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The subject of intentional breeding or meat rabbits is prohibited. The answers provided on this board are for general guideline purposes only. The information is not intended to diagnose or treat your pet.  It is your responsibility to assess the information being given and seek professional advice/second opinion from your veterinarian and/or qualified behaviorist.

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Forum THE LOUNGE Mint.com

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    • Sarita
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        Just wondered if anyone else has used mint.com to help budget their money.   My financial advisor had suggested Yodlee but it didn’t have my credit union in their database to load up my stuff and mint does.

        I’ve just set up my budge but it will definitely need refining and I’ll be interested to see if what I think I spend my money on is how I really spend it.  I know in my head what I spend but I think seeing it on “paper” will really help me.  

        So I wondered if anyone else has used any of these on-line budget websites and if you feel they helped you budget and save.


      • Elrohwen
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          I just signed up and loaded my accounts. I also set up retirement and house saving goals, just to see where we are (well, the house saving one was obvious, but retirement not so much). I do wish it would let you use a savings account for more than one thing. For example, our house downpayment is coming out of one account. I would like to budget a small percent of that money towards a new car, but Mint wants me to set up another savings account for the car – I’d prefer to just manage one savings account and split where the money eventually goes.

          The budgeting section confuses me though. I’m not really interested in strictly budgeting what I spend, and Mint seems to want me to break it into strict categories. I pretty much look at the credit card amount and if it’s getting higher than I would like, I stop spending money until the next month. lol

          So I’d be interested if anybody has tips on setting up a good budget on Mint. I’d like to use the feature, but I’m not sure how to do it without being very specific about $X for food, $Y for entertainment, etc. I need a more flexible option.

          I do love love that Mint keeps track of all of our accounts in one place so I can easily see what we have. I just need to get DH to add in his student loans, and then I can add a goal to keep track of when we’ll pay those suckers off.


        • MissKris&Koji
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            Mint is okay. It also won’t load all websites/accounts, but most. If it handles all of your key ones, then it’s really pretty good to use.

            The only thing is sometimes it imports transactions twice for some reason, so you have to check regularly to flag those as duplicate. Also to make sure things classify right. I would suggest checking anything online regularly, though, it’s much easier to catch problems (like incorrect charges to your credit card) if the date is recent and you remember what you spent and where. I have actually had it happen that more got charged to my card than was on a receipt, so it’s worth watching. But if you put up with that quirk it’s good for monitoring how you stick to your budget.

            I am not the sort of person who has saving problems. I’m an accountant and so good at keeping track of that stuff – it’s just in my nature I guess. But it does automate the process, rather than entering things yourself into an excel sheet for example. So that is nice. And if you are like Elrohwen and want broader categories, you can reclassify transactions as they come in and say “always treat XZY as such and such category”. So you could do it more broadly, if you didn’t want to break your budget out so specifically. But the specific nature of it can be useful in other cases. For example, someone I know who uses it told me last week they realized they had spent thousands on coffee shop purchases in like, a year. Identifying bad budget habits like that is easier to do with that level of detail.


          • LittlePuffyTail
            Moderator
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              That’s neat. I wasn’t aware of such websites. My bf does all the budget. He’d probably be interested in this site.


            • MissKris&Koji
              Participant
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                As an FYI, American Express has a service for cardholders called Money Manager which is similar and seems to be well liked. I don’t have an AmEx (or any credit card actually) so I haven’t used it but it has some nice reviews and if Mint isn’t doing it for you and you have an AmEx you could try that. I know there are some other options too but that’s another one that came to mind that consolidates all your various financial stuff (even the non-AmEx accounts).


              • Sarita
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                18851 posts Send Private Message

                  Thanks for the info MissK&K – I don’t have an Amex and don’t want one – I have a credit card that I do use but I pay it off daily – I just want the cash rewards. I hate being a slave to debt.

                  I envy you are a saver and good with your money. I try – my problem is that I have been self-employed for the past 5 or 6 years and paying self employment taxes requires alot of discipline to pay those quarterly taxes. I feel like I’m a slave to the IRS.

                  Luckily my financial adviser did find me a place to set up a self employed 401K to help me save for retirement which is now my ultimate goal.

                  I know what I spent my money on but sometimes I think seeing it on paper will help and keep me from being an impulse purchaser.


                • Monkeybun
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                  10479 posts Send Private Message

                    Both me and hubby operate off the credit cards, and pay the off if we can every month. We both have awesome credit now, but we are horrible at keeping track of stuff. Not sure if I want to keep track of what I’ve been spending…lol. I might get limited on sockbunnies and jewelry supplies


                  • MirBear
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                      mb, just say, he should be lucky your buying sock bunnies and not real bunnies, and jewlery supplies apposed to jewlery


                    • Barbie
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                        Sounds like a good idea. I do keep a budget and have started saving for retirement (gah!), but I never track what exactly I spend my $ on, just make sure I’m under budget. (Except for Nick – that’s a little experiment I have going – I want to see if my budget for him was close or really off). I don’t know how that site works though… is it safe to give the website access to your accounts?!

                        ETA: I should really go look at what everyone is talking about BEFORE I post something   Found the page about safety on their site.  Still… idk.  But I’m paranoid


                      • MissKris&Koji
                        Participant
                        279 posts Send Private Message

                          Mint has been around for a while with no incidents, so I think it’s pretty safe to give them your logins so they can assimilate the data. Just make sure you all use good passwords for all of your accounts, obviously especially critical for financial related things online. See this article for more info on how to create strong passwords and how hackers often steal them: http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2010/03/how-i%E2%80%99d-hack-your-weak-passwords/


                        • sibley
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                            I’ve had mint for a couple of years. I don’t really use it but it can be helpful – you can set it to alert you to large transactions (kind of a theft protection thing). You can also review ways to save money by changing your banks/credit cards. It’ll tell you the rates/interest/etc for everything. You can set up budgets that either are monthly or roll-over, so you can have a vacation fund that rolls over every month you don’t use it, and then regular expenses like a hair cutting appointment fund…
                            the main problem I have with it is it doesn’t define itself enough for me. So, yeah, I don’t use it.


                          • Elrohwen
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                              I finally got DH to add his student loans to Mint and then realized that they don’t let you track your payment of them as a “goal”. Uhh, so only credit cards and car loans count? That’s so stupid! Made me kind of mad, considering the only debt we have is his student loans (and boy do we have a lot of them). I’d like to know how long it will take us to pay them off, and how much we could save by paying them off sooner. Sure, I could calculate this myself in Excel, but I figured Mint would help me out. I was kind of disappointed.

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                          Forum THE LOUNGE Mint.com