Today, exactly two years after launching at TechCrunch40, I’m excited to announce that we have signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Intuit, makers of Quicken, QuickBooks, and TurboTax, for approximately $170 million.  It’s a great opportunity that could bring Mint.com’s unique approach to personal financial management to millions more consumers and small businesses as well as the 1,800 banks and credit unions serviced by Intuit.

In two years, we’ve attracted over 1.5 million users, found over $300 million in savings, managed $50 billion in assets, and helped people track nearly $200 billion in purchases.  Most importantly, we’ve helped a lot of people better understand and do more with their money. Thousands of people have told us that Mint.com has helped them pay off debt, control their spending, manage job loss, and even resolve money disputes with their significant other.  Expect all of this goodness to increase after the acquisition closes. And yes, expect Mint.com to remain free!
 
This acquisition makes sense to me because, first and foremost, Mint.com and Intuit share a common vision.  Intuit is, and has always been, a very customer-centric organization, with constant usability studies and follow-me-homes that observe how people use software and the problems they’re trying to solve.  This is fully aligned with my design philosophy here at Mint.com.


In addition, by joining Intuit, we can accelerate our ability to add more fantastic new product functionality into both Quicken and Mint.com. This means more people will find it easy and affordable to stay on top of their money issues. Bottom line? I see this as a chance to take a big leap forward toward our ultimate goal of improving the national savings rate.

Personally, I’ll play a leading role in the next phase of the evolution of Quicken, one of the best known, most trusted, and respected brands in software. A recent survey showed that 85% of U.S. adults had heard of Quicken.  It’s humbling to work with the people who really pioneered the field of personal finance applications.

Intuit is equally excited.  They recognize Mint employees as innovative thought-leaders in the field, who can make a breakthrough contribution to Intuit’s connected services strategy.
 
We expect the deal will close by the end of the calendar year. We’re looking forward to the opportunity to be part of a larger team with more resources that will continue to deliver the best personal finance tools out there!
 
Aaron Patzer
Founder and CEO

For Intuit’s take see: http://blog.quicken.intuit.com/announcement/2009/09/14/mint-com-to-join-the-intuit-family/

9/15/09, Update:

I wanted to let you know that I’ve been following your comments and I totally appreciate your passionate response to our announcement. I’ll try to address your concerns as clearly as possible.

Here’s a little more detail on what’s happening. After the acquisition closes, the Mint.com team will be leading the development of both Mint.com and Intuit’s existing personal finance products, Quicken desktop and Quicken Online. The fact that Intuit has agreed to acquire Mint.com, and is leaving our team intact, is evidence that Intuit has been impressed by and wants to build upon the user experience that Mint.com offers. We’ll not only improve upon that experience for Mint.com but also bring our know-how to the Quicken product line. Destroying the Mint.com user experience does not make sense for Intuit, Mint.com or any of our users.  

I can’t speak to Intuit’s customer service but Mint has always been as responsive as possible to our users. We believe this is one of the reasons for the success we’ve had and the trust you’ve put in us. Our ability to respond quickly to user requests is key to the way we build software. In fact, in the discussions leading to this deal, Intuit heard a lot about our software development process and told us they are very interested in learning how they can do the same thing for all of their software products, not just the personal finance ones.

Aaron Patzer
Founder and CEO

Intuit founder Scott Cook on why Mint.com won’t change

I recently had the privilege of meeting Suze Orman (@suzeormanshow on Twitter) for an hour long meeting… that turned into 3 hours. First, the answers to your burning questions:
· Does Suze always wear fabulous jackets in real life? Yes, yes she does.
· Is Suze really tan? Yep. And she has nice white teeth too.
· Does she frequently say “fabulous,” call everyone “hey boyfriend” or use phrases like “girlfriend, you need to get real” in real life? Yes, yes, and yes.
· Is Suze really the nation’s best personal finance guru? Actually, I think she just might be.

I’d like to think I know a thing or two about personal finance. It is, after all, my personal passion, and why I started Mint. But in talking to Suze about my views on investing, emergency funds, bank fees, and the all important human element in personal finance, it is clear that 30 years of daily interactions with real people having real money problems makes her the master.

Suze is a larger-than-life personality. She can suck you in with her irresistible charisma. And she’s using that knowledge and that charisma for good. One example: she negotiated a deal with TD Ameritrade where if you put in $100 for 12 months straight, they’ll give you your $100 back in month 13. That’s an 8.3% guaranteed return on your money – better than you can get in any CD or savings account right now. Over 100,000 people have signed up at: saveyourself.com. That’s how powerful her advice is. Multi-national corporations listen to her…even the head of the FDIC listens to her: myfdicinsurance.gov. Note the picture with the fabulous jacket.

Now, I’m sure there are some of you for whom Suze’s tough love advice, or big personality are not appealing. But Suze has an undeniable appeal to an audience that has been largely underserved: women, and young people (see her “Young, Broke & Fabulous” book). And that’s a good thing.

Traditional personal finance services and tools have been built, well, for middle-aged men. If you look at the demographic of Quicken desktop, for example, its users are 46 and they’re 85% male. One of the things I’m most proud of at Mint is opening up personal finance to a whole new audience: our average user is 30, and new users come in at a 60/40 male/female split. One stat that truly humbles me: 94% of our female users have recommended Mint.com to friends or to their spouse. We’ve created a tool that’s easy enough (and fun enough) for everyone.

And that’s where Suze comes in. Mint.com and Suze are now friends. Yes, we like to announce these things. Fabulous friends? Well, maybe one day. Until then, though, Suze says she’ll answer any Mint.com user’s money questions via Twitter: @suzeormanshow and include #mint. It’s not a team, it’s not her assistant, she answers all of these questions herself. Her only rule is it has to be a 140 character question or less.

Still, what an honor. While I love being CEO of Mint, I consider myself, first and foremost, an inventor. And Edison with his 1,093 patents has always been a hero of mine. He recognized that it wasn’t just enough to invent something – you had to commercialize it. He didn’t just invent the light bulb; he invented the first electrical grid, distribution and measurement system to make light bulbs practical. Edison had a team of thousands, with factories built right next to his labs in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

Fast forward a hundred years to Mountain View, California, in Silicon Valley. We don’t talk about it much, but there’s serious technology behind Mint.com. We have a patent pending categorization system that’s 93% accurate. A patent pending system for matching financial products to people based on their actual spending habits, interest rates, and balances – then quantifying what they’d save. And we have two secret patents pending for a few things that we hope will blow you away when they’re rolled out.

So here’s my salute to all you inventors out there. It took me many years – a failed bioinformatics business built on my first patent (#6983274), hardware patents for IBM/Sony’s Cell microprocessor, patents for Nascentric (which folded last week) – before things really took off (fingers still crossed for Mint). But there’s nothing like the spirit of invention. It’s what moves the world forward.

(dcJohn)

Last week, I was invited by the Obama administration to the White House. With me were Evan Williams of Twitter, Tony Hsieh of Zappos, the founders of Method, Blackboard CEO Michael Chasen, Jessica Jackley of Kiva.org, and many more young business leaders.

See the previous post, “Obama Administration Seeks Economic Advice From Young Entrepreneurs” for the recommendations I made to the Obama administration. Here’s some more on what was discussed on Friday.

Contrary to the opinion of those who believed I was invited only to then be coerced into letting the Obama administration win the Edison Award (we’re up against them in the “Lifestyle / Social Change” category), they had a much more constructive task in mind for us: to guide the administration on innovation, entrepreneurship and job creation.

In Washington, we met David Washington, Greg Nelson and Michael Strautmanis of Public Liason; Jason Furman Director of the National Economic Council; Macon Phillips and Katie Stanton of New Media; along with officials on the environment and domestic policy. The team stressed the main purpose of the summit: instead of just talking to big corporations, special interest lobbyists, and political pundits, they were actually interested to hear what 20 and 30-something entrepreneurs of 20 – 200 person companies had to say.

At the end of each introduction, we had the opportunity to ask questions. I took the liberty of breaking the ice with a question to the National Economic Council: “So if the US is a $14 trillion economy, and you run a $1 trillion deficit by printing money [more accurately selling T-bills and T-bonds], doesn’t that mean you’ve diluted the value of every dollar we save by 7% (1/14 = 7.1%)”.

His response was perhaps a little less than satisfying.  In essence it was: “A trillion dollars isn’t that much. We have $40-50 trillion in unfunded liabilities for healthcare in social security over the coming decades, and that’s where the real problem is. So long as we can sell this debt off at 2.5% interest, it’s cheap money and maintainable. The real risk is not the inflation that you imply, but deflation. In a deflationary environment, the prices for everything drop, and consumer psychology changes. People think ‘Why buy now when I know the price will be less in 3 months, or 6 months, or a year from now?’ and that causes hoarding of capital and increased deflation.”

The last point is certainly plausible. As to the other point, deficit spending in general, and the stimulus package in particular, I must disagree. Borrowing “cheap money” for housing is part of what got us into the current recession. The Three Principles of Personal Finance apply to governments as much as individuals – and rule #1 says “spend less than you earn” (or take in via tax revenue).

I believe in a laissez faire supply-side economics – minimize or eliminate regulations, no corporate bailouts or subsidies for failing auto manufacturers – and leave people free to create, to innovate, to take risks, and reap the rewards when their work pays off, and lose their investment if it does not.

The good news is we have an administration who will listen. This trip to the White House was just the beginning of what I hope will be an open dialogue with the Obama administration. I’m not yet convinced that the government can operate on different principles than those that govern (or at least should govern) the financial behavior of individuals. My hope is that the philosophy behind Mint.com might just be able to make a difference.  Want to help?  Post your suggestions below.

When giants fall, how can the average person resist getting caught in the financial crisis?

The markets are reeling from the recent news that Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch, a 94-year-old institution that was one of the last remaining independent holdouts on the street, while at the same time the 158-year-old securities firm Lehman Brothers has filed for bankruptcy protection. And the bad news doesn’t stop there. American International Group (A.I.G.), still woozy from the credit crisis joined troubled mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in receiving a bailout from the Federal Government. The Dow dropped 449 points on the news of the AIG bailout. And shares in the last two independent investment banks, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs fell precipitously on fears that they might go the way of Lehman and Merrill.

Coming on the heels of the forced sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase earlier this year, its more than enough to make the average person wonder if our entire economy is on the verge of collapse. When such seemingly solvent financial institutions get shaken to their foundations, it leaves a lot of rubble.

So what can you do to make sure you are protected?

Don’t Panic

Resist the tendency to respond emotionally. The Three Principles of Personal Finance haven’t changed just because Lehman Brothers made some poor financial decisions. Stick with the three principles and you will be prepared for any crisis.

1. Spend less than you earn
2. Make the money you have work for you
3. Be prepared for the unexpected

Don’t try to time the market

Dollar cost average your way into the market instead.  Dollar cost averaging is an investing approach that reduces exposure to the risk associated with making a single large purchase. Spend a fixed dollar amount at regular intervals on a particular investment regardless of the share price. More shares are purchased when prices are low and fewer when prices are high.

By following the most basic investing principle, “buy low, sell high,” you can turn the market volatility to your advantage and lower your average cost basis. This means higher returns when the market eventually rebounds.

Take a long-term approach and keep making regular, steady investments into your 401k & IRA. Bull and bear markets cycle through every few years. Many investors saw a growth in their portfolios in the 90’s only to see their profits dissolve by 2002. But the ones that panicked, abandoned the stock market, and put what was left of their remaining assets into low-yield CDs were not well positioned for the rebound that occurred between 2003-2006. Keep this simple fact in mind. According to Jeremy J. Siegel, there is not a single 20-year-period in the last 100 years where the stock market has not increased in value*

Still worried? See if your employer offers dollar-for-dollar 401k contribution matching. That’s like getting an instant 100% return.

Diversify

While consumer financial services are down 54% over the past year, healthcare has outperformed the S&P 500 by 10% – just a few years ago, the situation was reversed.  Rather than investing in a single stock or single sector of the economy, look for mutual funds that invest across many businesses.  Another option, index funds, which are less subject to seismic shifts in the market because they are based on a set of rules of ownership that remain constant, regardless of market conditions.

Remember these principles when making investment decisions and you can rise from the rubble.

* Stocks for the Long Run, by Jeremy J. Siegel, McGraw-Hill Companies; 4nd edition (November 27, 2007, ISBN 9780071494700)

With all of the recent doom and gloom in the financial markets, it’s easy to get discouraged about your own financial situation. But here’s some good news for a change. While personal finance may seem complicated, it really boils down to 4 good habits that can make the difference between going broke or building up your net worth each month.

1. Save money
2. Avoid debt
3. Invest
4. Don’t lose it

Just as with achieving a balanced diet or maintaining a regular exercise regimen, getting your financial house in order is easier said than done. What’s that they say about the best laid plans? A 12 step program can get you on the road to financial recovery.

Save money

1.    Know what you spend

The first step to growing your money is knowing your money.  Just by seeing that you spent $432 one month dining out with your friends, or that you went to Starbucks 37 times, you’ll change your spending habits for the better.

2.    Stick to a budget

Most of us really only have 1-2 “problem” areas.  Maybe it’s shopping, maybe its electronics.  Once you know how much you typically spend, create a budget 15-25% lower.  If you try to cut too hard too fast, you’ll never be able to stick to it.

3.    Find a checking account that pays interest

“Free” checking isn’t exactly free.  Sure you get free checks and no account fees, but most checking accounts pay no interest – zero, nothing.  Meanwhile, the banks are loaning your money out in the form of mortgages or business loans at 7-8% interest.  That’s how banks work.  If you don’t have a checking account that pays interest, you’re being ripped off. Consider switching your account to one of the many that allow your money to work for you such as an E*Trade Max-Rate Checking Account (2.9% APY on accounts over $5K) or an HSBC Online Payment Account (2.25% APY, open an account with as little as $1).

4.    Find a savings account that pays 3%+ interest

The average US savings account only pays about 0.5% interest.  With inflation at 2-3%, you’re actually losing purchasing power each year.  Find a high-yield savings account, money market fund, or CD that pays more such as E*Trade Max-Rate Savings (3.3% APY, open with as little as $1).

Avoid debt

5.    Know your credit score and correct your credit report

Your credit score determines the interest rate lenders will charge on your credit cards, mortgage, student loan, or car loan.  That means any mistakes in your credit report can cost you tens of thousands of dollars over your lifetime.  Unfortunately, 79% of all credit reports have an error, and 25% have an error serious enough to deny you access to credit. Take charge of your credit score at FreeCreditReport ($12.95/month for credit score and monitoring) or myFico (all three FICO scores and credit reports).

6.    Eliminate late fees

About 35% of your credit score is determined by on-time payment.  If you’re late on a credit card payment, it could cost you much, much more than the $29 late fee – if you let it go more than 60 days, it can affect your credit score and cost you thousands.

7.    Don’t pay credit card finance charges

The average American carries $8,500 in credit card debt.  At a minimum payment of $100 a month, it takes 6.7 years, and $4,257 in extra finance charges before you’re in the clear.  If you carry a balance, one way to get some temporary relief is through a balance transfer. The best way out of this quagmire is to pay down your highest interest card first, or look for a balance transfer card such as the Citi® Diamond Preferred® Card (0% Balance Transfer APR for up to 12 months, no annual fee, 3% transfer fee) or the Chase Platinum Visa® Card (0% Balance Transfer APR for up to 12 months, no annual fee, 3% transfer fee but no more than $99).

8.    Get a credit card that pays you

Visa and MasterCard typically charge retailers 2-3% of each purchase you make.  As a consumer, you can get a cut of those fees in the form of cash back rewards.  Don’t settle for a card that pays less than 1%. A typical household can get as much as $300 a year back just for buying what it was going to buy anyway. Examples of cash back cards include the Chase Freedom℠ Visa Signature® Card (3% cash back on gas and groceries) and Blue Cash® from American Express (up to 5% on gas, restaurants, and drugstores).

Invest

9.    Contribute to an IRA or 401k

Invest $100 a month in a tax-deferred account like an IRA or 401k, and at a growth rate of 10%, in 30 years you’d have $380k.  In a regular taxable account (assuming 20% annual taxes), you’d only have $229k.  That’s a $151k difference. Companies such as Fidelity and E*Trade offer such accounts.

10.    Start investing and keep investing

Two simple steps can put you ahead of 99% of your peers.  First, have your employer automatically deduct $200-$300 a month from your paycheck to a brokerage or mutual fund account.  Second, grow that money in an index fund like the S&P 500.  By having the money automatically deducted, you won’t be as tempted to spend it.  If $200 a month in the S&P behaves as it has in the past 20 years, two decades from now you would have around $170k in savings. Open a Scottrade Brokerage Account ($7.00 stock trades, $500 minimum deposit) or an E*Trade Financial Brokerage Account ($12.99 stock trades, $1,000 minimum deposit).

Don’t lose it

11.    Create an Emergency Fund

An emergency fund helps protect you against all of life’s ups and downs, whether they be car repairs, job loss, or a leaky roof.  If you’re young, single and have no mortgage, strive for about 3 months expenses, or ballpark around $10,000.  If you have a house, kids, or both, strive for 6 months expenses, or around $20,000 – $30,000 for the average family. Be sure to keep your emergency fund in a high-yield savings account so that it continues to grow.

12.    Protect yourself with insurance

The right insurance depends greatly on your age and whether you have a family.  If you’re in your 20’s, you need renter’s insurance – it’s typically around $150 a year and covers theft and fire.  If you have a family, you need life insurance, health insurance, and disability insurance. Compare rates at InsWeb.com or Insurance.com.

I left both home and college at 19, for a summer job in California with an internet start up. That was the summer of 2000, during the dot-com boom, and apartments were scarce. I paid $1,700 a month for a one-bedroom – which was hard to afford at a $21/hour job, I can tell you. It wasn’t until I got to the apartment that I realized: I have no furniture, no power, no connection to the outside world. Just a roof over my head. I don’t think I’d really appreciated how many things my parents had taken care of, and paid for, until that day.

I learned from that experience, and frankly it was the catalyst to my building Mint.com. My best tip?  When you make the decision to move out, put together a very simple personal budget that lists all of your one-time expenses. Whether you’ll be paying 100% of these costs, or sharing them among roommates, everyone should plan for:

• Moving Costs, including your U-Haul rental, and either gas or car transport charges
• Security deposit for your apartment
• Rental deposit
• First month’s rent
• Phone, Cable and Internet setup and installation
• Household basics like: cleaning supplies, pots and pans, dishes, etc., etc.”

Mint tip: Learn from my mistakes and prepare for your first paycheck to take several weeks to process. It took two weeks to get my first one, and then another week for it to clear. That delay, combined with all the unexpected expenses of living on my own, led to my first – and thankfully only -overdraft.

Once you’ve managed the move, start off on the right foot. Money management doesn’t have to be complicated and time-consuming. In my experience, everything you need to know and do can be summarized in about 3,000 words – not much bigger than a good term paper. Check out my Three Principles of Personal Finance post and see if you agree. Here are the parts that are probably most relevant to you now:

• Keep it simple. Setting a simple budget for just 3 – 4 discretionary expenses like restaurants, shopping, books, and entertainment makes it a sustainable change. Remember to budget for that monthly student loan payment, as well.
• Make it easy to keep your money organized. Open new accounts with banks offering the best online service you can find. If you also have accounts at school or at home, and a student loan, consider using an online service that automatically collects and analyzes all your accounts on one site. BTW, we’re adding student loan tracking to Mint.com next month.
• Know where your money goes. Often, people fall behind in managing their finances because the combination of a new job, new place and new friends keeps them too busy to collect and total all your receipts each month. To stay ahead of the curve, use a paid or free service that will do the work for you — categorizing and analyzing expenses to save time and money.
• Put your money to work for you. If you’re able to start saving now, put those dollars into your company’s 401K (if they offer a pre-tax, matching funds program) or a high yield savings account.
• Prepare for the unexpected. Get renter’s insurance. Its inexpensive protection and likely the only insurance appropriate for you at this stage in life.

Mint tip: One of our most popular features is the one I wanted most when I got out of school, but couldn’t find at any bank: text messaging. Mint.com can send SMS text messages to alert you to bills due, credit limits, and bank fees in any of your accounts. It’s like adding a mobile interface to all your banks. You’ll soon be able to send text messages to Mint, to check bank balances from your phone.

Even though money is tight when you’re young, it shouldn’t be the focus of your entire life. You can avoid money stress and surprises by using smart budgeting and money management tools. If you start managing your money well in your 20’s, you’ll be able to do more with your life, have more time for things that really matter and rest easy knowing that you’re prepared for the unexpected. Money is really just a tool for living well.
Related Mint Tips:

Budget Planner
Household Budget Software
Debt Planner
Financial Planning Software

Americans are drowning in debt. We’re falling behind on our credit card payments, our car payments and our mortgages, largely because we’re not taking our personal expenses management seriously enough. Foreclosure rates are skyrocketing. Borrowed funds now equal 138 % of annual household income, a sign we have taken on way too much debt.

THE DEBATE:

With the dreaded “R” word hanging over our collective heads, who can stop our country’s slide into debt? Is it the government’s job to stop the insanity or is it our responsibility to clean up our own messes? Shouldn’t we blame our debt issues on our inability to handle our personal finance management obligations?

COMMENTARY:

The stock market is down, and we’re seeing more and more unfavorable news on the economy coming to light these past few months. It doesn’t help that the financial sector has been reporting earnings well below analyst’s expectations, as a result of consumer credit problems and loan write-offs.

Much of the downtrend has been attributed to the subprime mortgage crisis and uncollectible loans that proliferated during a time of loose credit and high spending. Credit losses have been worsening for brokerages, banks and financial institutions as they write off bad loans and suffer through trading losses during a period of economic contraction. Bank of America, for example, reported an earnings plunge of 77 percent this week, after stating that they are reserving over $6 billion towards bad loans.

Financial institutions are in this situation because they are writing off bad debt that their customers have run up. What we’re witnessing now are the consequences of poor personal expenses management by consumers and investors across the board.

This is an example of how our collective personal debt has done a number on our economy.

My opinion? Our personal debt is our personal responsibility. It’s not the government’s job to bail us out from our credit card or mortgage debt. The real questions are: “Why are people in this country so far in debt?” and “What principles of financial responsibility should people be following to avoid such debt?”

At first glance, these questions would not appear to have easy answers. After all, Amazon.com lists over 10,000 books written on the subject of personal finance. It’s confusing, and personal finance management is not something they teach in school.

In reality, all of personal finance can be distilled into three basic principles:

1. Spend less than you earn: live beneath your means so you can save.
2. Make the money you have work for you: invest what you’ve saved and watch it grow.
3. Be prepared for the unexpected: have the right kinds of insurance, and diversify your assets.

Misapplication of these principles leads you into debt; successful application leads you to prosperity.

Most people get into trouble with the first principle, “spend less than you earn.” We each typically have 2-3 spending categories that are represent significant dollars and significant temptation. For lots of people, those include overspending on Housing, Cars, Monthly Services (cable? phone?) and Dining Out. The good news is that if you can make the tough decisions to cut back in those few areas, and have the discipline to stay under some lower budgets, you can make a dent in your debt, start to save and move forward with your financial plans.

Mint Tip: I designed Mint.com to help you readily identify your problem areas, suggest lower cost products and services, and give you all the automated tools available (web and email and SMS text alerts!) to help you keep on top of your money. And with minimal effort required (five minute set up) and for free. Mint is personal expense management made easy. I hope you’ll check out our online budget tool right now.

 
Further Reading:

Budget Planner
Create A Budget Online
Financial Budgeting Software
Budget Help

THE DETAILS: Home foreclosures, and the rate of homes entering the foreclosure process, rose to a record in 2007 as homeowners battled slumping house prices and spiking loan payments.

THE DEBATE: Who is to blame? The borrowers – for their questionable financial management and for taking out loans they did not understand and could not afford? Or the lenders – for offering loans that they sold as being less expensive than they really were?

COMMENTARY: The subprime lending debacle has its roots in a combination of factors. Aggressive real estate agents, lenders, home developers, banks and financial institutions got involved in the mortgage lending, management and investing process. The Fed has been criticized at both ends of the issue — for doing too little and too much: for not doing enough to prevent the crisis from happening, as well as artificially assisting homeowners in trouble by providing bail-outs and protections after the fact.

In my opinion, what we should have is a free market in which you’re held responsible for your own decisions. If those decisions are wise, you’ll profit; if they’re reckless, you’ll have only yourself to blame.

We’re Not Tracking Finances, Spending and Borrowing Well Enough

Borrowers willingly took on these mortgages. They are the ones with the most intimate knowledge of their own financial situation, risks, job stability and future prospects. They are the ones who are responsible for their own financial tracking. That’s information no credit score or income statement will ever reveal. As such, it is their responsibility to read and understand the terms of their loan, and determine their loan cost now and into the future. People who make poor financial decisions or speculate carelessly will lose money — and that’s the harsh reality and efficiency of a free market.

To bail-out such borrowers (as the “Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2007″ does) sends a horrible message to everyone else: that if you borrow to own or speculate in housing that you cannot reasonably expect to afford, and if the market turns against you, then you can count on a government hand-out or a legislated low-rate to soften your fall.

Imagine that we applied the same logic to credit cards. Lenders “ought to know better” than to approve a new card with a $20,000 limit, if the borrower already has significant credit card debt. Is it the fault of the card company, or is it the fault of the consumer who cannot control their spending, who hasn’t spent enough time tracking finances, and has requested yet another card to fuel their shopping sprees?

The Real Culprit of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis?

Surprisingly, few in the media are calling out the original culprit here: a government policy of monetary manipulation that pushed interest rates to artificial lows. This, along with “pro-housing” legislation and tax-breaks, sent a signal to some that housing was a can’t-miss proposition. But when interest rates are decided by the whims of bureaucrats, the party can end at any time…and unfortunately, it looks like it has.
Further Reading:

Expenses Tracking
Debt Planning
Finance Management
Expense Planner
Track Spending

I’ve been a big fan of Motley Fool for over a decade now. In fact, the Motley Fool guided my very first investing strategies back in 1996. I think their take on investing and personal finance advice is insightful, simple, and direct. This is what we aspire to at Mint as well. The Motley Fool first approached us in October right after we launched at TechCrunch 40. They immediately resonated with our mission to help people understand and do more with their money. Even before we were the leader in personal finance web-apps, they saw our potential. I’m honored to have them as a partner. You can read more about the partnership here.

You can see Motley Fool content on our Content Network today at www.mint.com/blog, with much more to come in the future. In general, expect more articles on smart investing strategies from Mint in the future. Many of you who are Mint.com users have noticed that we quietly added brokerage and investment account tracking to our money management service last month. Stay tuned for more in that area soon. We’ll be unveiling a pretty exciting, Mint-like approach to understanding and doing more with your investments this month.

Aaron Patzer
Founder & CEO, Mint.com