Save! Save! Feel the burn! Mint.com gets its users into financial fitness
Filed under: Budgets, Debt, Technology
Let's face it: keeping on top of your finances is never fun. Mint.com wants to change all that. Since September 2007, users of the online personal-finance service could track how they're spending money. Starting today, you can also measure how financially fit you are.Financial Fitness measures whether you're using debt wisely, how well you're preparing for the unexpected, and several other aspects of saving your money. Once a month, Mint.com gives users a score of up to 100%, showing you everything you did right, such as spotting errors in your credit report -- and wrong, such as racking up bank fees or spending more than 30 percent of your card's credit limit.
Mint.com came up with the Financial Fitness system after many users complained that they didn't know what do after they learned where their money was going.
Next up: helping users meet lifetime goals, like saving for retirement and putting kids through college (even kids who don't exist yet). Mint.com will roll out a longterm-goals feature within four months, Patzer says.
Now if only they could help me lose the five pounds I've carried around since my daughter's birth four years ago. Could Mint launch a physical-fitness application too? I suppose I can dream.
Be one of the first 500 WalletPop readers to test drive Financial Fitness. Sign up for a free account, then email walletpop-getfit@mint.com for access. (Once you've registered, allow up to three days for access.)



Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-29-2009 @ 6:46AM
James said...
I have been using Desktop Budget from http://Spryka.com to manage my personal finances for a few months now. Its the easiest to use free, offline personal finance software I have seen so far.
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4-29-2009 @ 1:40PM
Sandy said...
This sounded great, so I clicked the link and signed up. First thing they wanted was my bank...easy...Bank of America. Then, my account number AND password. Are you kidding me? Don't do it.
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4-29-2009 @ 2:36PM
Martha said...
Hey Sandy - Mint.com has more than 1 million users and no security issues; they use bank-level data security, are verified by all the right guys, and don't story your account information. Hear it straight from the CEO's mouth here: http://www.mint.com/privacy/
6-12-2009 @ 1:33PM
Megan said...
I had the same concerns as Sandy. I use Bank of America as well and I now use BudgetToolkit.com ( http://www.budgettoolkit.com ) to manage my budget. Their electronic banking support doesn't require you to enter your account information. You download data from your bank and then upload it securely into BudgetToolkit.com. The interactive graphs are especially nice!
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