Why'd The Chicken Cross The Road...?: Apr 28, 2008

Monday, April 28, 2008

AUTOMATIC ONLINE MONEY MANAGEMENT.

Say hey Buckos. Tonight I'm reviewing the website Mint.com. It's a free online service that will compile all your financial data automatically; and then put it in reports showing transactions, spending trends, and "ways to save." It's a great service for me because I tend to avoid looking at my financial situation in detail - it usually sends me into swirls of depression and terrific fits of incontinence. The catch: you have to provide them with access to all your accounts. That means giving them your checking account number, your ATM pin number, your credit card numbers, etc. The pucker factor with doing something like this is about 4000 on a scale from 1 to 10. So, being the canary in the coal mine, I did all this about 2 weeks ago to see how it would work. Would it track my finances or would my accounts get drained by some some pimply virgin living in Zimbabwe or some shit? So what happened.... ?

It's been over two weeks and the service has worked great. I've checked my bank and credit card daily for suspicious transactions and there hasn't been any. If they were going to take my cash I imagine they would have done that almost immediately. Their analysis showed me spending almost $200 on "kids/education" - and I don't have any kids! So there's one area I can make some righteous savings right there! Lastly, it's given me "ways to save." Some things are credit cards with a lower interest rates and checking accounts that earn interest. You can sign up for these suggested services right on their site. My only suggestion here is to read the fine print because some of the special offers they give you go down the old poop chute if you don't follow their directions to the letter.

My final verdict is a thumbs up - if you have the cajones to enter all your personal financial information. Which I, of course, do. Plenty of cajones on this side of the screen Buckos!