A few weeks ago I was reading some website with the “Top 100 Web Tools” and stumbled upon www.mint.com. Mint is the slickest personal finance tool I have used on the internet or otherwise. It consolidates every bank account, 401k, IRA, credit card, and even your mortgage (however no GMAC unfortunately for me).
After typing your username and password for all of your various accounts it lets you slice and dice your spending habits in a number of ways. It pulled over 300 days of history for me spending habits and it was immediately shown in graphs and made a mock budget for each of the areas where I can spend my hard earned dollar. There is no longer a need for those AMEX consolidated spending lists based on type of vendor. Mint has all of that for every card.
My only worry with Mint was the security around consolidating all of my financial life into one easily accessible area. Fortunately, Mint.com is a very limited tool and that is where the inherent security features are built in. You cannot shift funds, spend anything or change anything about any account because there is no functionality around doing anything other than viewing the information. Mint has no integration other than the ability to view your account information. Though I am no computer expert, it seems pretty fool proof.
I showed a few people at work the tools involved and it spread like wild fire. We have a pretty strict internet blocking program and somehow Mint circumvents all of the blocks. I can even check my daily 401k balance. Which right now is unfortunately depressing as my balance seems to be going in the wrong direction.
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