Mint.com – financial management for a busy mom!

So today on the news I saw a thing about this website, Mint.com, that allows you to track all of your accounts and investments, for free. So I signed up, synced our accounts, and put in our budget, and already it is analyzing our spending and sending alerts when we go over a budget line item (via email). What’s great is that you sync investments, student loans, credit card accounts, all in one place – and really quickly because you just select the account and use your login info for that account to bring in the information to Mint. When your checking transactions update, you just select the budget category it falls into (though usually it guesses them, like it knows Hollywood Video is “movies and dvd’s” or Starbucks is “Coffee Shops”).

It’s really embarrassing to never have money for things we most want, (or to pay a bill!), only to log onto my Mint account and see an alert that tells you how much you spent at coffee shops this month! I’ve signed up for a few things like it, such as Quickbooks Online or Microsoft Money software, but I didn’t find either of them as user friendly (or free!).

When we first got married, I had to keep every receipt and try to analyze all of this on my own, making little pie charts in excel, lol! It kept us within our budget but I so don’t have that kind of time anymore. Now I can use Mint to keep track of our transactions and can easily see that indeed we do end up spending too much on stuff, like convenience food.

In tough economic times, a tool like this is a busy mom’s dream come true. (And I swear this is no sales pitch- just my unprompted endorsement!)