Manage Your Money For Free with Mint.com

Managing money on your own is a hard task in itself. I wish the banks did a better job at helping you manage your money instead of trying to swindle every last penny out of you. I believe people would be more inclined to do transactions with banks if they simply helped us be better with money. Anyhow, I won't hold my breath because that day may never come. What you can do is sign up for Mint.com.

What is Mint.com?
It is a FREE way to manage your money online, yes its free. All you need to provide is a valid email account and your bank account information. Yes Mint.com does not store your bank account information rather it simply stores transaction information. It simply retrieves the information from your bank and provides you an array of information you could not compile on your own.For more information on Mint's privacy policy click here.

Benefits of Mint.com:

1. It lets you keep track of all of your bank accounts in one location. Since all of your accounts are available in one location, it is easier to both manage and track the transactions for all of your accounts.
2. It lets your set budget on numerous spending categories such as groceries, gas, auto repair and so on. You simply set the budget on how much you want to spend per month and if you go over Mint will send you a friendly warning that you went over the budget for that spending category.
3. You can even set to receive bill due reminders from your creditors. This is a similar feature like Bill Pay from a bank. So not only can you keep track of your income and expenses you can also keep track of the pesky bills.
4. Mint allows your track all of your transactions from various accounts. You have a detailed up to the minute listing of all transactions. You no longer have to wait for your monthly statements to figure out each transaction. As an added bonus you can sort by transaction to see if you have been paying more or less per month. Additionally you can label your transactions as well. For example if you have an automated debit from a creditor with an obscure business name, you can label them to something you can associate to and next time you will be able to tell easily.
5. Mint also shows you how you are spending money monthly via a pie chart. It allocates your various spending into categories (i.e. groceries, gas, auto) and this chart will show your expenses. Since this is monthly you can always go back to previous months and gauge your spending habits and attempt to improve on those categories.
6. Mint also monitors your investment accounts, CDs, 401K, stocks. With all of your assets and liabilities available in one location, it is much easier to manage your money than having various websites to check and see how hard your money is working for you. One of the most important features I like about Mint is that it lets me compare how my investments are doing in comparison to the market. For example, I can compare my investments vs. S&P 500, Dow Jones and Nasdaq.
7. If you are looking for credit cards then Mint also shows you various offers available for credit cards. You can do your own research of course and find the credit card that fits you best. 
8. It has its own iPhone app so now you can see what your money is doing wherever you go!
   

Overall, I am very much happy with my FREE mint.com account. My only grievance with Mint is that it does not work well with ING Direct bank accounts. It is usually delayed or fails to connect to ING accounts.This site has helped me budget my spending better and even help me with getting rid of some of my debt. If you are someone like me with multiple bank accounts and investment accounts and find it hard to keep up with them then definitely try mint.com and let me know what you think.