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Have you gotten word of Mint.com? Mint is a personal finance product that connects all of your financial profiles to one site and helps you keep track of your money. They also have a simple iPhone app that I use regularly to stay on top of my expenses. The great thing about Mint is it's free! There are also some other financial aggregators out there, but Mint is by far the most appropriate. In fact, they were a few weeks ago picked up by Intuit (makers of Quicken and TurboTax).

The only minus to Mint is the fact that you must give up all your personal financial information. Personally, this just isn't going to affect me because I use Mint every day to spot financial irregularities. Mint will take care of its day to day costs from campaigns and customized services or products recommendations. It utilizes your precise records to share significant promotional advertisements to its viewers.

So Why Use Mint?

I use Mint since it's trouble-free and structured. It helps me to monitor my daily expenditures and keeps me on top of my tight budget. If you're having difficulties cutting costs, Mint is an impressive budgeting website. It's still up to you though to follow through and keep tabs on your spending. When I joined Mint close to a year ago, I set up a hassle-free budget that would leave me to keep $1,000 dollars a month if I obeyed it.

At the completion of each and every month, I like to understand my budget and see what I over paid on. I make a conscious effort to minimize that the next month. Looking at my last month's budget, I did a pretty good job saving money this month. My only major buy came under 'Everything Else' when I put a deposit down on a property in Lovely Hawaii. It's easy to ignore what expenditures you make each month, and I love how Mint very easily categorizes all your Visa or MasterCard purchases. In addition, you can always enter actual cash transactions with their cellphone app

Why Not to Use Mint?

Despite the fact that Mint is technically no-cost, you are 'having to pay' for their tools by offering them nearly all your financial purchases. This data is extremely beneficial to financial services companies and Mint tends to make a lot of its money from affiliate advertisements. For instance, if you are charged an annual fee on your visa card, Mint would possibly suggest you utilize for a brand new no annual fee charge card. Some individuals might find this valuable, but some people may determine it protrusive.

Consider though, no human beings (even Mint staff members) are able to get to your user name and passwords for your other financial sites. Although a security assault is feasible, I don't think that it should really stop you from using Mint. If you use Mint seven days a week like I do, you'll be readily able to stay on top of any abnormal activity.

So exactly what do you look at, are you willing to sell all your private financial reports for a effective free website like Mint? Or do you like to use a a bit less intrusive budgeting software?

Harry Campbell is an aspiring personal finance blogger. His site yourPFpro provides free and honest personal finance advice for young professionals.

Budgeting and Saving with Mint Review

By Harry G Campbell