Mint: Another Site Trying to Help You Organize Your Finances

Filed in archive Tools on October 9, 2007

Back in November I wrote about a site called Wesabe, which is sort of like an online quicken but uses the whole "wisdom of crowds" things to help you save money. A similar site, Mint, launched recently and is supposedly gaining traction and getting some press from the tech crowd.

Mint is similar to Wesabe. You load up all your financial accounts on there, and then you can track everything in one place, plus get pie charts showing your spending patterns and that sort of thing.

Besides the benefit of organizing your financial picture, Mint also promises to help you save money by finding you cheaper alternatives to the things you spend your money on, such as cheaper cell phone service or a lower interest credit card. This benefit is also Mint's business model, in that they receive compensation if you take them up on the offers they present to you. If they find you something cheaper and you wouldn't have done that work on your own, it's a win-win. However, you should also be careful to not rely on Mint to tell you the best price you might find-they'll tell you the best price they know of from their advertising partners, but there may be better deals if you're willing to do some legwork.

As I said with Wesabe, I'm not interested in logging all my financial accounts within an online service and having that service know so much about me. I worry a bit about security but even more than that I worry about privacy. I just like to have as few people as possible knowing what I'm up to finance-wise. If you're more care-free, you might want to give Mint a try.