online budgeting-- mint.com

ShansBride

I am really old school and keep a paper checkbook and budget with a pen and paper.  I think it would be easier if I did it online (I do bank and pay bills online--well, everything comes out automatically), but I don't know where to start really.  I have heard about mint.com and I read something about manilla.com today too.  Anyone use anything like that?  pros?  cons?  help?

drillerswife

I'm old school like you so I'm interested to see these responses as well .

critti710

H keeps track of our spending through mint.com, and he really loves it.  He doesn't actually use the full budgeting feature, but we do have a fuel budget set on there where it automatically keeps track of how much we spend on fuel and lets us know if we are coming close to our budget.  He said it does run about a day behind our bank on transactions and balances, though.

+buttercup+

I didn't particularly care for mint.com. It's been so long since we tried it that I don't remember exactly what the problem was. We use quicken now and I particularly like the forecast feature. We can see what our cash flow is for the upcoming year. The only downside is finding online banking that works well with it.

BoyMom21

We use mint and really like it.  It's nice to have an app on my phone to look at balances, changes in our investment accounts, how much we have spent on groceries, restaurants, etc. It alerts me when we have had high spending in a particular area.  For example, when we added new coverage our health insurance, it sent me an alert saying "high spending--usually you spend XXX on insurance. This month you spent XXX".  So that's cool, because it does it in every budgeting category.  At a glance I can see how much I've charged to my CC that month for gas and it helps me to know if I've been going a million places and need to slow down a little.

oklagirl

I just got started with mint. I don't have the phone app yet because I need to update to the new OS first, but I'm looking forward to having all that info on hand always.

Anyway, the mint website has been really helpful so far. It pulled my bank info from the last month and I was able to see what I'm spending on. It was eye-opening.

+PuppyWuppy+

I prefer budgeting the old fashioned way - with excel spreadsheets!  I use more of a present and future cash flow approach - this works for us.

oklagirl

Oh, and I haven't really used mint to create a budge, just track spending. I also use excel to create the actual budget with money in and money out.