For the past several years, I’ve been pretty diligent in tracking my personal finances. I would enter (or download) every transaction I made and categorize it so that I could compare it at the end of the month. I’ve been using Microsoft Money, and I’ve been impressed with the level of automation it has in downloading and remembering the categories for each transaction.
That pile is all the stuff that has been accumulating since the first of 2008. I completely slacked off on my effort to keep on top of things.
Earlier this week, I came across a website called mint.com. It is a web-based replacement for Quicken or MS Money. It was easy to set up, so I tried it out. I was very impressed from the beginning with how it worked. The program isn’t as extensive as MS Money, but it tracks everything I need: checking account, credit cards, and loan balance. The best part is that it is very easy to use. The charts are very readable and useful and simple to manipulate. A feature I really like is that you can compare your spending within a category with people from other cities, or the average person in the USA. It is still in “beta testing” mode, so I expect to see more feature added as time goes on, but I’m already a loyal user.
And best of all, your financial information is all posted on the web for easy access!!
I saw a news article on this site and a few others. I checked mint and another that they suggested out. I was scared to use them though. Creeped me out to have the programs accessing our mortgage and bank accounts. That is TMI for one site to have access to for me.
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