Mint: Free and Simple Online Budgeting Software

Mmm. Makes me crave a mojito. ...I don't think it's a gay drink. ...mojitooo.

With the money problems that many people are having today, it’s more important than ever that we keep to a budget. I was actually in the midst of creating my own online budgeting program/website when I stumbled upon this bad boy. After about 10 minutes f cursing the gods for all my wasted work, I decided to take a look at it. Amazement was the first feeling that washed over me. Well…after the rage and blaspheming, that is.

Quicken for dummies…and poor people

If you’re a lazy bastard, raise your hand. When prompted by that question, my first reaction is to raise both hands and a foot for safe measure. Well, thankfully, Mint was specifically designed with our procrastinating, snooze-button-hitting, hides in mind.

The lazy way of balancing a check book is recalling the amount of money you had in your account 3 months ago and subtracting all the purchases and upcoming bills you can remember. Then you take that value and add an “-ish” to the end. Mint eliminates that guessing game. This amazing tool pulls all your spending and deposit activity from all your bank and credit accounts and gives you a detailed breakdown of what’s going where.

Another small, yet satisfying feature is that when you enter your credit card information, you are shown what APR you are being charged. Great stuff, especially since I’m too lazy to even open my statements anymore.

While it is 100% free, there is one requisite trade-off that you must accept in order to obtain this super-awesomeness. In order for the site to work, you have to have your accounts online enabled. Then you must fork over your login information. For many, this may be an exceptionally high level of trust to which they may or may not be willing to jump. However, with awards from main-stream press, including Money Magazine, and PC World, I was willing to take the leap (click here for the awards and acknowledgment list).

It sure is purdy-like

Mint is great in giving you both detailed breakdowns as well as simple to read charts. And those charts sure are helpful in highlighting your financial holes.

Just to answer your question, no, I do not spend $1,200 on rent.

You do, however, have to make sure everything is being categorized correctly. Mint, for the most part, does a great job of guessing, but you will need to do some fine-tuning. For example, I often go to a place called Billiard Bar here in Dallas’s Lower Greenville strip. Due to the name, it was categorized as a sports expense. Trust me, not much exercise goes on there beyond the 12 oz curl endurance runs. I created a Nightlife category, and filed this, and all the other “sports” and “restaurant” expenses correctly. You only have to do this once, though. There is a check box option to which allows you to file all past and future expenses at this establishment in the same way.

The memory of a fish

Don’t you hate it when you think to yourself “What day is it? Wait…the 15th sounds familiar… Crap! My monthly hooker bill is due!” Mint helps you avoid this by giving you the options for email and/or text message notifications. To top it all off, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that there is an iPhone app for this as well. (Last I checked, there was an iPhone app for everything, including gingivitis prevention.)

Plan B

So hook yourselves up, and check it out. If, however, you are unable to sign up due to your financial institution not being an available in Mint’s connection options, you may want to try another similar site called Rudder. Before I signed up with Mint, I attempted to sign up this one. Unfortunately, it was not able to pull any information on one of my bank accounts. Kinda breaks the whole idea, right? If you run into this problem with Mint and are able to successfully create an account with Rudder, leave a comment and let us know how it’s worked for you.