Mint.com - An Easy Way to Manage Your Budget

I heard about Mint.com a few months ago while reading a news article. It is a site that logs into all of your online bank accounts, credit card accounts and any other spending or savings account you have in order to give you a big picture of what you are spending your money on. The site charts, graphs and categorizes the items you purchase showing you what you spend and where. You can even break down your purchases into various spending trends. You can see a ledger of all of your spending as it monitors all of your accounts or customize alert messages if you exceed your budget or have any payments to make in the near future.

The site also suggests different ways you can save money. This is obviously a source of revenue for the site, so take all of their suggestions with a grain of salt. However, the site may suggest real ways to save that will be beneficial to you. Just make sure to do your homework before changing any of your accounts to companies that Mint.com suggests.

One caution is the security of the account. I do not know how secure the site is from hackers and it is more dangerous to "put all of your eggs in one basket" by putting all of your accounts and their passwords on one site. However with the protections of each account from identity theft, I felt comfortable putting my account information onto the site.

It is a free service and I've only tried it out for a couple of months. It seems to be very good for someone who does not have much time to sit down and track their monthly expenses, but still wants to know where their money is going. For very little time and effort, anyone can set up an account and establish a budget. I think it would be beneficial to the majority of people who spend money.