Using Mint.com to cut through the financial static
photo credit: ArtemFinland
As the year comes to a close, it is always nice to take a look at the finances. Although I love tracking our finances using Microsoft Money, the level of detail doesn’t always provide a clear look at the underlying picture.
For example, our net worth is approximately the same as last year, but this is due to losses in our retirement accounts, which I am not overly concerned about. Since we are in our early 30’s, we make regular contributions and reallocate our holdings twice a year. It’s pretty much on auto-pilot.
But what about our debt? And our savings? Are we doing better than last year? Again, it is hard to tell with Microsoft Money. I have all of my business accounts listed, as well as our credit card that we use to make our monthly purchases (and then pay off in full each month). These accounts can give a skewed representation of our financial picture depending on the circumstances.
This is where Mint.com enters into the picture. Basically, it allows you to track your financial accounts online. This morning, I spent some time entering the login information for all of our accounts. Then, I used the “hide” function to get rid of all the accounts that were causing “financial static”. Now, when I log in, I can easily see the totals for the accounts which represent our true emergency savings, our credit card debt, and our student loan/mortgage debt.
As an added bonus, I am also able to quickly look at our credit cards that do not carry a balance to make sure that no mysterious charges have appeared. Given our recent experience with this, this feature alone makes it worth taking a look at Mint.com.
I wouldn’t use Mint.com for making a budget or tracking our detailed spending – I have already spent too much time with Microsoft Money to tweak it to my liking, and our finances are tracked in the program from 1999. But now I have another financial tool in my arsenal to help us keep focused on debt reduction, and I’m really excited!
Have you used Mint.com? If so, what do you use it for? Are you happy with your experience?
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August Financial Challenge
Within the past couple of weeks, we encountered 2 financial bumps in the road totaling $600. This surely isn’t pocket change, and until tutoring starts up again, we really don’t have a lot of extra money. However, I am going to try to come up with $600 without dipping into our emergency fund or vacation fund. Here’s what happened:
1. New car tires – We weren’t really expecting this one, but when we got the car emissions and inspection done, we were told that new tires were in order pretty soon. We trust our auto mechanic – they have done a great job so far letting us know about upcoming maintenance ahead of time (ie. belt changes, tire changes, etc.). To date, we’ve been able to set the money aside ahead of time and then have it done at the next oil change. Our total bill was a little over $300 (includes our annual inspection and emissions tests). Usually, we just take the money out of our emergency fund and replenish it, but I would like to try to pay this without touching our emergency stash.
2. Car rental for trip to Arizona in November – We’re going to Arizona in November to visit our good friends. The flight is booked and paid for, but we have been discussing renting a minivan and splitting the cost 50/50 with our friends. We plan on visiting Phoenix, Sedona, and the Grand Canyon – with 2 kids in car seats and 4 adults, getting a larger vehicle to save on gas (as opposed to driving 2 separate vehicles, 1 of which would still need to be rented) seems like a good idea.
My friend called me last week with a great deal on a minivan for the entire week from hotwire.com. Our friends will pick it up and drop it off, and the cost was about $200 cheaper than what we had previously found. I booked it – the total was $295, and I’ll be getting back $15 for using my Discover Card. Our friends will be paying us their half ($140), but they are tight on money right now since they just got back from traveling themselves. They are good for the money, but I want to pay the total amount off without dipping into the vacation fund.
I’ll be keeping track of snowflakes throughout the month. So far, I should be getting $50 from RevResponse, and $25 from my credit union because I signed up for paperless statements. I’ve got some other tricks up my sleeve for this month as well.
Do you have any small financial goals this month? Do you think that I can do it?
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