One of the most frequently used excuses I hear for people not getting their finances in order is that they “don’t know where to start”.  If only they knew what the first step was, they claim, they would get started right away.  If you fall under this category of people, allow me to give you your first step right now.  Assess your financial situation.

That’s it.  No magic debt formulas or savings goals.  Simply look at your finances and find out how much money you make every month and how much money you spend every month.  

Once you figure out how much you are spending, you can figure out where you are spending it.  There are a few different ways to do this.  You could go the old fashioned way, carrying a pen and notepad with you every where you go, writing down every purchase you make and how much it was for.  You could spend the $50 or so on computer software like Quicken.  Or you could try Mint, the free online software that allows you to enter your bank and credit card information and have your spending automatically tracked for you.

While I have been hearing about Mint for awhile, I never got around to trying it until this week.  I’ve been using Quicken the past few months, and while I like many of its features, I wasn’t fully satisfied with the spending tracking portion of it.  So this week I gave Mint a try. 

I love it.  I can’t believe I waited this long to use it.  It is incredibly easy to set up, the features are very user friendly and it is 100 percent free.  Here are some other features I like:

  • Smart tracking- Once you change the category of an expense, it will automatically recognize that change in the future.  For example, after changing my payment to First Federal Bank to “Car Payment”, all future payments to that bank will automatically be placed in the car expense category.
  • “Ways to save”-  I love this feature.  Or at least the idea of it.  Mint claims that “By analyzing your current spending, we can find you products and services that will save you money, most of the time a lot of money”.  It says that users often find $1,000 or more a year in potential savings.  They also look out for checking and savings accounts with higher interest rates and credit offers with lower interest rates.  It hasn’t had enough time to analyze my spending yet to give me any recommendations, but I’m pumped hear what they have to offer!
  • Allows you to add your investment and loan accounts- On top of tracking your spending, Mint also allows you to enter any investment or loan accounts and will analyze those as well.  I already have my 401(k) on there for easier monitoring.
  • Did I mention it’s free?- Seriously.  All this and you pay no money.  Talk about value!

What are the downsides?  It’s hard for me to list anything negative about a product this valuable offered for free, but here are a couple things that could make using it difficult for some:

  • Not effective for people who use cash- Since it gets its information from your bank account, if you still use cash to pay for most things Mint may not be for you.  I strongly recommend using a debit card to pay for most or all of your purchases for tracking purposes, and will write a future article about automating your finances. But this isn’t for everyone, and if you are set on paying cash you may be stuck with the notebook method of tracking.
  • You can’t change the amount of an expense (0r at least I can’t figure out how)- This is a problem for me because I pay the entire rent, cable and water bills myself and then my roommates pay me their share of the bills separately.  As a result, Mint figures the entire amount into my expenses.  This isn’t a huge deal as I can manually subtract the needed amount from the total paid, but it isn’t ideal.  It is no where near a deal breaker though.

In the week I’ve used it, those are the only problems I can find with Mint.  It seems to be a very good product in my brief experience.  Here’s how you can sign up for a Mint account:

  1. Gather your user names and passwords for your online bank and credit card accounts (and investment and loan accounts as well, if you wish to add those).
  2. Go to www.mint.com.
  3. Click on “Sign up in under five minutes” button in the middle of the page.
  4. Fill out the short information form.
  5. Fill out your bank and credit card account information.
  6. Go through your transactions and change the category of expenses if need be.

All told this should easily take you less than 30 minutes, and probably much less than that.

Tracking your spending and figuring out where your money goes is an absolutely vital part of turning around your finances.  When you know where your money is going, you can figure out areas you can save more of it.  If you are willing and able to make your purchases with a debit card (and/or credit card, as long as you pay the entire balance off each month), Mint is an excellent tool for helping you track every penny you spend.

Please continue to sending us any questions, suggestions and story tips to centsabilitytowealth@gmail.com