Before you can determine how much you should be spending within any given category such as rent, transportation or paying back your student loans, you’ll need to first get a handle on how much you are actually spending. When you first sign up for Mint.com you’re asked to add all of your financial accounts so that you can see all of your spending in a single place. You’ll get an at-a-glance view of your balances across all accounts — there’s no need to log into multiple web sites just to see your balances.

Automatically categorized transactions

Mint.com shows you exactly what you are spending and where by auto-categorizing all of your transactions. You don’t have to go through the laborious process of tagging your transactions. Mint does it for you. But it’s flexible. If you’d like to categorize your iTunes purchases as food (music being food for the soul after all), and not as Entertainment, Mint won’t stop you. You’ll be able to tell immediately what your average spending is in any given category.

It’s now possible to track your spending and income over time in order to get a true picture of exactly how much money you’ll have left over at the end of the month. Mint.com lets you compare you spending from one year to the next or from one month to the next. Your budgets roll over each month so you can make adjustments as you go along.

Charting your course

Mint.com helps you to create a budget based on your actual spending, not based on some pre-determined notion of what you should be spending. Pie and bar charts break down your spending by category so that you can see exactly how much of your income goes to mortgage or rent, groceries, dining out, and much more.

The real key to budgeting with Mint is that your budget and what sets it apart from using an Excel spreadsheet is that it is based on actuals not hypotheticals. We’ve added 16 interactive graphs that show you exactly how you are spending over time. With the graphs you can see exactly where you need to cut back in order to get your budget back on track.

Mint.com starts you out with a preliminary budget that you can adjust as needed to reflect your personal values and financial goals.

Setting goals

Mint.com’s budgeting tools are flexible enough to deal with a number of possible budgeting scenarios. Unlike with a spreadsheet or the tried and true back of the envelope approach, you can play around to see how changes in your spending or income level will affect how much money you’ll have left over at the end of the month. In other tools, you are locked into specifying a dollar amount for each category on a monthly basis.

But Mint.com lets you enter irregular expenses that don’t occur monthly. You can even see how one-time only expenses that you may not have accounted for will affect your savings plan.The ability to look forward allows you to use Mint.com as a planning tool that lets you see exactly how much money you’ll have left at the end of the month.

This works with income too. Whether you get paid each week, every two weeks, once a month, or entirely upfront, you’ll still know where you stand. Mint is also a great choice for freelancers, consultants and others who can’t count on a regular paycheck but still want to be able to budget into the future.

Monitoring Your Budget

You’ll want to make sure to log in to your account regularly to adjust for changes in your spending and income patterns. But Mint.com is also proactive in helping you with both setting up a budget and maintaining it. Not only do we give auto-categorize your transactions and provide a starter budget. We also send you either SMS or email alerts for when bills are due or when there’s been unusual spending in any of your accounts. By keeping a closer eye on your spending you’ll be able to keep your budget on track.

Mint’s approach to budgeting is simple, automatic and, above all, flexible enough to accommodate a variety of budgeting approaches.

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If there’s one thing you can be certain of in life, it’s the uncertainties. No matter how carefully you plot out your expenses, there will always be those that you didn’t account for. You’ve got medical insurance so you think you’re okay. But what happens when you need an expensive prescription only to discover that it isn’t covered. You’ve got homeowners or renter’s insurance and you’ve insured your wedding ring. But what happens when an unexpected bundle of joy is delivered, or you decide to send your little darling to an expensive private preschool?

It’s not enough to make sure you’ve paid down your credit card debt or to make sure you are investing for your eventual retirement. An emergency fund must be a part of any sound financial plan.

Most people count on their employer for their income, tax payments, and medical benefits. But what happens when you are laid off (an increasing likelihood in this economy) and all of a sudden you are stuck with having to pay for things yourself. No matter where you stand financially, it’s going to take you awhile to get back on your feet. So most people will agree that an emergency fund makes fiscal sense. The question is how much do you need?

The standard answer to that question is that you should have three to six months of expenses set aside but in these oh so nonstandard times, that’s not necessarily enough. Keep in mind that every individual is different and your expenses will vary depending on what time of year it is. You might have a particularly expensive hobby, like going up to Lake Tahoe every weekend to ski during snow season. Or you might need to pay a piano teacher for lessons each week. If you’re thinking that these are luxuries that can be cut back on when disaster strikes, you’re right. But ideally your emergency fund should allow you to maintain the same quality of life you have now. With an unemployment rate that is at the highest it has been for the past 15 years, you may need to revise that time frame to between 6-12 months. If you are more experienced and thus higher paid, you will be at a disadvantage during this recession because it will take longer, often much longer, for you to find a job.

Your first step in establishing an emergency fund should be to set up a budget. It’s especially important to pay attention to those reoccurring payments; grocery bills, car payments, rent or mortgage payment, internet access and phone bills, electric and water bills, that can’t be entirely eliminated.

Okay, now that you’ve established the need for an emergency fund and have some idea of how much you need, you need to decide where that money should go. No, stuffing it under your mattress is not a viable option. You still need to put your money to work for you so that you can, at minimum, get ahead of inflation. Remember that you’ll need immediate access to these funds should disaster strike so forget about any accounts or investment vehicles that make you pay a penalty for early withdrawal. That’s what the financial gurus refer to as liquidity.

This is your emergency fund we are talking about so you should be as risk adverse as possible when it comes to establishing it. So forget about the stock market and put that money into an interest earning account at the highest yield possible. Mint.com’s Ways to Save can help you identify whether the interest rates and fees you are paying on your current checking and savings accounts are as good as you can get. If not, consider opening an account just for your emergency fund. In addition to checking and savings accounts, you may want to consider money market mutual funds or a certificate of deposit (CD) as places to stash your cash. Both are good, stable investment vehicles that are somewhat immune to the ups and downs of the financial markets.

Lastly, you should make sure that your credit score is high and you’ve established a solid line of credit. Worse comes to worse, you can pay for your day-to-day expenses with your credit card and defer the payments until such time as you are again gainfully employed or otherwise financially solvent. But this should remain a last resort. Make sure you pay the balance off in full each month so as not to incur finance charges. With a little advance preparation, you can weather any storm.

The bad news is inescapable and much as you’d like to there’s no use hiding under a rock. If your kids are starting to ask questions about the economy, it’s a good idea to learn the best way to talk to them about this difficult subject.

According to the experts, today’s kids are much better equipped to deal with sensitive subjects than you were, as you know if you’ve already discussed sex with them without resorting to that birds & bees nonsense. The trick is in approaching them in a way that raises their comfort level and presents only the information that is appropriate to their age level.

If you don’t talk to them about the economy, they are going to hear about it anyway. So don’t worry about whether you think they’ll be able to understand what’s going on. The best thing you can do is to keep the lines of communication open.

We asked Atlanta GA-based psychologist Dr. Erik A. Fisher for his advice in talking to kids about the economy. Dr. Fisher is the author of “The Art of Empowered Parenting, The Manual You Wish Your Kids Came With” and a blogger for the parenting website, ParentSociety.

Provide concrete examples

At age 3 your kids aren’t ready to understand personal finance. It’s vitally important that you express confidence and avoid passing on your own fears and insecurities to your children. 8 year-olds and older are ready for an education in basic financial concepts but these are difficult for even adults to understand, so you’ll want to make sure to provide concrete examples. “Your kids will hear all kinds of terms like foreclosure but they won’t know what that means,” says Fisher. “Explain to them how a mortgage works and what banks do. Make it concrete by using examples such as a barrel full of apples. Get out a stack of pennies and teach them how interest works.” Fisher stresses that, while there are certain guidelines for particular age groups, it’s also important to keep in mind the maturity level of the individual child, “If the child finds it difficult to accept change, you have to ease into those conversations, give them bits and pieces of the puzzle.”

Emphasize the role of the family

You should teach your kids the value of work and explain to them that, in these tough economic times, everyone is going to have to work a little bit harder. Fisher stresses the importance of the family unit and says you should get across the idea that you, as a family, are all in this together. “Have your kids put some money away each week so that they can realize the value of savings,” he says. Explain to your kids that the family is like a business, with money coming in (income) and money going out (expenses). An understanding of what goes into running a family can go a long way toward teaching kids the value of money.

Paint a positive picture

While Fisher thinks that a lot of parents make the mistake of pretending that everything is rosy right up to the point where the family is forced to move to an apartment because the bank just repossesed that 3-bedroom home in the burbs, he says there are things that you should keep from your children. “Don’t let them know how much you owe,” he says. “Don’t let them know that you are horribly in debt and can’t get out. And whatever you say, don’t make the kids feel guilty.” Kids, right up into their teenage years are largely driven by impulses and emotions. It’s okay to gloss over the details so long as you provide them with hope that your family will recovery from this temporary setback. “If you’ve been impacted financially and had to make adjustments in your spending, let the child know that things are changing in terms of how the family is spending their money but reassure them that they are going to be taken care of and that it is not their fault.” The parent’s role doesn’t change just because your financial situation may have. It’s as important as ever to provide your children with a sense of security.

Focus on what’s really important

Life is full of ups and downs. The economy is cyclical. But relationships, if properly nurtured, can last a lifetime. You don’t have to go on expensive vacations or constantly look for ways to entertain your kids. Simply spend more quality time with them and less time slaving away at work. Fisher says you shouldn’t back off on allowances because providing kids with an allowance and letting them make their own choices about how they spend their money is critical to teaching them the value of things. But it’s also important to take a step back and show them that there is more to life than things alone.

Older children, let’s say teenagers and above, are ready to learn a powerful lesson from the economic crisis. Explaining the root causes of the crisis can help teach the lesson that arrogance has been the downfall of every major civilization throughout history, according to Fisher. “We’ve spent so much time in our culture accumulating wealth and what got sacrificed is relationships. Our sense of value should come from within.”

Managing your money shouldn’t get in the way of living your life. That’s why personal finance apps are such a natural fit for the iPhone. They let you track your stocks, convert currencies, calculate how much you owe, and track expenses—all on the go. The more full-featured among them even let you manage multiple accounts and transfer money between them. The best apps are those that take advantage of the iPhone’s finger-friendly interface or unique features such as location-awareness. For example, GPS or WiFi can be helpful in finding the way to the nearest ATM. Most of these apps are free or available for a nominal charge so there’s little to lose by trying them. Here’s a look at 10 that count.

Bloomberg Mobile (Free)

Bloomberg

Wall Street Traders swear by the Bloomberg Terminal to analyze real-time financial market data, place trades, and get news and price quotes. Bloomberg Mobile isn’t quite the same thing but it is a beautifully designed app that provides up-to-the-minute news, stock quotes, company descriptions, and price chart and market trend analysis. The My Stocks feature is a more detailed replacement for Apple’s stock Stocks app. And Bloomberg Mobile takes full advantage of the iPhone’s position sensor by providing larger charts when you rotate the phone to a horizontal position.

Mobile Banking (Free)

Bank of America

Bank of America’s iPhone app, Mobile Banking is little more than a wrapper around its existing mobile site (which isn’t optimized for the iPhone) but if this is your bank you’ll still find it useful. You can use it to check available balances, pay bills, and transfer funds on-the-go 24/7. Its best feature is its ability to find the nearest ATM and Banking Center locations using the GPS in the iPhone, something that isn’t possible with the mobile site. BofA’s Online Banking Guarantee is its assurance that you won’t be responsible for any unauthorized transactions and it uses advanced encryption technology to prevent unauthorized access to your accounts and to protect your online identity.

PayPal (Free)

PayPal

In Japan many have thrown away their wallets in favor of paying for everything from train tickets to beer from a vending machine with their mobile phones. We’re not quite there yet but the PayPal app provides a tantalizing glimpse at this future. It provides complete access to your PayPal account allowing you to check your balances and send money to your friends and family, all from your iPhone. It supports 16 currencies and is secured by your existing PIN or password. It’s a good start but I’d like to see it go further. Missing is any way of displaying your transaction history and I’d also like to see it use the notification indicator on the app icon to show when money has arrived in your account.

Loan Shark ($4.99)

FoggyNoggin Software

Designed to help you navigate the often treacherous waters of financial lending, Loan Shark provides a number of features that let you calculate and compare loans from different vendors. You can calculate any component of a loan, including payment, interest rate or loan amount, see the full Amortization Table for the loan’s lifespan and play with “what-if” scenarios that let you determine the effect of making extra, higher, or lower payments. Loan Shark can help you determine how long it will take to pay off that credit card, determine how close you are to paying off your mortgage, and compare the cost of different loans, among many other uses. Kudos to FoggyNoggin Software for an easy-to-use and good looking interface that works well on a mobile device.

Bonus feature: Lets you locate nearby banks using the iPhone’s location-awareness

Tipulator (99 cents)

Tap Tap Tap

Tipulator stands out in a crowded field of tip calculators (it’s often said that the true test of how successful a new platform will be is how quickly a tip calculator appears for it) by marrying cute graphics with easy-to-use number dials. You can probably split the check without it but you won’t have as much fun doing it. And for 1/3 the price of your last latte, you owe it to yourself to at least try it.

Tiptap (Free)

Made With Bananas

More traditional but no less useful is the free Tiptap which is one of the most straightforward tip calculators I’ve seen. Featuring a large custom keypad and a large picker wheel, it’s extremely finger friendly, a plus when when your dining companions are tapping on their wallets and waiting for you to tell them how much they owe. You can choose to enable rounding, splitting, or tax support and Tiptap works with multiple currencies and multiple languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, German, Swedish and Japanese).

PocketMoney ($9.99)

Catamount Software

This venerable mobile checkbook first appeared 14 years ago on the Apple Newton and has since been available on Palm and Windows Mobile devices. Long time PDA users transitioning to the iPhone and former Quicken users alike will welcome its powerful approach to tracking your finances. PocketMoney can track an unlimited number of accounts, can auto-complete transactions based on payee, and will generate expense reports and pie charts. PocketMoney can import database files from the Palm version and also Quicken Interchange Format (QIF). You can even sync these files over a WiFi network using a free desktop app.

SplashMoney ($9.99)

SplashData

SplashMoney is another mobile checkbook that is well known from its implementation on Palm and Windows Mobile. SplashMoney allows you to track different account types: checking, savings, credit card, cash, asset, liability, money market and line of credit. You can create a budget and track and analyze your spending with customizable reports and charts. SplashMoney bests PocketMoney by connecting wirelessly to many online US banks using the same DirectConnect service as Quicken and Microsoft Money. In order to sync with the desktop, you’ll need to purchase the desktop version of SplashMoney separately.

Day Bank ($3.99)

Quantum Quinn

Day Bank is a pocket-sized check register that has been built specifically for the iPhone with a number of features that take advantage of the phone’s capabilities. Unlike the others included here, Day Bank seems particularly suited for entering transactions on the go and tracking your cash spending. Transaction entry is particularly speedy and the app uses the iPhone’s camera to capture images of receipts or purchased items. I like the ability to easily filter the view by day, week, and month. Day Bank isn’t as full featured as its competitors and currently can’t serve as your primary money manager due to its inability to reconcile transactions but it is improving rapidly and in its next version will support transaction geo-tagging, the ability to rename categories, QIF, CSV, & XML export, WiFi backup and restore and more.

Pennies ($2.99)

Design By A Knife

Pennies is a slick expense tracker with an interface that looks like it could have come straight from Apple. It doesn’t pretend to be a full-featured money manager like SplashMoney or PocketMoney but what it does do it does exceedingly well. It lets you quickly establish a monthly budget and record and track your daily expenses against it. Large finger friendly buttons and fun features such as a fuel gauge that indicates how much money is left in your budget make Pennies a joy to use. If you still rely on cash for your daily purchases and only want to make sure you are meeting your budget goals, Pennies is a good choice.

One answer comes in Mint’s ability to give back to the community by sending three budding internet entrepreneurs to the conference this year.

We ran a contest and awarded three passes to the users who either referred the most friends to Mint.com, wrote the best story about how Mint.com has helped him/her mange money, or proved themselves to be the biggest Mint.com fan.

I really enjoyed meeting all three of them in person so let me take a minute to introduce them to you.

Dan Hassenplug, from Chicago, Illinois is a marketing professional with a taste for social media and an interest in personal finance. After hearing about Mint.com when the news broke at last year’s TechCrunch, he decided to see if the service could help him integrate his finances. Dan was particularly drawn to the service’s attractive graphical user interface and handy SMS alerts and weekly email update. “The idea of using something like this to manage my finances was a no-brainer,” says Dan. “I decided right then that this was something I needed in my life.”

Dan, who has now acquired the moniker the MintFanatic™ created a website of the same name to share his love for his favorite online money management tool. Rejected names included “Send me to TechCrunch,” “MintyFresh,” and “I Love Mints.” By any name, his admittedly over-the-top efforts to win, which included daily video posts are a clear sign of his devotion to the service.


Robert Love, a graduate student at the University of Florida in aerospace engineering, took a more analytical approach, quantifying his experience using Mint.com in actual dollars saved ($1,000 in about 40 hours). “The main savings came not just from using Mint.com but from making lifestyle decisions based on what Mint.com was telling me to do,” he says.

Robert is taking an entrepreneur class this semester and is looking forward to learning more about the business side of startups at TechCrunch. “I’m really interested in the dynamics behind building a team and the process of working ideas through to implementation.


Ryan Merket is a Senior Designer at CBS Interactive in San Francisco specializing in social media and the creative brains behind a number of innovative startups including Ping.fm. Like Dan, Ryan heard about Mint’s win at last year’s TechCrunch and signed up immediately. As a designer himself, he was surprised to see how much he liked the design of the service. “It stood out 10 fold over the rest of the sites out there and it was amazing how quickly it pulled all of my information together,” he says.

In addition, Ryan is an advocate of the kind of cloud computing Mint espouses. “I’ve tried Microsoft Money and frankly, I don’t want to put my money on my laptop. Someone can rob you of your computer bag.”

Not being a writer, Ryan knew his best shot at winning was to leverage his extensive Gmail contact list. Good thing he did. After missing TechCrunch last year and failing to make the cut this year, he finally got to attend, thanks to Mint.

Just as Mint’s software streamlines the management of your personal finances, our content delivers a fresh perspective that gives you the actionable advice you need to make the right choices about how to spend and save your money.

We understand that the challenges you face are different from your parent’s generation and your expectations about how you live, work, and play are different too. If you’re just getting started in managing your money, look to Mint.com for how-to information on everything from planning a budget vacation to improving your credit rating. We’ll continue to provide you with money saving tips on all of the things you do, whether that’s buying concert tickets or going on a surfing trip to South Africa. We’ll also be covering topics that you won’t find on other personal finance sites. For now, those will remain our little secret.

And we can’t do it without you. Our hope is that the Mint blog becomes a two-way forum for your thoughts, hopes and aspirations around the money you work so hard for every day. We encourage you to reinvest—not just in stocks or mutual funds but also in your relationship with your money. Just like in your personal relationships, a small investment can pay huge dividends. As we like to say around here, “money is for living,” and that philosophy is at the heart of every blog post we write.

Let us know what kinds of articles you’d like to see on Mint, either by leaving a comment here or writing me directly at lee@mint.com. A penny for your thoughts?

Lee

In the movie, Wall Street, ruthless stockbroker Gordon Gekko preached the mantra “greed is good,” but today it’s “green is good,” as his yuppie lifestyle gets replaced by attempts to save money while saving the planet. Here are six easy ways to go green.

1. Move to a more walkable neighborhood

With gas prices topping $4 a gallon, living in a place where you can walk, bike, or take public transit can save you as much as $5,000 a year on gas (according to research by the Congress for New Urbanism) while at the same time reducing greenhouse emissions, slowing suburban sprawl, and kick-starting the local economy. To see how your neighborhood rates, visit WalkScore which recently ranked the 40 largest cities in the country on how close residents were to markets, cafes, restaurants, and shops.

2. Work from home

If you’re able to work at home you can help cut down on traffic congestion and the resulting pollutants released into the air. Since even public transportation costs money, even telecommuting one day a week can save you as much as $1500 a year and allow you to spend more quality time with your family.

3. Shop responsibly

At EcoPerks, each time you purchase a product from one of its 500 participating retailers, you earn points for yourself and your chosen environmental cause. Every dollar you spend is converted into a matching donation. You can also calculate your carbon footprint and purchase eco-friendly products and services from the site.

4. Think global, eat local

Buying your groceries at the local Farmer’s Market, instead of a national supermarket chain, keeps money in the local economy and in your pocket. By cutting out the middleman and buying directly from the farmers that grow your food, you’ll save money and be able to choose from a wider variety of incredibly fresh produce. Remember to bring your own reusable shopping bag (preferably one made of canvas, not paper or plastic).

5. Ban bottled water

Want great tasting, high quality water? Just turn on the tap. Most cities in the developed world have perfectly good water and if you are really worried you can always use a water filter to purify tap water. In fact, according to a four-year study conducted by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), one-third of bottled water tested contained levels of contamination. NRDC found that city tap water is subjected to much more rigorous testing and purity standards. Bottled water is one of the biggest scams going and not only are you paying for those plastic bottles, they are extremely harmful to the environment.

6. Recharge your batteries

A staggering half a billion batteries are purchased in the US each year and when they are done powering your personal electronics they go straight into landfills, releasing toxic chemicals into the environment. Switching from disposable to sustainable batteries, which cost a bit more upfront but can be used as much as 3,000 times, provides an incredible cost savings in the long run and can have up to 30 times less impact on the environment according to a study done earlier this year.