One day in November 2005, while using Quicken to catch up on his personal bookkeeping, Aaron realized that he was in for an afternoon of tedious accounting-type work: poring over his statements; filling in gaps in entries; and categorizing dozens of purchases. While all he wanted to get to was a simple pie chart breaking down his monthly spending into its major categories.From my previous post on Mint:
So in an effort to get a handle on my family's finances I turned to the oldest personal financial application around: Excel. I imported what I could from eTrade and then began the process of manually categorizing all of my income and expenditures over the past three months. It was excruciating and mind-numbing. During the whole process I kept asking myself, "Why can't Quicken do this for me? Don't they have enough people's data to know how people generally categorize a payment to Amazon or the Grand Lake Theater?"Well, the Mint team has done it again. They took another one of the things I have been wanting so badly out of a financial tool and provided me with a product that simply works. This time the killer feature is budgeting.
Ok, Mint team, here is what I want next... Continuing on the idea that finances can be fun, I would for you to give me some virtual reward for staying below budget. Send me an email at the end of the month congratulating me for being $25 below budget on gas, or shopping. Give me merit badges on my profile for saving on groceries. Do something that makes a game out of saving.
Next, and more mundanely, allow me to define the time frame for my budget. For example, my travel budget only makes sense within the context of a year, or quarter. I don't spent $400 per month, more like $2000 every 3-5 months. So in those months I will almost certainly be over budget for the month, but not the year.
As a wrap up, let me just once again compliment the team on their "Ways to Save" feature. That is a form of sponsorship and advertising I can really get behind. I honestly appreciate that the analysis that is done for me. I like the fact that I don't have to click on the ad to learn more. I like that the value is in the information, not the action. I have not yet taken advantage of an offer, but the more I stare at these things the more tempted I am. It is truly only a matter of time.
One thing though please let me dismiss an offer. I am not about to leave T-Mobile, and seeing an ad for Vontage just kind of annoys me. Not to be too harsh or anything, but I am too loyal to T-Mobile to be bothered... plus I can't imagine all the iPhone users who are like, "um, hell no I am going to Vontage, AT&T is the only frickn vendor I can use..." You know?
But on top of that I think having that kind of data would be really useful to your advertisers: a) how many people dismissed it, and b) how many people looked at it and didn't dismiss it. Because if I didn't dismiss it, it kinda means I am still thinking about it... and that my friends is as good as bait on a hook to these banks and credit card companies.
Thank you Mint. I still love your product. Can you tell?
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