Mint is Mint

Over a year ago, I stumbled on a fantastic money management site. The best part about it? It's completely free. (If you don't use online banking, pay bills online, or if you operate only in cash, don't bother reading further.) It's also completely safe. Just as safe, in fact, as using online banking - partly because you're not moving money around through Mint. It only displays what's in your various accounts. (More on safety features.)

Here's how Mint.com works and why it's so great.

After you sign-up (literally just takes a few seconds, requiring an email address, password and zip code) all you do is enter your account information from your various online accounts. This can be everything ranging from bank accounts to retirement accounts. Basically, you're registering all of your credit cards, loans, investments and bank accounts.

Once you enter all of your account information (again, I encourage you to read about the safety features!), Mint downloads all of the information, then categorizes accounts based on loans, credit cards, bank accounts, investment accounts, mortgages, etc.


Normally to the right you'd see how much is in each account and the balances of your loans and credit cards, but I can't share everything with the world.

Now you're ready to start playing around with Mint. Different features include a list of "Cash & Credit Account Transactions" so you can see what you're spending. From here you can categorize every transaction (like label something fast food, coffee shop, restaurant, utilities, car insurance, entertainment - you get the point.)

My favorite feature is Trends. You can compare what you've spent in a certain category from January 2009 to January 2010, or you can compare your spending to other Americans or Minnesotans or to people living in Duluth. But by looking at what I spent in Gas over a year's time, I can begin to budget exactly how much I need to set aside for gas every month.

There's lots of other tools on Mint to play with as well. Like the Investments tab shows you how your IRA is performing.

But when I look at this, I really have no idea how to decipher it. Can anyone tell me how my Roth IRA is doing? (It really is the least of my worries.)

Accountable to the World

I've never had much of a desire to start a blog. I've always felt blogs were a little self-serving, unless you're an expert at something, have a really interesting job or hobby, or you're an aspiring writer. And I'm none of these things.

But recently my hubby & I have decided to undergo a major financial renewal of sorts, and I've been a little obsessive (ok a lot obsessive) about our "Plan". For us, it's extremely ambitious, and by broadcasting it to the entire World Wide Web (or at least the few people that may happen to stumble across this), we are accountable to people outside our little house of two.

(Another reason? I need a spot to vent my enthusiasm for penny pinching, because I'm pretty sure my family and friends are going to quickly tire of it. This way, I'm not forcing anyone to be excited for us.)

Here are the deets:

Goal 1. Pay off our car in a year.
Two and a half years ago we bought a really expensive car. OK, it was a used 2007 VW Jetta, but the loan was over $20K (including a previous car loan we rolled into it-stupid), and even though we've been able to make the payments just fine, we've realized our money would be much better spent elsewhere.

Goal 2. Save $10,000 by March 2011.
Socking away $834 a month in a bank account we won't touch and have limited access to will hopefully get this accomplished.

Goal 3. Limit our spending to $700/month. (I told you it was ambitious.)
We realize $700 is practically nothing, even for just two people. But in order to accomplish Goal 1 and Goal 2, we don't really have a choice. That brings me to the bigger picture, which is why we're doing The Plan in the first place...

Our Ultimate Goals.
Move to our dream home, hubby quits teaching to become a full-time potter, and then (if we're ready) babies.

Also, I want to share our story about how we are making our life happen. And if we do it (and I really believe we can), then hopefully others will be inspired to make their life happen too.