using mint budget
Personal Finance

Using Mint Is The Secret To Budgeting Success

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.

24 thoughts on “Using Mint Is The Secret To Budgeting Success

  1. I’ve had Mint since 2012. I stopped using it for a few years then recently got back into it. Seems like they made a bunch of quality updates. Never tried personal capital, although I see a ton of people pumping it on Social Media.

    1. Personal Capital is solid but I think the affiliate program is why you see so many people pumping it. I do like the interface, though it was annoying getting calls from them every month or so when I first signed up. Mint’s latest update provides a much better user experience than before, especially on the app.

      1. I do like the interface more than Mint too. Mint does get annoying with all the card card ads, etc. so i guess pick your poison.

        1. True–they aren’t all going to be perfect, but you can’t beat the price of free. I know some people have a problem with how some of your information might be handled (if it’s free, chances are YOU and your information are the product for someone), but for whatever reason that doesn’t really bother me so much.

  2. Great right up!

    I meant to try out a bunch of different budgeting apps a little while ago and never ended up pulling the trigger on any of them.

    I’ve heard mint’s connection can be a bit wonky at times and UI was a bit dated, but it just updated the UI then might as well jump in and give it a go. It’s hard to beat free and itch needs to get scratched.

    Take care!

    Tag

    1. I think I had a connection issue with a Bank of America account many years ago, but otherwise it’s been pretty smooth sailing. And I’ve been using Mint so long (as you mentioned, the free price is right!) that it has so much of my financial data and spending history ready at my fingertips.

      I like Personal Capital as well, more for tracking investments and net worth (which Mint also does). I just think a big reason they are often touted is due to their affiliate links, and there’s no reason Mint should receive second billing.

  3. Totally agree. Although I’ve shifted to more of a loose budgeting style in recent years, it was incredibly valuable to use Mint for several years until I really changed my mindset and habits. It really opened my eyes to how much of my money was disappearing in purchases that were in the $10-50 range. Individually, each one felt insignificant, but by the end of the month, they added up to hundreds of bucks spent on frivolous stuff and bad habits. As the saying goes, death by a thousand paper cuts. Mint snapped me out of that because, like you said, it was super easy and all in one place.

    1. Can’t blame you there. A loose idea is still better than NO idea! I tend to buy too many rounds when I’m out–and those certainly add up! Though that spending category has fallen off a cliff during the pandemic…

  4. Haha! Yes, I admit the Personal Capital incessant follow-up emails and calls are a nuisance. Also, you made a great point that our bodies will tell us that we’ve drank too much or eaten too much Taco Bell before our bank accounts get the chance to alert us.

    It’s also crazy to think about life before Mint, Personal Capital, and technology for that matter. People used to have to calculate their net worth by hand, and here we are: a number pops up on our phone that we carry with us everywhere. Boy, do we have it made!

  5. We use both Mint.com and have a personalize spreadsheet to budget. Mint if for on the go and big picture for us. Plus it’s nice to check net worth. But the day to day planning we do with our spreadsheet. That gives us a much better handle on how much we can pay toward debt each month.

    But we really look forward to being debt-free and cruising in the rest of the journey with mint. Still being intentional with our money, but not so caught up in the nickel and dime.

    1. Love a good spreadsheet! Yeah Mint has been very good to me for over a decade. Intentional is such a huge word (as you obviously know haha). You don’t have to be a complete penny pincher, but you should be purposeful about what you’re spending, when, and why.

  6. I used to be one of those people who didn’t know how much they were actually spending. For years I just made sure I had a general idea that I had enough to cover my expenses. The tipping point one day long ago was that my company didn’t direct deposit one of my checks and instead sent me a check. I didn’t realize it for a few weeks and when I reported it they thought I was crazy for taking so long to realize it. Looking back I was so foolish, I just didn’t know better. I’ve tried both mint and PC and I lean towards Personal Capital. I just ignore their calls and they’ve stopped. The trick is not to answer random Colorado area code calls lol.

    I also do my own excel sheet for my “budget” just for the analog experience of it. Once I started to track my expenses I was astounded. That really is the first step to freedom, knowing what you actually spend and on what. Doing a budget for the first time is like taking the red pill. You can’t go back after that.

    1. Haha so true about those Colorado area codes. I really enjoy the analog experience of net worth tracking, so I can imagine budgeting has the same effect. It’s kind of like writing something down to help you remember it. By doing the simple math manually rather than just looking at Mint/Personal Capital, it really gets hammered home in your brain.

  7. i really like the last paragraph. i too have a finance blog and it’s easy to forget how it used to be back before we got to a more “advanced” level. i really think the biggest change in our lives here came around 2007 when we started estimating what the “lumpy” expenses were and smoothing those out by bucketing those costs as averages throughout a year. like…with 2 incomes we spent about 10k for travel and 10k to fill up the roths back then. property taxes and house repairs are around X/year. it was life-changing to have all that money set aside every pay period and a very relaxing way to live knowing that trip was already kind of pre-paid. it’s really why we never had to truly hit up the emergency fund because we knew what our lives cost.

    i’ve never used any of those automated services but always know our net worth only because i write about it. it’s great when you find something that works well for you.

    1. You nailed it on the last line–it’s great when you find something that works well for you. It might be the old cash in an envelope system–whatever works. As long as you know where your money is going, and why.

Leave a personal or impersonal comment