The Apple iPad is this season’s most desirable gadget but it might not be in your budget. Mint.com is all about helping you keep to that budget so we’ve decided to give away a Free Apple iPad! Enter here: http://bit.ly/cvRsPi.

The Free Mint.com iPhone app works great on the iPad and will help you manage your money wherever you are, with the features you need while on the go. Use the Mint.com app to check your balances, edit your transactions, and be alerted — via real-time push notifications, email or SMS — when you are over budget or get hit with fees or other unusual charges.

But, as Steve Jobs would say, there’s “one more thing.” We’ll pick one winner and if that winner heard about the contest from another Mint.com fan, then we’ll give the referrer an Apple iPad too.

The contest will run until March 18th at 11:59pm pacific time. Entrants must be fans of Mint.com on facebook: Facebook.com/mint to be eligible to win.

You know what they say about a picture being worth a thousand words? When it comes to explaining concepts like inflation or describing how the Federal Reserve works, a visualization or infographic can educate while it entertains. From bankers to bailouts to taxes and unemployment, the economic downturn provided plenty of fodder for infographics this year and it quickly became part of our mission to produce ‘em to help make sense of it all.

Our visual guides, Mint maps, and animations have proved popular and we’ll be putting even more emphasis on them in the year ahead. For those that may have missed ‘em, here’s a look back at our best financial infographics of 2009, according to you, our readers.

Charity: Who Cares?

Americans lead the world in charitable contributions, giving $300 billion a year to charities. Sounds like a lot right? But this is just a drop in the bucket compared to the over One Trillion Dollars needed to keep US charities in operation, more than the US government collects in taxes. The rest comes from their own assets, government support, and foreign investment. Our visual guide to giving shows who’s paying and offers some tips on how to pick a charity of your own.

Who is paying taxes?

Recent news articles have brought to light the fact that almost 47% of households in the US currently have zero or negative federal tax liability. We take a closer look at this lack of liability across each income level, highlighting the percentage in each range that will not pay any taxes. Also shown is a full breakdown of who is paying the bulk of all taxes collected by the Federal Government each year.

A visual guide to inflation

Inflation. It’s bad right? When prices rise your money is worth less and nobody wants to see their hard earned cash decline in value. But what is inflation anyway and what are its root causes? Turns out the situation is not as straightforward as it first appears. In this first of a two-part series we take a look at inflation and examine the pros and cons of this important barometer of the health of the US economy. Stay tuned for part two next week where we look at inflation’s alter ego, deflation. We look forward to your feedback and comments below.

The Fall of GM: A Visual Guide

In recent weeks, GM has been making a last-ditch effort to deal with its mounting problems and somehow escape bankruptcy. The final outcome remains to be seen, but any bailout efforts or even the most drastic of moves at this stage seem to be, as visualized below, the equivalent of lifting massive, crushing weights with simple balloons. The announcement of the resignation of GM Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner at the behest of the Obama administration was just the latest in a series of moves designed to reassure public confidence in the flailing automotive manufacturer.

Mint Map: America’s Most Frugal Cities

We all know that Americans have cut back on their spending during the recession but where are they cutting back the most? Comparing 20 cities across 25 “discretionary” categories we found that five cities spend less than the national average and cut more of their spending (yr over yr) than the national average. Our latest map is based on the aggregate data from over one million Mint.com users, a representative sampling of US consumers.

Student Loans by the Numbers

While it’s been said you should never underestimate the value of a college education, neither should you underestimate its price. Without proper financial planning, you could be paying off those student loans for the rest of your life. College tuition costs are rising at twice the rate of inflation, in part because colleges are attempting to make up for reduced public funding under the previous administration and passing the costs on to you and your parents. The Obama administration has proposed a massive overhaul of up to $6 billion dollars in federal loans but many fear this will lead to the same kind of death spiral that got us into a financial mess with the housing crisis. The numbers tell the real story.

Mint Map: The World’s Resources by Country

A country’s economic worth can be measured in more ways than just its GDP and national debt. It is also important to consider the economic potential that lies in the harvesting of the natural resources within its borders. This map shows the top producing countries of each resource, or the proved reserves in the case of oil and natural gas. Each circle represents the percentage of the world’s total that the country produced in the last two years. Though some of the resources are renewable and some are not, it is interesting to see which parts of the world are rich in resources that are essential to our way of life, and to consider what this map might look like 10 or 100 years from now.

Golden Parachutes: How the Bankers Went Down

When high-ranking executives are fired from a company, for whatever reason, they don’t go to the back of the unemployment line. Instead, they typically receive compensation in the form of the “golden parachute.” Golden parachutes can include severance pay, cash bonuses, stock options or other benefits. In the case of the financial crisis and the ensuing bank failures, if it seems like these executives are being rewarded for poor performance, you may be right. Here’s a look at what some bankers made on their way down.

The Descent into Credit Card Debt

When used wisely, credit cards can be the cornerstone of a sound financial strategy. A solid credit history makes you a good credit risk and that in turn allows you to purchase the necessities of life. But credit cards can also be a slippery slope. One misstep and you’ll tumble into the abyss of credit card debt hell, a mounting spiral of missed payments, fees, high APRs, and rate increases that will take years to recover from. Only by remaining vigilant can you hope to avoid this fate. Here’s our guide to what you may experience on the way down.

China vs United States: A Visual Comparison

Everyone knows that China’s got more people and that its importance as an economic superpower has escalated in recent years. What you might not understand is how the differences between our countries, in economic philosophy, in population, in geography and in how the military is built and paid for ultimately play into the entire economic relationship.

The government is telling us that the economic stimulus is working and the recession is over. But you wouldn’t know it from looking at the unemployment numbers. While we may have dodged another great depression, unemployment is at its worst since then, having fallen to 10 percent by the Fed’s own reckoning. And, while we don’t like to be the bearers of bad news, we do stand for transparency in reporting statistics. So we’ve produced an animated infographic explaining who gets to call themselves ‘officially’ unemployed, and why the government leaves out millions of jobless Americans in their often cited and repeated unemployment rate statistic. So while the economy may be recovering, it might be awhile before many Americans feel it in their wallets.

Embed the above video on your site
<object width="600" height="360"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ulu3SCAmeBA&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ulu3SCAmeBA&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="600" height="360"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://www.mint.com/">Free budget software</a> – Mint.com

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Enhanced Security

While you could always lock your device with the device passcode, we heard from users that wanted to specifically safeguard the Mint.com app with its own four-digit passcode. Now you can. Hand your phone to someone else and they’ll be locked out of the app. And if someone tries to hack it, after five attempts, we’ll reset your account and delete all of your personal information. If your phone is lost, stolen or misplaced, you can deactivate iPhone access.

Editable Transactions

We’re continuing to improve the Mint.com iPhone app to make it even more useful while you are on the go. You can now edit essential transaction details such as category, tag, description, note and date.

Real-time Notifications

The Mint.com iPhone app now takes full advantage of the notification technology in iPhone OS 3.0. In addition to getting notifications via email or SMS, you can now have them “pushed” directly to your device. It’s faster and it saves you money. Notifications for when you’ve gone over budget, receive fees or experience other unusual activity are delivered securely, right when they happen.

Update your iPhone app and take advantage of the new features today.

A star is born. MintLife, our still new online magazine devoted to helping you manage your money and understand the economy is a finalist in the OMMA Awards for Web Site Excellence and your voice counts. Vote for us!

We’ll save the complete list of thank you’s for the award ceremony itself (if we make it) but there a few people we’d like to single out. First, we’d like to give a shout-out to the team at Mule Design, our partners in designing MintLife, who helped us create a website that has the real-time immediacy and interactivity of a blog, but the depth and research of a magazine. MintLife also delivers on Mint.com’s dedication to transparency by aggregating conversations already taking place across the social web on sites like digg, Facebook, reddit, StumbleUpon and Twitter. Congrats to Mike, Erika, Katie, Rebecca, and David on this recognition of your incredible talent. On the Mint side, JP kept us true to Mint’s design aesthetic and Adam and Colin put in countless extra hours to ensure that we launched on time and with desired functionality. Thanks too to the team of fantastic writers and visual artists (too many to list here) who have provided us with such killer content. We couldn’t have done it without you.

The OMMA Awards are being held by MediaPost, a leading publisher of print and online magazines for media and advertising pros. You must register with MediaPost to enter but membership is free and gives you access to its website and publications.

You have until September 16 to cast your vote.

Winners will be announced on September 21, 2009, during MediaPost’s OMMA Awards Reception at the OMMA Global New York Conference and Expo.

Budgets that work like you do

Now our budgeting features let you plan for the future like never before.
Look ahead to see how your current spending decisions will affect your ability to save. Move from just creating a budget to taking a comprehensive look at your financial health. You’ll know immediately what you can do today to save even more tomorrow. Now you can:

• Budget on income as well as expenses
• Budget for infrequent expenses (like paying taxes or annual vacation)
• Roll over unspent funds from one month to next
• Budget over different time periods

Improved graphs and trends

We’ve added more options for tracking spending, income, net worth and account balances over time. You’ll make smarter decisions when you start comparing your spending year-to-year or month-to-month. 16 interactive graphs give you the real-time insights you need. Now you can:

• Graph net worth over time and net income over time
• Compare your data across different time periods
• Compare your data to other demographic or geographic groups
• Enter more granular demographic data for future comparison options
• Easily export all reports to a CSV file

Better filters

Mint.com lets you see things your way, whether you are managing your household finances or running a small business. You can now filter trends and budgets by either account type or tag, giving you more ways to manage your finances. Now you can:

• Select which accounts or tags are included in budgets or trends
• Easily separate out spending by household member, or business from personal spending

New ways to save

We’ve added IRA Rollovers to Ways to Save making it easier than ever to save thousands of dollars toward your retirement.

Microsoft today announced that it will stop selling Microsoft Money, its venerable personal finance software, by the end of June. While the software will continue to work, users will no longer have access to automated data feeds from their banks, credit card companies and other financial service providers.

If you’re a Microsoft Money user looking for a new tool to help you continue to manage your money, we invite you to try Mint.com.

Mint.com is the #1 free online personal finance service…and it’s free. It makes staying on top of your finances easy, efficient, and convenient. Mint.com shows you all of your accounts in one place, helps you budget, finds you ways to save money, and alerts you to any unusual activity in any of your accounts. Over a million users trust Mint.com with their critical financial information and find it the most convenient way to manage their money.

Here’s why we think you’ll like Mint.com as much as they do:

You’re in good company

Nearly 40% of Mint.com users tell us they’ve tried Microsoft Money — and chose Mint.com. In fact, Motley Fool and Lifehacker.com readers (among others) have consistently picked Mint.com as their favorite personal finance tool.

Mint starts free and stays free

Sign up for Mint.com and you can say goodbye to buying annual upgrades. Mint.com is continually adding and improving its features. And when we do, you’ll get them free.

Mint.com is easy to set up…and the rest is automatic

There’s no need to install software and connecting your financial accounts takes just minutes. After that, we do the work for you, updating your accounts, categorizing your transactions, calculating budgets, sending you alerts, etc.

Mint is online and accessible from anywhere

Unlike Microsoft Money, Mint.com can be used from any web browser on any computer. There’s no need to install anything and you can be up and running in a matter of minutes. We even have an iPhone app and a version of our service for your My Yahoo! personalized home page.

Mint is safe and secure

Your security is our first priority. We never ask for any personally identifiable information. We connect directly to your accounts using the same bank-level security as leading financial institutions. You can’t move money in Mint.com, and neither can anyone else.

Mint saves you money

Mint.com automatically compares your credit cards, bank accounts, brokerage accounts and CD’s to available offers and lets you know if there are better options to consider.

We know that change can be stressful. That’s why we’ve made it as easy as possible to get started with Mint.com. All you need is an email address and password. Then, add your accounts one at a time in just minutes. We hope you’ll try us out today.

Welcome, and please let us know your first impressions of Mint.com.

Many Americans start each day on their personalized My Yahoo! homepage. Starting today, they can use our new Yahoo! application to keep an eye on their money and budgets right along with their email, weather reports, sports scores, and news streams. If you’re a My Yahoo user, please try out the app today!

To add the app click here, or from My Yahoo! go to “Add Content” and look for the “Open Apps” category in the My Yahoo! gallery.

Look for the small
Mint leaf logo and click on
“+ Add”.

My Yahoo! users using the Mint.com app will get many of the at-a-glance insights that existing Mint.com users love most — an overview of their financial essentials — net cash, budgets, categorized spending, Mint.com alerts, investment performance, and ways to save – all on their home page.

And because so many Yahoo! users check their home page from their laptop while away from home, the Mint.com Yahoo! app does not display account balances or specific transactions. But all those details are just a click away on the Mint.com website.

We were honored to get the call from Yahoo! asking us to create a version of Mint.com specifically for their new Application Platform. We were one of just a select few companies chosen, we’ve knocked ourselves out getting this to market, and we’re excited to see it launch. At Mint, we believe that managing your personal finances should be an integrated part of your day-to-day life. Please let us know if or how the Mint.com Yahoo! app does that for you.

IMGCOM

As we head into Memorial Day weekend and look forward to spending time with our friends and families, our thoughts go out to those in military families who are separated from their loved ones. While Mint.com can’t help much in bringing them physically closer, we can bring them financially together and reduce some of the stresses that money management places on them.  We spoke with Lieutenant Colonel Mike Fenzel about this issue.

Lieutenant Colonel Fenzel has served in Afghanistan and Iraq while his wife and three children remained stateside.  He agrees that family members serving overseas face a particularly difficult time staying on top of their money while living apart.

“Leaving home to go to war for a year or more is hard enough, but when you add the complexity of managing finances while taking care of the kids it becomes a significant challenge and, as the months go by, a real burden,” he says. “This is particularly true if you own a home, are paying off school loans, or raising a growing family. When you do finally get on the phone with your spouse, the very last thing you want to talk about is a financial problem. Any tools that will make this easier for military families and lighten this burden would result in thousands of silent ‘thank you’s’ from around the military community.”

Mint.com addresses the needs of military families (and all families) by:

• Letting you see the family’s total financial picture on one, secure website…available 7/24.
• Making it simpler to track the family’s spending. We consolidate and categorize all debit and credit card charges in a single, searchable database…and provide charts and graphs which show how spending is trending over time.
• Making it easier to set and stick to budgets, by automatically calculating and tracking spending in the categories that each family feels are most critical.
• Making it clear how the family’s investments are performing vs. “the Market” with easy-to-understand graphs.
• Sending email or text alerts on significant expenses and deposits to both spouses simultaneously, wherever they are in the world.
• Providing iPhone access to virtually all of the above services, via the free Mint.com iPhone app.

We hope to provide a little peace of mind to anyone serving at home or abroad.  Thanks for your service and Happy Memorial Day to all.

]]> http://www.mint.com/blog/updates/helping-military-families-with-their-finances/feed/ 3 http://www.mint.com/blog/updates/get-your-mom-on-mintcom-for-mothers-day/ http://www.mint.com/blog/updates/get-your-mom-on-mintcom-for-mothers-day/#comments Tue, 05 May 2009 00:20:49 +0000 Mint.com http://www.mint.com/blog/?p=3090 ]]> Most Moms already handle all of the household finances. If you use Mint.com, you already know how easy it makes managing your money. Flowers and chocolates don’t last. Give her a gift that will, a little of your time in getting her set up with Mint.com.

With Mint.com, there’s nothing to buy, nothing to install, and no annual upgrades. Mom can sign up in just minutes and immediately see all of her accounts in one place. She’ll get the peace of mind that comes from knowing that Mint.com is secure and private, providing bank-level data security and industry-leading identity protection validated by VeriSign and TRUSTe.

Busy Moms (and what other kind is there?) will like how Mint.com replaces piles of receipts with automatically categorized transactions and an at-a-glance view of her spending. Mom can immediately see where the family is spending and where it needs to cut back.

Mint.com can help your Mom set up a budget and keep her under budget. Budgeting has never been easier, or this much fun.

Mom can get alerts when she’s over budget while on-the-go from any computer or even her mobile phone, at the grocery store, the soccer field, or her kid’s playdate. Mint.com will even alert her to any unusual spending in any of her accounts.

And if your Mom’s the type that clips coupons and likes nothing better than finding a bargain, she’ll appreciate Mint.com’s Ways to Save feature. Mint typically finds users hundreds in savings opportunities on Credit Cards, Savings, Checking, and Brokerage accounts, and CDs in their first session—minutes after registering. And it keeps on working to find new ways for her to save every day.

Mint.com—money management that even a Mom can love.

Give the gift of Mint to your Mom today



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