Mint.Com: A Great Financial Planning and Budgeting Website

I'll admit, I was a little leery at first. Managing your money, investments, credit cards and loans on-line doesn't seem like a safe bet. My husband even questioned my judgment when I told him about the website, Mint.com.

However, Mint.com is an effortless, secure way to manage your money on-line for free. By using Mint.com you can simplify your life and save money. Mint.com has also won many awards for it's ease of use by The Motley Fool, Time and PC Magazine.

If your life is anything like mine, you find yourself struggling from paycheck to paycheck, scrimping to save a dime, and not having enough time to make out an elaborate budget; Mint.com can change all of that. Mint.com has changed the way I look at my finances and has encouraged me to change my spending habits. It is simple to load your financial accounts onto Mint.com; all you have to do is enter in your user name and password for your on-line financial accounts and it loads everything onto the front page. From there you can look at your spending trends, create a budget, or read Mint.com's tips for saving money.

My favorite feature is the budget planning. You can select which items you want in your budget, such as auto, entertainment, and shopping; then you select the amount you have allocated to each category for that month. Mint.com will automatically tell you how much you have left to spend in that category or how much you have over-spent in a certain category.

Mint.com also has a blog that offers free financial tips and advice. This is a great place to go for easy to understand financial information; Mint.com is great about giving facts, not just motivational lingo. They also offer many articles about saving money, budgeting, and debt reduction; every article offered new, unique information that is easy to apply to every day life.

The only problem I have discovered with Mint.com is how some of my transactions were categorized. Most of my gas station purchases were in the "No Category" and most of my credit card payments were categorized as "Investments" rather than "Credit Card Payments." It took me awhile to go through the transactions and make sure they were in the correct category. Now that I have my account set up it will be easier to keep a daily record of my transactions and it will be less time consuming to make sure that each transaction is in the correct category.

I highly recommend Mint.com to anyone who wants to take control of their finances and simplify their spending habits.