New Toy: www.mint.com

My sister blog Bargaingeneering recently highlighted a few of the on and offline tools available to help PFers manage their finances. Among those lauded was Mint.com, and having not touched a personal finance app since Microsoft Money 2003 was brand new (and entirely forgotten how to so much as make a pie chart), I decided to give Mint a try. This post is an overview of Mint.com for anyone who may be interested.

Mint relies heavily on online banking, so make sure you're set up with your banks, brokerage accounts and loan services before you sign up. Mint will help you locate the particular banking products you use--type in the name, and it will do a search for all similar entries. After Mint has successfully logged on to your accounts, the start page will look like this:

Clockwise from top: You can program alerts to e-mail you when transactions clear, you go over budget, or your account balances fall below a specified amount. Mint.com uses past spending to estimate an average monthly budget, and applies that a bar graph on the Overview tab. You can adjust the "budget" amounts by clicking on the blue hyperlink to the right of each bar (example: if you've historically spent $200 on gas and want to cut your budget to $150, enter in the new amount and Mint will track it for you). Your Ways to Save is thinly veiled advertising, but also a useful tool if you're thinking about changing account providers. Listed in the left column are your savings, credit, loan, and investment accounts and current balances. Clicking on a button will take you to the Transactions tab for that particular account. The Overview tab concludes with a handy tally of your financial assets and liabilities and your current net worth; a monthly cashflow illustration; and your monthly net income.

The Transactions tab (above) is a portal that allows you to see debits and credits that have cleared your accounts and how Mint has categorized them (this is directly tied to the budgeting feature on the Overview tab). Mint.com has a handy naming feature to categorize transactions that comes pre-loaded with budget tags that you can choose from. Tweaking with this tab forced me to acknowledge and label my expenditures, and trust me, it's not fun seeing that I've all ready blown $18 this month on my latte' habit.

The Trends tab (above) is where things get really nifty. Once you've identified the categories in the Transactions tab to your satisfaction, Mint will create a pie chart of your expenses. Clicking on a wedge will yield a further breakdown of a given category, e.g., the Auto & Transport wedge breaks down into Insurance, Gasoline, Auto Payments and Maintenance. No graphing or mathematical acrobatics necessary! Below the pie chart is another bar graph that lists your average monthly expenses in the category of your choice and allows you to compare them to other people in your area (below).

My overall opinion? Mint is a smooth, high-caliber and intuitive personal finance interface that is more than worth a look if you're considering upgrading, or even taking the plunge into money tracking and budgeting software. The fact that it's entirely free (unlike Money and Quicken) is a big plus, and more than worth the blatant but non-invasive advertising. I personally enjoy it and will continue developing my account.

(Disclaimer: I am receiving no incentives or compensation from Mint.com for featuring its product. This content is not officially endorsed by Mint.com or its affiliates.)

IMAGE CREDIT: mint.com