Vyrotek|Bridging the gap between code and wealth

I remembered hearing about a really great site that helped you manage your money a while back but I was never able to find it again until tonight. Thankfully another blog I read decided to review it just recently. Mint.com looks to be a fantastic service that I am very interested in using. I am still playing with it right now but it seems to offer quite a bit. Here’s their description of what they offer.

“It automatically pulls together your bank, credit union and credit card data, and provides up-to-date and amazingly accurate views of your financial life - from the big picture to specific details, in a friendly and intuitive way.

In addition, Mint goes beyond visibility and analysis; providing personalized money-saving and money-making suggestions. Mint provides users an average of $1,000 in savings opportunities during their first session. Plus, Mint is accessible from your desktop, laptop or cellphone.” (Mint.com - About)

The first thing I love about the site is its clean and simple design. I really don’t like using the website my bank provides but Mint’s GUI seems to be very intutive and inviting… And its Green! (Best color ever, take that Noah!) So, I am testing the site as I write this post and I will try to describe my experience.

Since the service is free I obviously went looking for how they make their money and its actually very nice how they they do it. There is a page called ‘Ways to Save’ and from here they detect things such as my cellphone bill and compare it to what other people are pay with other companies and provide a list of ‘offers’ that could help me save money. I have no problems with this kind of advertising because it’s not a banner ad, yay! What I REALLY like about this site is how I can associate each past transaction with a custom category/tag which will make the pretty charts make more sense. This was one of the areas where my current bank’s site had problems. They did an ok job at reporting what charges fell into what categories (like Housing, Food, Gas, etc) but there were a lot of things it couldnt categorize. But, it seems Mint already does a much better job at know what the right categories are because I have only found a few unknowns so far. Another feature that is very useful is the ability to search my transactions. Now I can find out when was the last time I had Del Taco. (Sept 12) I am still trying to figure out what all these graphs and trend charts represent but I am sure they are useful as well. They use many different algorithms to show change in spending such as if you are spending more or less than you normally do in many different categories such as entertainment or restaurants. In conclusion, this site rocks.

Check it out for yourself! www.Mint.com