Since Mint.com got a nice mention for the TechCrunch40, a conference about new web APPs, I guess I can finally start talking about the Mint.com beta that I was in. Look, it’s all Web 2.0 and everything! (Sarcasm intended)
Overall Mint.com is a nice web APP where you hook up your financial accounts to one central location and you can see all your info in one place. Transactions, spending, reporting, it’s all there. It’s a free APP and Mint sells its aggregate information about users to pay for the APP. If you can get over the security fears and information fears about giving someone this kind of information and putting it online, it’s a nice service. They are real up front about what info you give them and who gets to see what, and I liked that about the service. They have a nice page about safety that spells out their data uses.
You get to see all your transactions which are categorized for you, you can see your spending and saving habits in relation to the average. A nice feature is that based on your spending it gives your ways to change services or providers to save money.
Some minor distractions were that you couldn’t really change and add categories and it didn’t seem to have a mechanism to account for moving money from your account to an IRA or savings account. But what do you want, it’s beta and FREE.
I still prefer a nice desktop based program like “MoneyDance” but if you want a simple program to get you going with personal finance. Mint is a nice option, and you can’t beat the price.
Premium Member
Portland, Oregon