Review of Mint.com

Wild Card Wednesday is finally here! Today is the day I post reviews, videos, poetry, rants, interviews, projects, or whatever else strikes my fancy. Today I chose to do a review of an online service I think is fantastic.

What is it?
Mint is online financial software that collects information from all your bank accounts, loans, credit cards, investments, etc... and puts it all in one place so you can easily see a detailed snapshot of your finances. You can also use the budgeting software to pay off debt and set savings goals.

Cost
It's absolutely free! None of those sneaky trial periods or watered down service. Everything is free. It's paid for through unobtrusive advertising that stays in the background and never interferes.

Security
It's just as secure as online banking, and even more so since it's a "read only" version of your finances. Full account numbers aren't listed and money can't be moved around. You have to sign in with the actual financial institution to do any type of transaction.

Why I Love It
It's online, free, and  pretty. Oh yeah, there's also the whole "it's incredibly useful!" thing too.
I love to see charts showing what I spend the most money on.
I get email alerts if I go over an area in my budget.
I can set goals and track my progress with savings.
The ads are actually useful if I'm shopping around for a new bank account.
It's simple to use.

Some Cons
In the beginning I had some trouble getting Mint to communicate with my bank. A quick visit to the "Help" section cleared it up though.
It's not good at predicting what type of expense my debit card purchase was. I often have to go back and change "pharmacy" to "groceries". I like to go over my purchases anyway, so it doesn't bother me that much.

I just love www.mint.com and I think you should check it out if you haven't already. I'm not even getting paid to do this endorsement! But, people at mint, if you decide you want to pay me for it, I'd be more than happy to remove the previous sentence.