also curious if anyone has any tips on keeping saving/loans separate and visible? I opened another savings account today for loan repayment savings so it doesn't get mixed in with our normal savings and I can deposit an amount directly. I wish I could have 5 different savings accounts for different things, but obviously that isn't really doable...tempting, though!

[MarissaNicole]

Sandy has suggested it... I'd like to get my crap together and start using it. Sorry I am no help...

[poky]

Yup. Love it. As for your concerns:

1) I'm not sure I understand why you even put that account in mint in the first place? Is it using the same login to the same bank website as an account of your own? If not, just delete completely. If so, what you're looking for is the "hide" feature. When you're in "my accounts" (the popup-like thing that lets you edit your accounts), at the top right is "hide". Click that, then find the account you don't want to see in the list, and mark it as "hide from all of mint".

2) I ran into this, too. Set your goal for the amount that's currently in the account plus how much you want to add, if you don't want to have a separate account for it.

3) I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. As for having lots of accounts, actually, we do have about 4 or 5 different savings accounts. Our credit union makes it *really* easy to add lots of savings accounts under the umbrella of an existing "main" account - they each have their own account number, but they all start with the main account number, with a couple digits after that.

My favorite feature right now is being able to add bills that only happen every 6 months or year (or other irregular schedules) to the budget. Only issue I'm dealing with is that whenever you set those budgets up, it assumes you're starting from 0 to save for it, so, for instance, our $3500 property tax that's due in November every year should take less than $300/month..but because I set the budget for it up in July, it's telling me I need to save $700/month..which kinda skews my monthly budget until it's been paid the first time by several hundred dollars. I figure I have till next January before my monthly budget actually reflects accurately how much I will need to set aside for irregular bills every month.

Another quirk about budgets I've run into: don't set a budget for an overall category *and* a budget for a single subcategory within that category (for instance an overall "auto" budget and then a separate "auto insurance" budget), and expect it to ignore anything you pay into the sub-category in the overall category budget; it won't. *everything* in any category or subcategory of a budget counts in that budget, even if there's a separate budget for the subcategory. Because of that, in my own budgeting, I have a lot of budgets that are overall whole categories, but I also have some main categories that don't have overall budgets, so that each sub-category can have its own separate budget (mostly to accommodate irregular bills) - as a result, I've had to move around where I categorize some things - for instance, I have an overall "bills and utilities" category as a catch-all for the variable monthly bills like electricity and water and such. One of the items under there is "internet" - well, we have an internet hosting bill that we pay once a year rather than every month. I had to create a new subcategory under "home" (which doesn't have an overall budget) for that bill, and give it its own budget, so it wouldn't get lumped in with my overall "bills and utilities" budget and completely blow that budget once a year.

Another thing I do to make sure that I actually look at and properly categorize every new transaction that comes in, is I set up a new "tag" called "checked". When I go through and look at a transaction and make sure I remember spending the money and make sure it's in the right category, I check the "checked" checkbox in the details for that transaction. Then, once I think I've gone through all the new ones since the last time, I go down to the bottom of the page and make note of the number where it says "export all xxxx transactions". Then I click on the "checked" tag at the bottom of the list of accounts on the left, and at the top, it says how many transactions have the "checked' tag selected. If the numbers match, I've seen every transaction. If they don't, I go on a hunt to see which one(s) didn't get looked at (or that I forgot to check the "checked" checkbox on). It's a little bit of a hassle, but it's so much less effort than updating quicken ever was, and it makes sure nothing falls through the cracks, by forcing me to at least see every single transaction.

Best of luck! Once you understand mint's quirks, it's pretty good to work with. The getsatisfaction site they have set up as their online support forum has *lots* of information, too; anything I've been frustrated by or not understood, I've gone there and done a search, and reading other people's similar questions and the answers they've gotten has usually cleared things up.

[Chrisada]

When Sandy mentioned mint.com a while ago I signed up. It can see it has a lot of potential to help us budget and now that DH has finally been getting a paycheck, we plan to sit down and hash it out. It set automatic budgets for us and I think it is hilarious that it gave us a budget of $400 for eating out! Clearly we were spending a lot of time in restaurants when we were between homes.

[niener]

I've only just started using it, so I haven't delved into all the features like Poky has. I've been using it to set some basic goals, like how much to spend on food per month, on shopping, on gas, etc. The only major "quirk" I've had to work around so far is making sure it correctly categorizes all of my transactions. For instance, we might go out to eat at a restaurant that it doesn't recognize so that transaction will go uncategorized and thus not count against our monthly food budget, so I go in every week or so and assign categories to the transactions it left uncategorized. Overall I've found it to be very helpful.

I also use the mobile app on my phone (Droid). I mainly use it as a quick reference to see how we're doing on our budgets -- for instance, if I'm out shopping and see I only have $10 left in my shopping budget for the month, I might take it easy on the spending.

[SoonerTexan]

1) I'm not sure I understand why you even put that account in mint in the first place? Is it using the same login to the same bank website as an account of your own? If not, just delete completely. If so, what you're looking for is the "hide" feature. When you're in "my accounts" (the popup-like thing that lets you edit your accounts), at the top right is "hide". Click that, then find the account you don't want to see in the list, and mark it as "hide from all of mint".

Yeah, it's on the same login so it came in automatically when I imported my bank info. I'll try finding that Hide feature.

Thanks for the other info! I'm going to have to play with it tonight.

As for savings accounts...I guess I need to talk to Chase. It would be easiest to just set it up through them, but I'm not keen on having to keep a minimum dollar amount in there. My workplace has a credit union--perhaps it would just be easier to go through them, especially since I can import them all through Mint. If I could have about 5, that would be perfect, especially since I can easily direct deposit into them all.

I have heard it is really good, but have not tried for myself. I still use the old excel spreed sheet. But I'm very lucky my bank has all that budgeting stuff online, and I can really do most of it on there. But I'm interested in the feed back you guys have on Mint.com.

[poky]

As for savings accounts...I guess I need to talk to Chase. It would be easiest to just set it up through them, but I'm not keen on having to keep a minimum dollar amount in there. My workplace has a credit union--perhaps it would just be easier to go through them, especially since I can import them all through Mint. If I could have about 5, that would be perfect, especially since I can easily direct deposit into them all.

DEFINITELY look into the credit union you have access to, yes. They may not have the same "lots of accounts under one main umbrella account number" thing that ours does, but they're usually easier to work with, have fewer fees (if any), higher account interest rates, and local and friendly to boot.

Love Mint - thanks for the extra tips!

[bobk]

I tried using Mint.com, but at the time it didn't work with the online system that our small local bank has. Surprisingly Quicken.com does work with it so I've been using that. The two applications are very similar and Quicken ended up buying Mint so now they are being merged under the Mint.com name.

Anyway, the main reason I have it is for checking account balances from my iPhone. That really comes in handy sometimes. I made a half-hearted attempt to use the budgeting features, but didn't keep up with it. I do a fair amount of cash transactions and it's a pain to enter them manually.

[SoonerTexan]

Wanted to update this...

I've been using it religiously for a couple months now (meaning I've actually categorized every transaction) and it has been helping us figure out problem areas. And I like being able to categorize DH's golf, etc. fees under "Sports" and show him EXACTLY how much he has spent...muahaha.

BUT...there is a glaring security glitch (IMHO) if you use their iPhone app. I opened it the other day (hadn't opened the app in a couple of weeks) to show a friend and was expecting it to make me log on. It didn't and went straight to my banking info...not cool. I have a passcode on my iPhone, so I had some protection on my own, but I am a bit pissed that the default isn't to make you log in. You have to go into settings and add a passcode or change log in/log out info. Just an FYI.

Having all your accounts in one place is pretty cool, but I'm sure a thief would find it pretty cool, too.

[alison]

You're right--you can see everything by just clicking on the app. There should be one extra step before disclosing all that info.

[poky]

You're right--you can see everything by just clicking on the app. There should be one extra step before disclosing all that info.

Yes, there's some security risk with knowing how much money you have at what bank, and how much you have spent on what brand of credit card, and where you spend your money...but that's all they can see. You can't get to full account numbers or actually initiate any transactions, at least, and as you say, you CAN set a passcode on the app. Good to know that it doesn't have a passcode by default, though!

[Thirteen]

Ooooh, this sounds like something we need to do. I keep telling DH I'd like to meet with a financial planner to figure out how to move forward after residency, but this tool sounds great for the interim.
He really doesn't keep track of his spending that well, and I think it would be eye opening for him to realize just how much money Amazon and Ebay receive from us.

[SoonerTexan]

It is a real eye opener! For us it is the fact that we have dropped $400-500 some months eating out. I'm very ashamed.