Mint.com – iPhone App Review

Mint.com (Free)

REVIEW- "Know What You Spend Every Day"

One of the best ways to manage, track, and budget your finances on a daily basis is using Mint.com, an easy way to see all your accounts in one place, find instant savings, and understand your money and your spending habits instantly. Mint.com has a sleek design and intuitive interface so you can quickly check balances of your checking, savings, credit card, loan, and investment accounts.

Wondering how this app is different than any other? Well, Mint.com allows you to synchronize information from ALL of your accounts at one time instead of just one bank or investment. Keep track of every dollar you spend with this free app. The set up is fast and easy. Just go to www.mint.com and add your account information for the checking, savings, and investments you want to check. This takes about five to ten minutes at the max and then you are ready to roll.

Connecting with over 7,000 banking institutions, Mint.com helps you track where your money is being spent and how much you have available when you are out and about town. Whether you want to see a purchase, deposit, or how your investments are holding up, Mint.com enables you to check balances in real time. The interface is very simple to use with just two buttons, Overview and Alerts. The Overview connects you with all the latest information about your accounts, your monthly budget, cash flow, and investments.

While the overview is great for giving you a general outlook on each account and the "big picture," the real value in this app happens when you are able to see what you are spending your money on. With just a few clicks, you can set budgets for expenses. You can also set budgets for different categories ranging from Food and Bills to even specific merchants you buy from regularly such as Target. You can only read information in your accounts and this adds security because you cannot transfer money in and out of accounts.

You can create alerts to keep track of your spending habits, find new ways to save money, and uncover hidden fees. You can also compare your investment portfolio with the SpendSpace feature. I like that the app remembers where you were last, which makes it easy to navigate quickly.

Mint.com uses the same security system, Yodlee, in use by major financial institutions such as Scott Trade, T-Rowe, and MSN with 128-bit encryption.

While the interface is beautifully designed and it is easy to use with information available at your fingertips, I still found areas for improvement. Some features I would like to see include a pin just for this app for additional security instead of having to pass-lock the entire iPhone. Another thing that would be good to have is a mobile instantaneous update instead of manually having to do it. It would also be good to be able to edit budgets directly with the iPhone. The website www.mint.com has great graphs to see spending visually and it would be nice to see that on the mobile version.

Apart from these minor drawbacks, the application works very well and I find using this app easy, convenient, and fast. Mint.com is an excellent app that tailors the information you need instantly. I love that I can take my iPhone anywhere and have instant updates to my cash flow from Mint.com immediately!

- Jan M.
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