The Tangrens

So I just happened across a SWEET online tool that I can't help but share. Also, Sunny reminded me that I hadn't posted a cool site of the week for a while, so I thought I better strike while the iron is hot...

The tool is called Mint (www.mint.com). It is an SAAS (Software as a Service) online money management system that is a TON better than anything else out there. I just signed up tonight and have been playing around with it and I'm really impressed. Especially since it is free! They actually have a pretty cool business model that I'll explain a little later on.

So this is how it works. You sign up for an account and then add your various financial institutions and/or credit cards by entering in your account information for each one respectively. They support up to 3,500 different institutions and I was surprised that my local credit union was one of those supported. After adding all of your accounts, you have a one-stop place to view account balances for all your different accounts (useful if you keep your money in several different places like we do).

The real fun begins when you import your transactions. (It must be 1) a sign of old age or 2) the indication of some suppressed accountant tenancies when you start thinking stuff like this is fun....) It automatically recognizes how to categorize different purchases. For example, it automatically identified such transactions as Albertson's as "Groceries", Target as "Shopping" and Carl's Jr. as "Fast Food". Now, it's obviously not perfect, but it has an option so you can easily go through and correct any labels that it didn't get right. But, I was actually amazed at how much it got right.

After your transactions are imported and you have them labeled correctly (took me like 5 minutes top), you can quickly identify how much you are spending where. You can even create a budget and get updates as to where you are at with you budget for each line item. You can easily see how much you are spending on Entertainment, Gas, Shopping, as well as what stores you are spending the most at. You can even set up alerts to be notified when one of your accounts reaches a certain low/high, etc. Maybe it's just the web analytics guru in me, but I think it's totally cool.

Like I said they have a pretty cool business model. They have a "Ways to Save" tab which analyzes your current interest rates for your checking/savings and credit cards. Companies can purchase advertising on that space. Mint will tell you how much more money you could be making/saving in interest if you switch to one of the other offers. Pretty cool inasmuch as it's really a value add for consumers to see what else is out there, especially in this day and age of Internet banking competition.

Certainly well worth your time checking out.