Mint.com experiences?

[MommyBryn]

I'm curious about Mint.com. I know several people who love it, but I'm just not sure... I'm considering it now though because I think DH and I need a new system that we can be "partners" in, and the ability for both of us to easily see at any time where we're at and where the money is going is what draws me to Mint.

We've always done our finances on paper. It's because of my custom "system"...for balance, we have our accurate balance, a rounded balance, and the difference. It has been a method for saving money but also for cross-referencing my numbers too. Not complicated but not common. We also use credit cards as our primary spending method so I deduct it as we spend (like cash)- we have never carried a balance, we always pay it off and just reap the rewards benefits. It's been hugely beneficial for us and has tons of perks. But it does require more frequent balancing to keep track of how much we've spent and what we have left. Hence the other reason I've preferred to do it myself.

Anyway, I've always been hesitant to switch systems, partly because I have never felt like there is one that fits everything I want, but also because it's either going to cost us money (like Quicken, for example, is what I always helped do my parents farm finances on) or be online (which kinda freaks me out! But I'm "old fashioned" like that ).

But Mint.com seems to be very similar to my system, minus the rounding stuff...from what I understand, it links to ALL your accounts so it looks at credit card spending like cash?? That's our biggest necessary feature since we do use CC's primarily. Is it safe though? I am always hesitant to move exclusively to this kind of stuff. I'd love to hear how it works for anybody who uses it.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

I have been using Mint.com for over 5 years and I really love it. I have all of my accounts linked - savings, checking, mortgage, car loan, retirement accounts. In mint, everything is either a debit or a credit, so it doesn't matter if you spend with your debit card, credit card, check or even in cash (you can manually enter these expenses), it all looks the same. I can even include assets like our house, 2 cars, our DVC contract and it not only lets me track expenses but also our Net Worth. I am a big fan and haven't had any security issues. Mint uses your login information to access your accounts just as if you had gone to the website yourself. And you really can't beat it being free.

 

[snayak]

I've been using mint since 2007, so almost 10 years now. You control what accounts you want added, and Mint lets you look at all your transactions at once.

I did not link my online savings account, just checking & credit cards. It's really good at setting up budgets & categories; once I started using them I found out exactly how much I spent at my office cafeteria and was able to add a budget. now I brown bag lunch & coffee more often, easily saving a hundred bucks a month or so, especially since the cafeteria costs have jumped so high.

Mint is now owned by Intuit, who also makes Turbo Tax so I'm not too worried about security or anything.

 

[MommyBryn]

Thank you both for the replies! I went ahead and signed up to check it out...but other than the "overview" main page, it is SO slow! Is this a common issue? I can't even get it to open up the "create a budget", for example.

 

[MommyBryn]

Well, now that I've had a few minutes with it, I can see it isn't going to work for us until they add the much requested (from what I can tell per the comments over the last couple of years!) feature to change the budget dates. Month to month doesn't do me any good as my husband is paid bi-weekly so I have to set the budget on his pay dates. Looks like it would be awesome otherwise, though!