Save Money via Mint

I tried Mint, a free online money management application, based on the feedback it got from the web community. It is a wonderful application.

I've been tracking my expenses and finances via Gdocs manually. This time Mint does all the record keeping and more.

Mint has saved me time, energy, and money by doing the following:

1. Consolidated my accounts in a single interface, and giving me overall expenses pie and bar charts.
   
2. Cut my time and energy typing expenses in a spreadsheet. It extracts all line items from your accounts.
   
3. Saved me money by comparing my current bank rates to other banks with higher interest rates.

It does more by allowing you to set budgets on Gas, Shopping, Groceries, Restaurants, and other categories. You can tag expense line items per your classification requirement.

Mint has a special feature that tells you on "Ways to Save." By knowing the money you have on Certificate of Deposits or Savings accounts with a bank, it proposes another bank that has higher interest rates and computes the annual returns from both banks and gives you the difference, which would be the amount you will further save annually.

Technically what Mint does is the following:

• Once you're signed in to Mint, you add your current banks by identifying the banks (from the list provided) and giving the necessary user ID and password for those banks.
  
• Mint signs on to your banks and pulls out the transactions, each line item.
  
• Mint automatically classifies the transactions by standard categories (restaurant, grocery, etc.). For example, Costco line items are categorized under Grocery; while Costco Gas line items are under Gas/ Fuel.
• Mint creates pie and bar charts based on categories, amount, date, and bank.
• Mint compares your bank's rates with its current set of other banks' rates and computes for the annual difference -- the amount you'll save prospectively if you'll change or open new bank accounts.
• Mint compares your spending cost with the average user's spending cost.

Currently, however, it only integrates with US banks. If you would like support for another country, go and campaign here.

For more Mint history and Mint Money 101, click here.