mint | Online Savings Blog

Money Saving Links: 10/12/08
10.12.08 | Savings Links | 1 Comment | by junger

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
We're going to try posting the Money Saving Links on Sundays from now on — hopefully you'll have some light reading and we'll be able to highlight some great content from around the Web.

This week, we participated in the Carnival of Personal Finance #173 hosted by Girls Just Wanna Have Funds, who has a lot of great stories on finance for women.

Some of the highlights from this week's carnival include …

Mint.com Review: Beautiful Money Management Tool - Blueprint for Financial Prosperity

In Summary, I think Mint is a pretty slick tool (after looking at the screenshots, I think you have to agree with me there). Can you live without it? Of course you can. Will you likely learn more about your spending if you use it? Definitely. Is it worth the security risk? That depends on your level of risk aversion and how well you trust the securities measures they’ve taken with your data.

Six Ways to Get Intense About Your Money and Finances - Prime Time Money

Read Personal Finance Blogs
Browse the Personal Finance Sections of Your Local Paper and Online News
Head to the Library and Check Out a Few Personal Finance Books
Learn About Other People Who’ve Had Success With Their Money
Find a Money Mentor
Analyze the Details of Your Own Finances

My 3 Biggest Personal Finance Successes - Value for Your Life

These are my three biggest successes because they changed my focus, my relationships, and how I live my life and look at money. They have made my marriage stronger, my life happier, and my relationship with money so that I rule it–not the other way around.
Mint Launches Re-Design; Are Conversion Rates Up?
08.18.08 | Money Management | 0 Comments | by junger

Mint, the online money management and personal finance tracking tool, has launched a re-design of their site.

From their blog:

Starting today, you’ll find a refreshing new look which reflects the new features we’ve added to the site since launch; enhanced budgeting tools, brokerage and investment accounts, mortgage accounts, student loans, and auto loans. We’re also kicking off a series of “how-to” guides designed to simplify your financial life, giving you practical, actionable advice on things like saving for retirement, paying off your student loans, buying a car, creating a personal budget, and more.

According to TechCrunch, the re-design is aimed at increasing conversion rates — and it's doing just that.

That normally isn’t big news, but what caught my attention is that Mint has been bucket testing various redesign formats with some users and is seeing conversion rates increase by 20% over the current site.

That equals “hundreds of thousands” of more registered users over the course of a year given their current growth rates, says CEO Aaron Patzer. When we last checked in with them, they had 350,000 registered users and were tracking $11 billion in assets. Those numbers are likely substantially higher now.

Even though Mint is one of the more well-known online finance-tracking applications, it hasn't always done what I've needed it to do, including loans, investments, and more. The re-design is apparently supposed to help users track these accounts (which have been added in the past months) easier.
Do You Manage Your Money Online?
02.28.08 | Online Finances | 2 Comments | by Tom Valenti

Within the last year, there has been a proliferation of interactive money management sites. If you don't know how they work, they basically categorize your income and spending so that you can better track your finances.

Depending on the service, you enter in your own data or can have it scraped from online banking sites you already are signed up with. Kind of like what one would see in Money or Quicken, but online, and often they give advice based upon your data.

For instance, if they see you have a high-interest credit card, they might suggest one with a lower rate. As of now, they all seem to be free of charge.

Some examples: Wesabe, Mint, Buxfer, Geezeo, Billeo, Quizzle. I know I've seen even more. I can't recommend or offer too much individual comment on any of these because I haven't used them enough and, frankly, I don't feel like going through the set up for each one.

I really don't know how anyone decides which ones(s) to use.

The ancestor of this technology seems to be the account aggregators, such as Yodlee. With the explosion of so-called Web 2.0, they've evolved into something more. It's inevitable there will be a shakedown sometime soon, with some collapsing, some merging, maybe some charging, and some being bought by banks or online banking providers.

Until that happens, I plan to sit on the sidelines.

Is anyone using any service like this yet? If so, how has it (or not) helped you?

Tom Valenti is a marketer and project manager who currently works for a financial institution in New Jersey. For more info, visit him at http://tomvalenti.com.

free website hit counter