Mint.com Review

Financial Software Reviewed: Mint.com
Review Rating:

Lately I’ve been looking for ways to make my personal finances more streamlined, and decided to give Mint.com a test drive.

I was a bit skeptical and afraid initially because I wasn’t sure if my information was safe, and second, whether Mint.com would be worthwhile because it’s a free product after all, and I’m usually a pretty firm believer in you get what you pay for.

Click here to Visit Mint.com

Mint.com Review Pros

Mint.com is completely free
Really easy to use
Graphs and reports of your spending
Easy to track personal net worth and income
Central view of all accounts
Large forum of members
Great iPhone and iPad apps

Mint.com Review Cons

Can’t reconcile all accounts at once
All your logins and data are at a central 3rd party location
Not much support, more of a do-it-yourself product

Mint.com Review Findings

To setup Mint.com, all you do is input your financial institution login information, i.e. credit card companies, checking and savings accounts, and investment accounts. Mint.com logs into these institutions and grabs your account information to make its reports. You can categorize the expenses yourself, or Mint makes a guess at what category your expenses falls into.

I noticed that once I set up mint, I didn’t log in constantly; the real beauty for me was in the weekly emailed reports which show where your money goes.

Also, because Mint.com creates a comprehensive picture of your past expenditures, it emails reports detailing unusual spending if the software notices discrepancies from week to week. This is useful for catching identity theft and throttling down expenses that are getting out of control.

How does Mint.com Make Money?

This is where I was originally not sure about mint.com because I figured that if they weren’t making money by selling the software, they must be making money some other way. With more research, I found that Mint.com can make money in potentially two different ways:

First, they make offers in their “Ways to Save” view. They basically show offers from other financial institutions and show you exactly how you would save money by taking said offers. For example, I had some money in a savings account that wasn’t earning any interest. Mint suggested that I switch to ETrade which would actually earn some interest. Mint.com earns a commission from ETrade if I open an account.

The other revenue stream is the possibility for Mint.com to sell anonymous information about people’s banking and spending habits to companies for research purposes.

Mint.com is owned by Intuit who produces the ultra-popular Quicken personal finance software. Intuit knows personal finance, as they have been in the financial industry for years.

Mint.com Review Conclusion

Mint.com is right for people who want a comprehensive back view of their financial habits. Mint.com shines in the categorization of expenses and ability to present at a glance where your money is going. The alerts and weekly financial summary reports are a nice bonus.

I also really appreciated that Mint.com is free. This is especially good for people who want to make a small nest egg into a larger one. it’s easy to commit to products with MORE fees, but I found Mint personal finance software to have a lot of power for free. When I researched the software’s security more, I was pleased with the lengths that Intuit has taken to secure the user’s financial information.

I also really like the iPhone app, and have noticed that I use that more than the actual web site. I like the weekly reports about where my money went, I’ve found these 2 parts of the software useful in curbing expenses.

With all of this said, I definitely recommend getting a free account at Mint to check it out. Like I said before, you can’t go wrong with a free product designed to help you budget better. Thanks for checking out my Mint.com review.