Highly ranked Mint located at www.mint.com is a free online money management system that has almost 5 million users. Originally launched by Arron Patzer in September 2007 Mint.com currently tracks almost $200 million in transactions and $50 billion in assets. Mint claims to have identified more than $300 million in prospective savings for users. Most users agree that Mint is easy to use, allows users to see all their online financial accounts in one place, and makes it easier to create and stay on budget. According to Mint, 90 percent of users have discovered that Mint has changed their financial behaviors.
Background
In September 2009 Quicken purchased Mint for $170 million with plans to continue both Mint.com and Quicken brands. However, by January 2010 Quicken online was dropped. One reason may be that when Quicken online, developed in 2008, was compared to Mint it appeared to be cumbersome.
A major advantage of Mint is that it links to all your financial Web sites and aggregates the information in an easy-to-understand manner. Once a week, Mint sends via e-mail an automatic summary of your accounts for your review. Additionally, you’ll automatically receive e-mail alerts when bills are due, when your credit card interest rates change, and when you pay finance charges. It is important to note, that repeatedly receiving an e-mail messages stating that you have paid finance charges often motivates individuals to reduce outstanding debt. There is one advantage, these frequent e-mail alerts are helpful for quickly catching credit card fraud.
One of the biggest concerns about online money management is security. Mint uses all the technology that Intuit has developed over the years (multiple firewalls, encryption, read only access to data, and so on). If you are deeply concerned about Mint’s bank-level security please read Mint’s “Privacy and Security: How Mint Keeps You Safe” located at https://www.mint.com/privacy/.
To sum it up, Mint offers budget and goal features that assist individuals in planning, tracking progressing and reaching financial goals. Mint is available free on the Web, on Android personal assistants, and its iPhone app. However, it is important to keep in mind that Mint makes its revenue from credit card, checking account and mortgage referrals. The easy-to-use program takes about a half-hour to set up. Mint immediately offers a good idea of how much money you are spending. Expenses are assigned to predetermined categories. Therefore, when you start using Mint these pre-assigned categories may not be exactly right so be prepared to do some tinkering over the next several months.
New Features or Enhancements since the Intuit Purchase
The following are a few examples of the features that have been added or enhanced since the Intuit purchased of Mint in the fourth quarter of 2009. To get a hold of how much Mint has changed the following examples of added features and improvements are listed chronological order:
February 2010: Find $1,500 in tax-time savings using Mint. Targeted for individuals who are seeking last-minute tax savings, the Mint IRA Center is located www.mint.com/ira. The IRA Center is available 24/7 for opening a traditional or Roth IRA account (it takes about 10 minutes to open an IRA account). If you already own an IRA, that financial information can be included with your new IRA information in Mint. The Mint IRA Center offers education, blogs, and the ability to view daily updates.
May 2010: To make Mint more mobile, new iPhone apps are developed. Folks claim that using Mint on their iPhone is like having a “mini-port” that shows if they have reached their spending limit before making a retail purchase or going into a restaurant. To get started it only takes a few minutes, download the free iPhone app and import your transactions from the online version of Mint by entering your user ID and password. If you want to know your exact bank balance, the Mint iPhone app is the way to go. In regards to privacy, the Mint iPhone app is password protected. If you lose your iPhone no one can see your accounts.
June 2010: A new financial goal setting feature is added. The goals feature uses pop-up windows. Users enter information such as income data (salaries, recurring part-time income, pensions, and investment income) into the pop-up windows. Next the program estimates how much the user needs to save for a certain financial goal, (for example, this year’s vacation, a child’s college education, or a down payment). Users set their aggressive or conservative savings plans with a click of the mouse.
Note: Mint works with Expedia (www.expedia.com) and Orbitz (www.orbitz.com) to provide travelers with planning tips.
July 2010: Kelly Bluebook sets automobile values. Mint now allows users to access Kelly Blue Book (www.kellybluebook.com) data to provide a more convenient way to manage their funds and to get a clearer view of their finances by eliminating the extra step of having to search another Web site for data about car prices.
September 2010: Mint adds Zillow for real estate price estimates: Mint uses “Zestimate@” owned by Zillow (www.zillow.com) to determine home values. Zestimate values a range of data, including comparable sales and individual home facts, such as number of bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, lot size and remodels. The home’s value is automatically entered when Mint users enter the home addresses in the property search box. Users can decide if they accept the Zillow valuation or if they want to manually enter their own estimated home value.
March 2011: Mint updates the “Get out of Debt” feature. “Get Out of Debt” has always been the most popular feature of Mint. “Get Out of Debt” illustrates what the user needs to do to eliminate credit card and student loan debt. The updated feature includes ways to:
1. Divides debt into categories.
2. Create separate goals by debt type (credit cards, loans, mortgages, and so on).
3. Develop a payment plan. Different types of debt require different types of payment plans. For example, this feature examines how changing the amount of monthly payments affects interest and savings.
4. The action plan illustrates the best and quickest way to get out of debt and maximize savings.
March 2011: Mint offers a new home loan and refinancing feature through Credit Sesame. Mint’s home loan feature has been included in its “Ways to Save” section. Based on an individual’s income, debt ratio, and credit worthiness, the new program looks through thousands of home loan options and tries to match them to the financial characterizes of the Mint user. In a matter of seconds, users can view personalized suggestions for home loans presented by numerous lenders. The application of this information can assist Mint users in reducing mortgage interest rates or lowering mortgage payments. For those who are considering refinancing this feature can reduce time and confusion by presenting different loan options and indicating if there is an advantage to refinancing. Additionally, for the 65 percent of American’s that own a home, this feature will automatically calculate the user’s equity. For those that don’t own a home, this feature is a good way to get educated about the home loan process.
Note: The Mint home loan and refinancing feature is available via a partnership with Credit Sesame, Inc. of Sunnyvale, CA. Credit sesame is a company that analyzes consumer debts and matches consumers with competing offers.
