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Tech Product Review: Mint.com

By Lauren T. Bologno, CPA posted 08-07-2012 08:34 PM

  

Tech Product Review:  Mint.com
Reviewed by:  Lauren Taguer

What It Is

'Mint' is a tool that enables individual you to view all of your online financial accounts in one place including checking, savings, investments, and retirement accounts. Mint has more than 7 million users who can view their accounts in a read-only format. Monetary transactions are not made through Mint. Instead, you can set budgets and create plans to reach personal financial goals and use tools from your financial institutions, etc. to make transactions.The tool can be accessed on an internet browser by visiting the Mint.com or by downloading the app onto an iPhone, iPad or Android phone or tablet.

How It Works

By visiting Mint.com or downloading the Mint app on one of the devices mentioned above, anyone can register. Users search for their financial institution, providing their log-in information.  Mint then automatically pulls all the information from these accounts into one location each time you log in. 

Mint helps users create budgets based on historical spending. You can set up multiple budgets and track spending in that category at any time allowing the user to know exactly how much is left in the budget. Mint has standard spending categories (ex: shopping, auto, food) and you can create your own categories to help you monitor spending  more specifically. In addition, savings goals can be set and Mint will track your progress and can even give you monthly e-mails updates.

All while giving you this portal, Mint also provides suggestions for ways to save.  For example, there is access to the latest offers from credit card companies. Mint can calculate the average annual savings by using that card. Or, Mint can list lenders with the most competitive rates for a home mortgage loan.


Pros

·         Free to use

·         Easy to set up

·         Safe and secure

·         User-friendly pie charts and graphs help the user visualize their budgets and spending habits

·         Mint sends emails when you are getting low on budgets, when you have a large transaction in an account, or when you have an upcoming bill

·         You can change email settings by extending or limiting the number of emails received from Mint

·         Cash transactions can be manually entered and categorized by the user


Cons

·         Not every online financial institution can be linked to Mint

·         Some may find that Mint sends too many e-mails (although the settings can be changed)

·         Budgets may be skewed by reimbursable expenses.  Mint allows us to "tag" the expense as reimbursable, but it does not remove this expense from your personal budgets.


Overall Recommendation

I have been using Mint, primarily on my iPad. It’s easy to read and use. All of my bank and credit cards are linked; however, neither my 401k Plan nor my auto-financing loan is supported. This is a minor drawback because I mainly use it to see how my expenses are categorized. I’ve already realized I should stop eating out so much because food and dining takes up a lot of space on my pie chart!!!  While I use a separate MS Excel spreadsheet to project my spending month to month, Mint helps me keep on track of that projection by tracking spending by category throughout the month.

As mentioned above, reimbursable expenses can create imprecise records for those who frequently use personal funds for business other reimbursed expenses. Even though I tag a $200 hotel room for business travel as a reimbursable expense, it is still deducted from my personal budget. I personally wrote to Mint to about improving this functionality.

Mint is a cool tool to use for personal budgeting.  Its charts and graphs help visualize spending, so an individual can re-evaluate where their money is going.  Although it is not perfect in every aspect, it makes money management extremely simple and can help users stick to their budget.


Lauren Taguer is a Staff II Accountant at WithumSmith+Brown. She is a graduate of Monmouth University with a degree in accounting and a minor in information technology. She has involvement in both tax and audit engagements, and occasionally other special projects and has been exposed to different industries including not-for-profit and education, manufacturing, construction, consumer products, and healthcare. Lauren passed all parts of the CPA exam and is eagerly awaiting licensure.  You can reach Lauren at ltaguer@withum.com.  

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The NJSCPA Technology Interest Group is pleased to bring Tech Product Reviews to NJSCPA members. Our goal is to provide monthly reviews of tech products/gadgets that may be useful to CPA's from both a professional and personal perspective. Look for reviews on Connect and in New Jersey CPA.

Have a product you'd like to see reviewed? Send your suggestion to Victoria Kosuda, CPA, CITP at
vicki@beyondfinancialsconsulting.com.

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