Even more exciting are the graphs and pie charts. Here’s an example of one from my account (without numbers):
You can click on each slice to drill down into the category further. So, for example, that orange slice up there, that’s shopping. When I click on it, I get this pie chart:

That’s a thin slice of books and the rest for clothes. Clicking on a slice that has no subcategories takes you to the transaction itself. This is how I found inaccuracies in categories. I would see a huge slice for something like movies and then clicking on that slice would show me that they’d categorized cable as movies or something like that.

I find being able to visualize my spending and drill down to find exactly where the money goes extremely helpful. I know Quicken and other programs like it did this in the past, but the categories often had to be done manually and it was complicated to set up multiple accounts. I felt like you needed a degree in accounting to do it successfully. Mint, by contrast, is dead simple, relying on data your banks already keep. Since we’re down to one income with my own income coming sporadically, keeping track of our spending is more important than ever. I’ve already found some places to cut more corners, and I’m actually enjoying the process of managing our finances. Who knew!

Related posts:

1. Money Can Buy Happiness
2. Coins, Money and Banks
3. Other People’s Money