First Thing's First: Where Is All My Money?
If you've found your way here, you probably like free stuff and no-brainer tools that will grow your stack while you sleep. This post is about to help you accomplish both goals. The best part is if you've got 5-10 minutes you can get started right now!
Just for fun, I asked a couple of friends how they keep track of their money. The answers I got ranged from "I have a word document with all of the accounts listed" to "I figured it out years ago and just look at my last tax return to see where everything is." to "I have a post-it note in a drawer with my account numbers but I lost it I think.".
That was scary to me, but it also means a lot of people can benefit from some good news! There's a way better way, and I've got it covered below!
One of the best things you can do to start getting smarter about your money is to simply understand where all of it is. Mint is a free website with a slick mobile app that helps you do just that. It's part of Intuit, which also owns Turbotax and a host of other top notch financially oriented software tools.
Just go to mint.com and sign up with your email address. Then you simply log in to your banks, credit card portals, and investment accounts through their secure integrations and you're off and running. It took me 10 minutes to set up and have saved me countless hours and thousands of dollars.
Once you're set up, Mint will display the balances of each of your accounts, updated automatically in real time as money flows into and our of your accounts and as you spend on everyday items. You can track your spending with smart, user-specific budget categories that do a pretty good job of figuring out what's what and putting it in the right spot. You can track and analyze your spending over time to see where your money is going. It's also got a free credit score monitoring tool right in the app that updates regularly and provides insights into what affects your score.
You can configure alerts for unusual spending, large transactions, and even pay bills through the app. It's kind of like you hired a 'money guy' to keep an eye on things for you. except it's free, is available 24/7 in the palm of your hand, and you don't have to go to a smelly office full of stacks of paper to get the answers you need. Get it today. You won't regret it.
I looked at a number of other free and paid options for tracking and budgeting services, and one seemed worth mentioning. YNAB (You Need a Budget) is a popular tool for the budgeting aspect of what Mint offers. It's definitely a capable system, but I don't see it being the best options for most people for two main reasons:
1. It makes you enter all of your expenses in a more manual way, which may be a psychological benefit for people with severe spending issues, but it's more time consuming, and if you're not totally committed to being on top of entering everything it becomes a pain to keep it up. With Mint there's basically nothing you need to do. You can fix things that are wrongly categorized, but it's totally optional and purely adds upside.
2. YNAB isn't free! It costs $4.17/month as of today. Not a ton of money, but a future post will talk about how subscription expenses have a sneaky way of slowly eating away at your stack.
Keep it simple for now. Sign up with Mint, and if you decide down the road that you're so fancy you need a paid service, check out YNAB for a free trial.
Stay tuned for more on tools that are sure to help you on your stack building journey!
Keep Stacking,
BS
Just for fun, I asked a couple of friends how they keep track of their money. The answers I got ranged from "I have a word document with all of the accounts listed" to "I figured it out years ago and just look at my last tax return to see where everything is." to "I have a post-it note in a drawer with my account numbers but I lost it I think.".
That was scary to me, but it also means a lot of people can benefit from some good news! There's a way better way, and I've got it covered below!
Mint!
One of the best things you can do to start getting smarter about your money is to simply understand where all of it is. Mint is a free website with a slick mobile app that helps you do just that. It's part of Intuit, which also owns Turbotax and a host of other top notch financially oriented software tools.
Just go to mint.com and sign up with your email address. Then you simply log in to your banks, credit card portals, and investment accounts through their secure integrations and you're off and running. It took me 10 minutes to set up and have saved me countless hours and thousands of dollars.
Once you're set up, Mint will display the balances of each of your accounts, updated automatically in real time as money flows into and our of your accounts and as you spend on everyday items. You can track your spending with smart, user-specific budget categories that do a pretty good job of figuring out what's what and putting it in the right spot. You can track and analyze your spending over time to see where your money is going. It's also got a free credit score monitoring tool right in the app that updates regularly and provides insights into what affects your score.
The not so free option...
Now, if you're like me you might think, okay, free sounds great, but is Mint free because it isn't that great?I looked at a number of other free and paid options for tracking and budgeting services, and one seemed worth mentioning. YNAB (You Need a Budget) is a popular tool for the budgeting aspect of what Mint offers. It's definitely a capable system, but I don't see it being the best options for most people for two main reasons:
1. It makes you enter all of your expenses in a more manual way, which may be a psychological benefit for people with severe spending issues, but it's more time consuming, and if you're not totally committed to being on top of entering everything it becomes a pain to keep it up. With Mint there's basically nothing you need to do. You can fix things that are wrongly categorized, but it's totally optional and purely adds upside.
2. YNAB isn't free! It costs $4.17/month as of today. Not a ton of money, but a future post will talk about how subscription expenses have a sneaky way of slowly eating away at your stack.
Keep it simple for now. Sign up with Mint, and if you decide down the road that you're so fancy you need a paid service, check out YNAB for a free trial.
Stay tuned for more on tools that are sure to help you on your stack building journey!
Keep Stacking,
BS
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