When it comes to tracking your financial statements I will be honest. It’s BORING (and I love accounting, weird I know). I used to make all my payments on time, double check everything but I didn’t really take too close of a look unless something was way out of whack.
I stumbled across an app on my iPhone called Mint. I had been looking for a way to get a better handle on my expenses and I have determined that this is the service to do that.
So let’s go over the top three reasons to go with Mint and why I like it so much.
Reason #1: All of your banking, loan, credit card and investment info in one place
Sign up for Mint at www.mint.com and you will immediately be prompted to add accounts through a search field. Â If you already use online banking you will find this process very easy. Â Search for the institution and click to connect. Â I use Vancity and it brought over a list immediately with all of my accounts and information. Â I then added all my other accounts and was amazed to have all the pages I used to login to available right on one page. Â You can also view ALL transactions for your accounts which is spectacular for reviewing each month.
Reason #2: Â Track your spending easily with little to no manual entry
Mint takes it one step further than this.  It automatically categorizes your transactions with a category based on the merchants name.  So if you go to Super Store and you buy something it will automatically classify that transaction line as ‘Groceries.’  Now you can always override this category, make new categories or even split them up if you want to split the receipt into multiple category buckets but this auto selection saves 99% of the hassle of a normal bookkeeping system.
Now with Mint, I can see a real-time view of my net worth!
Reason #3: Budgets
Now that everything is classified you can have Mint simply group them into monthly buckets so you can track them. Â $200 per month for groceries? Â You will know real-time what you have spent, what the transactions were and how much you have left. Â It’s a marvelous tool for keeping on top of all of those pesky expenses and things you don’t realize you are spending money on.
Summary
Mint.com is awesome.  Check it out today!  It’s free and will help you figure out where all of your money is going so you can save it away and get ahead.  And if you happen to have an iPhone or Android it has a spectacular app (free as well) which will further keep  you in line.
Where to get it?
http://www.mint.com or the itunes app store or wherever Android people get things.