Mint…

If there is one subject that more Americans struggle with than anything else, it is probably astrophysics. However, number 2 on the list is probably personal finances. And who runs into astrophysics on a daily basis anyway? Personal finances on the other hand are a daily thing that affect everyone.

The sorest subject when talking about personal finance is that dirty word: budget. All the tracking receipts and adding up totals and paying attention to your spending. It truly makes you want to smack yourself in the shin with a hammer. But there is a super helpful tool out there called Mint.

Mint is a website that fixes the hardest parts of personal finance and budgeting specifically. It automatically downloads your transactions from you debit card and credit card accounts. It shows you where you are in your monthly budget compared to where you are in the month (eg: halfway through the month you should be half way through your budget).

Mrs. Digitante and I set up an account with Mint about 8 months ago and it was missing some very key features: annual expenses, budgeting income, irregular income, and an everything else budget category. Now that those features have been added, Mint is a nearly complete. I’ll touch on a couple of the big pluses of Mint, but realize that using it is pretty intuitive and simple and the best way to learn about Mint is to start using it.

Most of us need to save up for those annual (semi-annual, quarterly, etc) expenses such as auto insurance, family vacation, and that embarrassing subscription renewal for US Weekly. As you’ll notice, you can enter the frequency of the expense (12 months), how much it is ($67 for a year of US Weekly? Yikes!), and when the next payment is due (January of 2010). You will notice that it indicates that you must save $13 per month which equates to 5 months of saving. The reason being that you need to have the $67 by January. For the payment due in January 2011, it will tell you that you need to save $6 per month since you have 12 months to save for that payment. Very convenient.

Transaction listing is another huge plus of Mint. When you sign up for Mint, you will go through the process of entering your online account information. Mint will then automatically pull in all your transactions and label them in various categories. When the transaction for your US Weekly subscription is processed, Mint will mark it as being in the category Entertainment and the sub-category Newspapers & Magazine as can be seen in the above screen shot. This then loads it into the budget accordingly. You are also allowed to make up custom categories for items that Mint doesn’t list by default such as home owners dues and bulk gummy bears. You can also exclude certain items from your budget such as business expenses.

Another newly added feature to Mint is the addition of an “Everything Else” category. Before, Mrs. Digitante and I would look at our budget thinking we were doing so well because we were $100 under for the month. Yet we still were short by a couple of hundred only to realize that we didn’t have a budget category set up for “Frivolous Funtimes.” Now the category Frivolous Funtimes goes into the Everything Else bucket and we can instantly see that we are over budget and take corrective action. Cancel that frivolous funtime for the rest of the month. Boo.

The biggest roadblock that stands in the way of people using Mint is the fact that all your financial data is in one place. From a security standpoint, that can be very scary. However, I would like to give Mint the Digitante’s seal of approval for security. On their privacy page, they give many ways they keep you safe. The biggest security feature is that Mint is all read-only. That means you can’t move money, make deposits, or withdraw money through Mint. Someone can see how much your paycheck is or how much you spend on toilet paper, but they cannot steal your money or even your bank information. My only caution would be to be sure you choose a strong password that will keep out any intruders.

As is usual, if you want help getting signed up for Mint or even getting signed up for your own bank’s website, The Digitante can help. You can head to the About page for contact information (email and phone) for The Digitante.

In addition to offering my own services, I would like to recommend an expert in the area of personal finance: Susie at Truly Life Financial. She has all the tools and skills to help you with your budgeting concerns whether you are in debt over your head or whether you just want to streamline the budget you have. As it says on her website:

Mission: To help others take hold of the life that is truly life.

When personal finances are hanging over your head, either because they are confusing or the amounts are overwhelming, you need a professional to help you through it. If you car breaks down, you don’t just pretend it isn’t broken, you call a mechanic and get it fixed. Susie is the mechanic that can fix the broken car or just tune up the sports car for you. Call or email her for a free consultation to get you started.

Friday Night Links (8/21/2009)…

Tonight, I have a little bit for everybody: food, recycled bottles, super-efficient refrigerators, paper mail from the internet, and fleshing out your bar.

• One-handed egg crack – Cooking isn’t just about flavor – everyone knows it also about the flair. If you aren’t tossing spatulas, spinning pizza dough in the air, and using inordinate amounts of butter and lard a la Paula Deen, then you really need to work on your kitchen skills. Try starting with this video of the lowly one-handed egg crack.
• Wine bottle torches – I’ve seen some amazingly designed wine bottles in my life, however, since I’m not in college anymore, lining them up on the top of my cabinets is no longer acceptable. With a little work hooking some copper pipe together, you can end up with some sweet tiki torch-type outdoor lights. Add some citronella and you have some mosquito repellent as well.
• Chest freezer turned fridge – Normal fridges are extremely inefficient. When you open the door, all the cold air falls out on the floor. Imagine having fridge full of ping-pong balls and trying to keep them in there every time you opened the door. Tough to do. Now imagine you had a chest fridge and tried to keep the ping-pong balls in there. Simple stuff. Cold air sinks, hot air rises, so it is similar to the ping-pong ball analogy. Just add a little on-off switch hackery and you have yourself a super efficient fridge.
• Paper mail from the internet – After entering the address and paying a dollar (or $1.15 for no ad on the envelope), you can send a letter or note on paper to anyone through the internet. The cost seems kind of high, but it will also save you a trip to the post office.
• Stock your own bar – Stocking your bar on a budget is a great thing. I don’t necessarily agree with all their recommendations, but as is usual with this sort of article, you can customize it and spend and cut expenses as you see fit.

Friday Night Links (7/3/2009)

Welcome to the Friday night link round up. This is what got me pumped up, reading, and getting my learn on.

• ASUS Eee Keyboard – The bad news: this product is delayed. But chances are, you didn’t know about it to begin with, so it isn’t that big of deal. The good news: you get a full computer, including harddrive, connections for a monitor, a little touchscreen, and a keyboard (duh!) all in one compact package. Pretty amazing.
• More than FICO – Surprise, surprise. Lenders are looking at more than just your credit score provided when evaluating you for a new credit card or other financing. I knew insurance used various credit models, but this stuff was mostly new to me. And eye-opening!
• New Windows pricing – No, not windows for your house, Windows for your computer. Windows 7 is due out in the next few months and pricing details have become available in the past week or so. Check out the link.
• Economic recovery report card – Up, down. Left, right. Which way is the economy headed? It is one of the biggest questions and concerns around right now. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance has put together a dashboard that gives you a nice overview of some of the data coming down the pipe so you can see what the economy is doing currently.

Vacation is almost over, so we will be back to a regular posting schedule shortly. Back to the real world!