Despite what personal finance bloggers might have you believe, budgets are, unfortunately, not always sexy. Personally, I still don’t really know how to set a budget. I certainly have no desire to stick to a budget. And yet, I recognize the importance of budgeting. And fortunately for me, I discovered Mint.com over a decade ago to simplify the process. Since then, I’ve become a bit obsessive—by choice—over tracking my spending habits.

By using Mint for nearly a third of my life, I have a personal database of all of my historical spending habits, and a net worth tracker that dates back to the early stages of my professional career. I’ve come to enjoy looking at the different merchants that are devouring my hard-earned cash, and comparing my monthly or even yearly spending to previous periods of time. And it’s helped me tremendously on my personal finance journey.

Budgeting with Mint

Almost all of personal finance boils down to a mind-numbingly obvious concept: spend less than you earn. That’s really all you have to do (and invest the rest). In order to do that, you need to know how much you spend. And, for that matter, how much you earn. Surprisingly few people know neither of these things about their own situation.

Specific to setting a budget, Mint allows you to create spending limits for various categories, and allows you to get as broad or specific as you so choose. What I’ve found is that I don’t necessarily need to cut myself off when I reach my “limit” in a specific spending category. But I should at least know when I am in fact exceeding my allotted amount. Armed with this information, I can determine whether or not my spending habits have shifted in a different direction—for better or worse—or if I simply incurred a one-time expense that skewed the numbers (car maintenance for example) during a particular spending period.     

Organizing your financial accounts

The biggest value of Mint, to me, is in having all of my accounts in one well-organized place. It always baffles me how many people get by without utilizing a handy dashboard to present all of this information in a succinct and visually appealing manner. They may know that they have a 401k with their employer, and a personal checking account, and maybe even a brokerage account (hopefully not with Edward Jones). Sure, they can theoretically check all of those accounts if they need to do so. But rarely do you need to do so. Thus, they have no idea how much money they have in which accounts at any given time. And in the case of the checking account, they have no idea where it is that the money is disappearing to on a regular basis.

I understand that, for some, ignorance is bliss and they would rather not know too many intimate details about their money. During a market downturn, it can be counterproductive to stress over the changes in your investment accounts. But generally speaking, having a one-stop shop for all of your personal finance information is extremely beneficial. Having immediate access to a few simple charts can help paint a much clearer picture of where you stand financially, and Mint provides just that.

Mint vs. Personal Capital

Is Mint the only site or app that provides this service? In fact, it is not. If you regularly frequent personal finance blogs, you’re probably familiar with a few of the others. There’s You Need a Budget, which I’ve heard great things about but that will cost you a small fee. And then there’s Personal Capital, which is also very solid but comes with a caveat. From what I understand, Personal Capital has a great affiliate marketing program, so it makes sense for many of the high-trafficked blogs to promote their product—which like I said, is very good. My issue with Personal Capital is that, while still free, you’ll get incessant calls and emails from their financial advisors trying to entice you into their advisory services or other paid products.

This is all a perfectly fine and reputable business model, and not a very significant price to pay for enjoying their features. But it’s a warning that isn’t often included in the glowing Personal Capital reviews that you’ll find across the internet. For my money, Mint provides even more value, minus the minor inconvenience of an every-so-often sales call. Without entirely shitting on Personal Capital, which I also use and find valuable, my intent here is much more about singing Mint’s praises. Since I use credit cards for nearly every purchase, it’s incredibly easy to keep tabs on my expenses as they come in. Without a doubt, using Mint to track expenses and chart my net worth has made it the single-best personal finance tool that I’ve come across.  

Mint is the secret to budgeting success

As it happens, Mint just underwent a long overdue update to their mobile app, which now prominently displays a user’s net worth on the home screen in addition to quick access to recent transactions and monthly spending reports. I’ve relied on their site for years when it comes to tracking my net worth via my own Excel spreadsheet, but the new presentation of this piece of information essentially eliminates all need for Personal Capital’s equally appealing net worth visual.  

As part of my manual net worth tracking, I like to take some time at the end of each month to compare my spending from the previous month, or six months, or year. Sometimes, this spending comparison reveals that I’m getting a little too loose with the grocery bill. Sometimes it tells me I am being a little too much of a tightwad when splitting bills with friends. And sometimes it confirms information that my body has already relayed to me throughout that spending period—that I’m going out drinking too frequently, or eating entirely too much Taco Bell. In any case, it is always a revealing and beneficial exercise. Which in itself reminds me that I need to be getting more exercise.

Budgeting is the first step toward the first step

I’m so far down the personal finance rabbit hole (case in point: I have a freaking personal finance blog) that I sometimes forget what life was like on the other side. But when I think back to what got me started down that hole, I think of Mint and the awareness it brought me to my own finances. And I think of how, if you take the time to really get to know your budget and what that focus can bring to your financial landscape, you really do start to see the sexiness of it all.