The Best Budgeting Tool for Canadians: Mint.com Review

Budgeting is important, but it doesn’t need to be difficult. Mint.com can help with that.

When I was in university, I often found myself scrounging for loose change just to have a fun night out. Typically, this rock bottom situation would result in me muttering to myself “I really need to start budgeting”. For some reason, I believed that financially responsible individuals were the people who painstakingly tracked every single dollar spent on needs and wants. Therefore, as someone who wanted to be financially responsible, I would: 

• Create a VERY DETAILED excel spreadsheet
• Hang on to every single receipt 
• Manually enter all the receipts into the aforementioned spreadsheet
• Never pay with debit or credit. Cash only 

This process would often conclude after a few weeks, and eventually result in me once again scrounging for change just to have a fun night out telling myself “I really need to start budgeting.”

I have read a lot of books and listened to enough seminars to come to the realization that there is no secret sauce for everybody when it comes to budgeting. Certain individuals thrive with simplistic budgeting systems, and some people prefer the detailed excel spreadsheet mentioned above.

Regardless of the eventual direction you take with your budgeting process, the important thing is that you have one. Part of the journey to financial freedom is to have a clear understanding of the comings and goings of your money. This will enable you to make factually-based decisions in your life. 

Mint.com allows you do to this

Mint.com has more than 15 million users, and it’s a simple personal finance program that is web-based, but also has an easy to use app. It’s free to sign up, and it takes only a few seconds to add new accounts. 

Mint is one of the best options for free, all-in-one automatic budgeting. It does everything automatically so you don’t have to spend a lot of time on it – an issue many Canadians face.

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What is Mint.com?

Mint is a revolutionary, free way to manage your finances. 

It connects all the different financial accounts in your life and tracks them against customizable budgets, which makes managing money more straightforward than ever before.

With Mint, you can automatically import all the transactions from any number or type of accounts and easily assign them categories that are relevant for what kind of expenses they represent – this means no more constantly looking through old bank statements trying to find where something went.

How to Set up Your Mint.com Account

Intuit (the company who owns Mint.com) has done a great job at streamlining the process and ensuring that connecting an account is easy as logging in.

Setting up your account is really straightforward:

• Click here, and select “create a new account.” This account will also give you access to Turbo Tax & Quickbooks (Intuit’s other products).
• Put in your personal information (postal code, banking information etc). You’ll want to put in all of your financial information (credit cards, savings accounts, loans). 

Going forward, Mint.com will automatically pull transactions from your financial institutions, and put them into your budget (more on that later) 

Mint.com Features 

Transaction Tab 

Mint is a great tool for tracking your spending and income. Mint has an easy interface, which will allow you to see all transactions from each connected account in one place. 

Transactions will automatically be allocated to a particular budgetary category, but users have the ability to permanently allocate retailers to a particular category (for example, you can make it so “Walmart” is always allocated to your grocery budget).

You can also manually input cash transactions. 

You should periodically check your transactions on this tab to make sure they’re being recorded properly.

Here is a video tutorial of the transaction tab by the Luxurious Credit Youtube page:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=DylVVclbGms%3F

Budgets Tab

This is where you can customize your personal budget. 

Creating a budget can be daunting, so Mint.com will automatically pre-populate your budget with some of the most common budget line items like:

• Mortgage & rent
• Food & Dining
• Car Insurance
• Bills & Utilities 
• Travel

You can fill in your budget by choosing from hundreds of budgetary line items. 

Read: Tracking your Spending

You can completely customize your budget, and you can also create your own budget line items. For those who prefer a really simple budget, you can categorize your purchases into “wants” and “needs.” 

Items from the transaction tab will be automatically assigned to a budget category. If you would prefer that a certain retailer be assigned a different budget line, you can set it so that retailer goes to the preferred budget category. 

Goals Tab

This section of the Mint plan is designed to help you track your saving goals. You can choose from a number of goals that are pre-set or create custom ones.

Mint has built-in calculators for how much you should put away each month. 

Whether it be to start saving up your emergency fund, pay off debts faster with a debt repayment plan or increase savings in retirement accounts; Mint can do the math.

Trends Tab

This tab breaks down your various spending trends 

Ways to Save Tab

Mint has partnered with Ratehub so that consumers can easily find offers from rewards-friendly brands in 4 different categories: 

• low interest rates 
• rewards 
• balance transfers
• secured purchases like mortgages or car titles 

3 Positives of Mint.com

1. Mint.com is Extremely Easy to Use

Mint is your best option for a free, all-in-one budget tracker that automates most of the budget process, so you don’t have to devote too much time. 

Mint’s interface and features are great – just plug in your financial information, set your budget, and everything will be done on your behalf. 

Occasionally you’ll have to go into the platform, and tweak your monthly expenses (if your insurance rates go up for example), but that’s a breeze when compared to manually tracking your expenses in some spreadsheet. 

Mint: A Free Automatic Budget Tracker That Does It All

2. Mint.com is Free Free Free

Mint.com is 100% free. 

I like mint.com because it’s easy to use, but more importantly, it’s free. It lets me keep track of my finances on the go, even if I’m on a mobile device.

3. Great Mobile Experience

One of the problems with using programs like excel, is that there is virtually no mobile experience to speak of. 

With Mint.com, the mobile experience is second to none.

Mint’s developers continue to leverage artificial intelligence in an effort to help improve the user experience. 

In addition they have enhanced navigation tools which provide helpful tips about how to best manage money along with new apps available both online or on mobile devices.

3 Negatives of Mint.com

1. Automatic Categorization Is Unreliable 

When it comes to category assignment, that can be a bit tricky at times. Sometimes, purchases are not allocated to the appropriate category. For example, you may purchase gas from Costco and have that purchase allocated to the “groceries” or “shopping” category. 

Just make sure you check in often and make any adjustments necessary. Once every week or 2 weeks would be considered optimal. 

2. No Investment Tracking 

While Mint.com does a great job of syncing up to your investment accounts (like Wealthsimple for example), it doesn’t have the technology in Canada to actively track those investments. 

If you want to see how your investments are progressing, you’ll have to log into the recordkeeper’s website. 

3. You Can’t Pay Bills Through Mint

Mint has been around for a long time, and it recently stopped supporting its bill paying services. 

You can still view the bill transactions through the transaction tab, but the service stops there. 

Conclusion 

Mint is a great way to stay on top of your spending and avoid overspending. Mint automatically tracks every dollar that goes in or out without any work from you, making it one of the best free automatic budget trackers around.

The ability to have your transactions automatically assigned to different categories is a huge time saver, but you’ll still need to check your budget every 10 days to ensure those transactions are categorized appropriately. 

Mint.com FAQ

Is Mint.com Safe?

The company behind Mint (Intuit) has been around for years. Intuit produces one of the most secure financial software options on earth so there are some high security features in place to protect their users from hackers or malware authors who would want to access your personal information such as passwords etc..

However, no company is 100% safe from online hackers, but Mint is as safe as any out there. 

The one issue lies with the 3rd party connections. If someone hacks your banking information through Mint.com, you may not be eligible for fraud protection from your bank.

4 Tips to Help You on Your Financial Wellness Journey

1. Download Mint.com. It’s a free service that can help you organize your finances 
2. Choose a budgeting method that fits your needs
3. Check in with Mint.com every 10 days to ensure your transactions are being allocated to the correct budget category 
4. Re-organize your budget every 6-12 months. As your lifestyle changes, so should your budget