Mint.com

Posted by Raven in Phone Apps, Reviews | 0 comments

For quite a few years I’ve been puttering around looking and searching for a personal finance site that has Canadian content… seriously lacking – or I’m crap at searching for things online.  I’d like to roll with the seriously lacking    Well in my search a few years ago I’d found the website Mint.com.  It looks so pretty and seemed really easy to sign up and get things rolling.  I was totally bummed to find out that Mint.com only rolled with the United States and if you didn’t live in the States you were out of luck.

Well…. *insert my squeal of glee!!!!* it’s now available in Canada.  What’s better than it being available to us now – IT’S FREE!!!!

Check out Mint.com Canada Version

 

 

So last night after I’d finished work I decided to sign up and check it out.  I have to say that it looks so darn pretty it was so hard to resist and it asked questions about loans, credit cards, cars, etc to get your profile set up.  It also asked for my credit score…. which urm…. isn’t so great.  I haven’t gone through Equifax or TransUnion but I have had to declare bankruptcy when I went through my divorce.  It was a nasty thing and I left the house, gave it to the Ex who then proceeded not to pay the mortgage.  So, long story short – I had to get that big monkey off my back and even though you never want to have to go through a bankruptcy…. it was the best thing for me in my circumstance.

Back to Mint.com!  I have to say that once I’d set up my bank account it categorized most of my spending into the right categories and it created a budget.  I have to say that I’m not sure what it bases its budget on (well, yes it has the numbers….) but my income seemed really high (and it was so I fixed it) but it was really handy – and saved me loads of time.

Seriously, it is one of my favourite budget making / where’s my money going sort of program.  Not only is it available online, it’s also available through iTunes as an iPhone or iPad app – and it is seriously pleasing on the eyes and makes it pretty simple to know what’s what as far as your spending is going.   Just to take a peek at what the main page looks like when you’ve logged into Mint.com.

I have to say from the experience so far with Mint.com it’s really opened my eyes to what it is that I’m spending my money on (urm… food…. restaurants…gah!) and what I should focus on with the budgets that I had created for me and the ability to create my own – very handy – and a time saver for sure.  I just loaded up Mint for the iPad – and I know I keep saying how pretty things are but if it’s not pretty – I lose interest, it appears more like work (maybe that’s just me… but Mint makes it more eye appealing).

I know I’ve mentioned at the beginning but I love the fact that Mint is at no cost – perhaps they make their money through Equifax/TransUnion and the ability to offer credit cards to help boost one’s financial situation – as their way to boost their bottom line to provide us with a free product and to be honest if this is how it is… I have no problem with that, because they’re not forcing you to do anything you don’t want to do.

I would recommend if you’re looking for a budget program – to give Mint a try… now that we can get it in Canada (and it’s been available for some time in the US as well).