Mint’s New Investment Graphs Showcase Personal Recessions
I don’t know much about finances, but the latest headlines suggest I should take a look at them anyway (something about a financial crisis? What now?). News about Mint.com’s new financial analysis features came across my desk Monday, so I bit the bullet and took the opportunity to check out the popular financial planning website.
Mint.com is an award-winning website you can use to track your finances. It’s got an Ajax-heavy interface with lots of graphs and visualization tools. The new features added to the site Monday include a new graphing tool that allows you to see all of your financial investments in one place and compare them to data points depicting the performance of the S&P 500, Dow Jones and other sorely depressing indexes. Another new chart shows how your assets are allocated.
That’s what’s new. What I’ve been missing is trending graphs and plenty of information to tell me where I should or should not be spending my money. Information from your bank accounts is automatically uploaded, and spending is automatically categorized. For example, it somehow knows how much I spent on food and can compare it to other people across the nation. It also told me my credit card’s APR sucks and I should get a new one.
The interface is sleek, easy to use and full of Web 2.0-friendly Ajax and big search boxes with buttons. The site even congratulates you when you successfully fill out those big search boxes with a nice green “OK” and “good password” in encouragement of your literacy …or e-mail uniqueness and knowledge of safe passwords. Whatever.
The graphs are intuitive and insightful. Too insightful, if you ask me. As I started uploading my accounts, the site felt compelled to explain to me that I spend too much money on Starbucks coffee. Back off my caffeine addiction, website. I can quit at any time.
Alas, the newspaper headlines were true. As suggested in newspapers all over the country, the graphs of my finances showed a lot of down and to the right action. What struck me was how easy it was to upload my financial information.
What has kept me from using the service up until now was it felt like I was uploading all of my financial information to Jamba Juice — with a name like Mint, it reminds me more of my favorite ice cream flavor than something trustworthy like a bank. After a look at the SSL encryption information, security certificates and the site’s privacy policy, I decided this web startup out of nowhere is worthy of all of my financial information, logins and passwords. Why not?
The graphs were very nicely drawn, and power of suggestion had me tasting mint thanks to the logo. In the end, I couldn’t help but feel good about being worth one or two hundred cup o’ joes poorer. Easy come, easy go, right? The software is definitely worth checking out if you can get past the unsettling online privacy trust issues. I admit, it got me taking a serious look at my finances in a fun way, and that’s something I never thought I would say.
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