Millennial App Recommendation of the Week: Mint
Coming at you this week is Mint, which organizes your jumbled shoebox of crumpled receipts and torn paystubs in one of the sleekest money management apps around.
Alright, what do we have here?
Managing your personal finances is a pain in the ass. If you’re like us, you probably have a checking account, you should have a savings account, you hopefully have some kind of investment portfolio and you sure as shit have expenses that haunt your dreams.
One of the biggest challenges in staying on top of your finances is keeping track of all your different accounts.
So, I dropped my debit card for that $82 worth of tequila shots for those people who I’ll never see again and I have $200 for student loan repayment coming straight out of my savings account and Fidelity says my 401k grew by $56 and I think the Apple stock I cashed out came in at $113….
At this point, you’re probably thinking, “I would absolutely love it if I could see all these moving parts right now, in real time.”
Mint’s gotchu.
I’m pretty busy swipin’ and ‘grammin’. This won’t take forever, will it?
In the words of creator Aaron Patzer, Mint’s goal is “to make money management effortless and automated.” And, true to Patzer’s words, it pretty much is.
You can either download the app or head over to Mint.com to create your free account. From there, you plug in the information for your various financial accounts and, after a few minutes, you’re staring at a living, breathing composite of your personal finances. Which is both relieving and terrifying.
If you’ve got a few extra bills to kick around, you can even buy some of Mint’s content, including advice and tips for getting the most bang for your buck.
Sweet bruh. But why don’t I just, you know, use my bank for this?
Beyond presenting you with a comprehensive picture of your (potentially panic-inducing) financial standing, Mint lets you play around with your various accounts and plans, giving you a better understanding of your personal finances in the process.
If you’re in denial about how much you blow on Seamless every week, Mint will tell you how much your Pad Thai habit costs and allow you to set specific budgets for it. As Patzer told the New York Times, “Most people don’t know what they spend in every single area, but they know they have a problem in particular areas.”
Likewise, if your friends are all fired up about that ridiculously cheap airfare to Barcelona they just found, you can easily set up savings targets to show you exactly what it’s going to take for you to spend next April pronouncing your “c’s” with a lisp. Grathias.
Are you a one-man bandwagon or do other people actually use this thing?
Welp, just two years after its creation, Mint was bought for $170 million by financial software giant Intuit. Today, Mint has over 15 million users and owns a lifetime four-star status in the iTunes store with 193,834 ratings. Safe to say, the cat is squarely out of the bag.
Alright, I could be down, but is there anything else I should know before I say “I do”?
The one key thing to know before signing up with Mint is whether aggregating your info with a third-party service violates any terms of use agreements with one of your current financial service providers.
Mint takes its data security “super, super cereal” and has received plenty of positive plaudits along the way, but if someone manages to hack your info, your bank could try to get out of reimbursing you for the damages.
Check your agreements and if you’re still unsure, ask a customer service rep at your bank before taking the plunge.
Previous App of the Week Reviews:
Robinhood: The Free Brokerage App Revolutionizing Stock Trading
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