[Update 2023.12] We received an email from Mint saying that Mint will officially shut down on March 23, 2024. Your previous budgeting data will be migrated to CreditKarma, so you can continue using it there. However, it is still not very user-friendly right now, so I recommend not switching over just yet.
If you're looking for an alternative, Empower (Personal Capital), which I recommended before, is still quite good.
What Is Mint
As the number of credit cards in our wallets keeps growing—thanks to all the recommendations from Chinese- and English-language blogs and credit card forums—it is no longer realistic to track every single purchase the old-fashioned way by logging in to each bank account individually. Today, chanye is going to introduce Mint, a very useful tool for managing your accounts.
Mint is a personal finance website founded in 2006. It was acquired by Intuit in 2009 and continued to develop afterward. Intuit is also the company behind Quicken and TurboTax.
- Mint homepage: www.mint.com
Why Use Mint
The reason is simple: once the number of accounts starts to grow, keeping track of every account at the same time becomes tedious, and Mint provides a convenient way to manage all of them in one place.
With Mint, you can:
- Monitor every expense transaction in each account
- Track the balance and amount owed for each account
- Track each credit card account’s statement balance and payment due date
- Automatically or manually categorize each expense, making it easier to record and manage your spending
- Analyze spending and income over custom time periods (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) to better manage your finances
Is Mint Safe?
This is a question many people ask. Personally, I think Mint is generally safe, though of course the possibility of a data leak cannot be completely ruled out. In the U.S., banks also do a very good job with anti-fraud protections, so in most cases you do not need to worry too much about your account being compromised. But who can guarantee 100% safety? That said, in the U.S., losses caused by theft are generally covered by the bank (zero liability), so for individuals it usually means more inconvenience than actual financial loss. In my view, trading a small amount of risk and hassle for a great deal of convenience is well worth it, and monitoring your accounts regularly also helps you spot unauthorized activity quickly.
How to Use Mint
Mint is actually very straightforward and easy to use. It is simple to get started with, so I will just briefly explain how to use Mint here and leave the rest for you to explore on your own.
Adding Accounts
After signing up for Mint, you will enter the main dashboard. Naturally, the first step is to add your bank and credit card accounts. Just click either of the red boxes shown below.
A dialog box will then pop up. Click “+ADD ACCOUNT”.
Next you will see the following screen. If your account institution appears among the icons shown, just click it directly. If not, enter the name at the top and search for it.
Then simply enter your online banking username and password. Some banks may also require additional verification information, such as an email verification code or security questions.
One thing to note: for some banks, credit cards and checking accounts belong to two different institutions and need to be added separately (for example, Discover).
After you finish adding accounts, you will be able to see your current card balances in the panel on the right side of the screen, as shown below.
Monitoring Each Expense/Income Transaction
This is Mint’s most important feature, and also the one I use and rely on the most. After all, when you have nearly 30 active credit cards, keeping track of them one by one is obviously unrealistic. To enter this page, simply click "TRANSACTION" on the main screen.
You will then enter the transaction page. Pending transactions appear in gray italics, while posted transactions appear in regular black text, as shown below.
One thing to note is that Mint automatically assigns a category to each transaction. Most of the time this category is accurate, but sometimes it is not, and in those cases you will need to change it manually. The accuracy of these categories is also very helpful for the spending/income analysis discussed in the next section.
Custom Spending/Income Analysis by Time Period
This is another Mint feature that I use often. If you do not normally keep a budget but still want to understand how much you spent in a certain category over a certain period—for example, how much you spent on groceries this month—this is a great feature.
As shown below, click "TRENDS" to enter this page.
You will then see a pie chart like this (if you choose "By Category" from the dropdown menu on the left), which clearly shows the percentage each spending category accounts for in your total spending.
Of course, clicking on different parts of the pie chart will take you into the next level of categories. For example, under FOOD&DINING, you may see grocery, fast food, restaurant, and so on.
You can also choose "Over Time" on the left to view your daily spending. Under "During," you can select a time period such as this month, last month, this year, last year, or a custom range.
One thing to keep in mind is that the categories shown in this pie chart are based on the category settings mentioned in the previous section.
Viewing Payment Due Dates and Amounts Due
Once you have many credit cards, remembering each card’s due date becomes a real headache. That is when Mint’s Upcoming Bills reminder feature becomes extremely helpful.
After logging in to Mint, you can find this feature under the Overview tab.
As you can see, the payment due date and amount due for each card are displayed very clearly. Then you can log in to the corresponding bank account and make the payment before the due date, avoiding late fees.
Setting a Monthly Budget
I do not use this feature very often. Although I have set it up, I do not pay much attention to it most of the time. Still, for people who want to strictly control their monthly budget, it can be quite useful. Click "BUDGETS" to enter this page.
Here, you can set a monthly spending budget for a specific category and see how much you’ve already spent in that category for the current month. I won’t go into detail here—just try it out and you’ll get the idea.
Set Financial Goals
As the name suggests, this feature helps you set financial goals for self-monitoring. The setup is very straightforward: just click "GOALS" to enter the settings.
As you can see, there are quite a few goals to choose from, such as buying a car, buying a home, retirement, and more. I personally haven’t used this feature, since I don’t currently have those needs. But if you do have a goal like this, it’s worth setting one up and checking your progress from time to time—it can help encourage healthier financial habits and more rational spending.
Pay Credit Card Bills [Updated 1/7]
Mint has recently added another new feature: you can now use Mint to pay your credit card bills. Since Mint can track your credit card balance and statement balance in a timely manner, using Mint to pay bills is a fairly convenient one-stop service.
Next, chanye will try out this bill payment feature.
First, click “bill” on Mint’s top menu bar.
Then select a card and choose pay bill. Here, chanye used an SPG card as a test. chanye also noticed a calendar-like icon on the right that is color coded, which should correspond to the due date.
After that, enter the card number again to confirm.
Then choose whether to pay with a bank account or debit. Here, “bank account” is labeled “free,” while the debit option is not, so it appears debit is probably not free. chanye used bank account for this test.
Mint will then automatically show the bank accounts you’ve already linked to Mint. Just pick one. Here, chanye selected Discover checking.
Then, just like a normal bill payment, you’ll be asked to enter the routing/account number.
Confirm the billing address.
Then choose how much to pay. Here, chanye made a test payment of $10.
And that’s it. Based on the feedback shown, this bill pay should post on the 9th (today is the 8th, a Sunday).
It looks like Mint’s bill pay feature is pretty useful. According to Mint, you can make payments from the mobile app as well. And after entering all this information the first time, you shouldn’t have to fill out as much the second time, so it really does seem convenient.
That said, chanye still strongly recommends enabling auto payment on each credit card issuer’s website as a last line of defense, so you don’t get charged a late fee.
P.S. chanye usually uses Discover’s bill pay. It’s pretty fast too, and you even get 10c for each payment... LOL...
Conclusion
Overall, Mint is a very useful personal finance/account management tool. Used flexibly, it can save you from a lot of headaches—especially for readers of this blog, many of whom probably have quite a few credit cards. In that case, using Mint to manage those accounts becomes especially worthwhile.