Next Generation Financial Tool with MINT

Monday, October 8th, 2007
by James Connors

So here’s the thing, college kids are lazy and very NOT-proactive about finances. Mint, a new web-based financial tool, makes it easy to bring into one place every financial account that a student is likely to have. This means you can pull in your credit cards, your bank accounts, loans and investments coming soon. They say they support over 1500 different financial institutions/services and it’s all as easy simply logging in.

I have a couple different bank accounts and a couple credit cards that I like to keep tabs on. Each account has a web-based interface where I can go online and check balances, reconcile accounts, or even pay bills. To use them with Mint, all I need to do is provide my log in credentials for those services. Within minutes, Mint has grabbed the account balances and recent transactions for those accounts and starts building a clear, central picture of your financial situation.

In the main screen, you get an overview of your bank accounts, the available money as well as the available credit. Furthermore, you’ll see your credit card balances and a debt to cash indication. This would be amazing enough but then Mint goes ahead and computes some very interesting information. First, they’ll establish your spending patterns and display them on a running basis where you can compare your current spending with average spending. They’ll then bring you alerts that you set for low balances, bills about to come due, major transactions, and even when checks clear. These can be sent via email or mobile alert to your phone. Finally, Mint brings some interesting offers to your door.

Every website needs to make some money and this is how Mint monetizes their service to pay the bills. By analyzing your spending trends and current financial situation, Mint presents a number of offers that can always save you money for which they may or may not give you a commission. Different offers provide Mint with different compensation or none at all but they pledge to always display offer that will help save you, the user, money even if they aren’t getting anything out of it.

I was so excited by this service that I had to write an article about it. Each of you should do some research and make sure that you’re ready to trust some websites with your information and then sign up and add some Mint to your diet!