Mint.com: Innovative Money Management

Scenario: Managing multiple bank accounts, credit cards, and investment accounts is a pain
Solution: Track all your accounts from one place with Mint.com





Back in the good old days we'd shove all our money under the mattress and buy everything we owned with cash. Then the banks got wise to our deviously sensible budget strategy and decided to seduce us with low-interest loans and credit cards that would reward us with a free toasted sandwich maker for every $100,000 we spent on plastic.

This shift in landscape had two major impacts. Firstly, years of reckless lending left the world economy on the brink of collapse and the prospect of a second Great Depression in 2009. But secondly - and more importantly for me - If I carry 12 credits it generally means I have to log-in to 12 different web sites so that I can be told 12 separate times that I'm 50k in debt and don't have a pot to piss in.


That's why I've been bouncing up and down like a young spring lamb ever since Mint.com came on the scene. This web-based money management tool allows you to log-in with a single user-name and password and see all your bank accounts, credit cards, loans, and investments in a single location. You can get a complete snapshot of your financial situation, which depending on your personal circumstances could be a good or bad thing.

Each time you log-in to Mint it connects to all your accounts and downloads your latest, real-time transactions - so you'll always be up to date. In addition you can receive alerts by email or SMS text message if any of your accounts display activity, and you can even define specific budgets and have Mint automatically alert you when you've gone over your set limit.

Finally, Mint looks at all your credit cards and loans and suggests savings you can make by switching to a lower interest option. This is a great feature that will be useful for people who are prone to credit card hop to secure the 0 per cent introductory rates.

This is one of the best and most useful sites I've used for a long time and there's even an iPhone application which allows you to log-in from your phone and see your financial activity.

Check out the video walk-through above to learn about some of the great features that Mint.com offers.