How to Budget with Mint

I appreciate the “roll over” feature and the irregular expenses, but I’m not sure exactly how those should be used.

What I’d really want is the ability to roll amounts from one category over to another. For example, if I budget $100 for shopping and $100 for food, but spend $150 on shopping, I only have $50 to spend on food. Is there a way to do that?

There’s no information easily available about how the “Projected Savings” is calculated. I would assume it would be Budgeted Income – Budgeted Expenses = Projected Savings. However, even though my Budgeted Income is $1,000 more than my expenses, my projected savings is still $0.

Additionally, in the trends section, net worth doesn’t seem to take into account mortgage debt.

So, at first I was really excited about these changes, but now I’m just frustrated. It seems to me that if I have an umbrella budget for my food and dining – say $100 – then when I spend $15 on a restaurant and $20 on groceries, these should ONLY show up under the Food and Dining Budget… and yet, they don’t. They also show up under Everything Else. What gives? Anyone know how to fix this? Also, the little budgeted expenses thing on the side doesn’t make any sense, since it is not equal to my budgets. Seems like mint is working hard to improve there services, which is great!

Well, I like the idea of budgeting, what I do not like is reason they for personal accounts number, which I feel unconfortable give up.

have been waiting for this. started looking for another solution last week but will now stick it out with mint.com

Interesting comments. I like the idea of asking Mint to allow us to expand on the budgetary categories. That makes sense to me. After reading all the comments I believe that I will stay with the “old” style of format. I have more items in my budget and I do like the idea of being able to see all of them on one screen. Apparently that wouldn’t be something I would see with the new format.

I agree with the person who said that moving items from one category to another to stay in budget would be counter productive. It sounds a lot like government accounting to me. I want to see if I have over shot my budget and if I have I will make note of it for the next month. Artifically moving items with money I haven’t spent to compensate for areas that I’m over budget on just doesn’t work for me.

I like the old view better. There should be an option to look at it the old way like a “Classic View” mode.

I’m not a fan of these new changes. I really liked being able to see the budget all on one page without scrolling. Frankly, the categories it chooses to display on the main page are not the ones I’m most concerned with. If you’re going to do it that way, there MUST be a way to allow the user to select which categories are displayed. And the red/yellow/green lights are distracting and not helpful. I do not like having the various sub-categories broken out as separate items, either, ESPECIALLY because the sum of the subcategories is greater than what I originally allocated for the total category. Very misleading. I will have to tinker around to fix this which is frustrating because I had them all set just the way I wanted.

I had recommended mint.com to many people, but I won’t be after this. Not sure I’ll continue using it myself, which is sad because I found it to be very useful.

How do you set a budget for “everything else”?

I wish that the income budget would let me set up for the pay periods that I get paid in. I am paind every other week, so some months I get two checks and some I get three. But Mint forces me to budget for money that is not there in the two check months, etc…

I love the budgeting tools, and the intelligent transaction tagging. When I used Quicken it would try to tag transactions but usually I had to go back through and correct 50% of them! I’ve setup budgeting software before but it was such a pain to get going and maintain, Mint is easy! I also love the iPhone app sync, got my info on the go! I like the notifications too, get them emailed to my iPhone, and have them texted to my wife’s phone so I don’t have to nag her about being close to running out of money and to cool it on the spending until payday, Mint does it for me!

I would love a “move” function to be added to the addd/delete/edit category field. Sometimes the item is just miscategorized and needs to be moved and it can be a hassle without this function.

And one other note, trends are shown over time (bivariate plot, one variable is time, along the bottom, and the other is money spent). Showing a trend of spending in a pie chart, whose colors change arbitrarily, doesn’t show trends at all.

I originally looked at mint a long time ago (2 years?), and at that time the budgeting features just weren’t granular or flexible enough for me. This is a HUGE step in the right direction, and I applaud all who worked on it.

I have been a paying subscriber to mvelopes for many years now, and I basically love their features, and hate everything else about it. Slow flash-based web app, no iphone app, ugly, clunky, etc. But you can set it up to give you a very good idea of where your money is, and what it has been allocated for.

After seeing this though, I’m going to have to give Mint a try again. After reading all these comments, it seems most (myself included) are a little mystified by the depth of the new features, without a clear explanation of how it all works together. Coming from mvelopes, I’m used to thinking in the ‘envelope’ budgeting system, and I’m really not sure how to conceptualize this system in Mint. Are these categories that ‘have’ money in them? Or are they projected goals of spending? How do I know the money is available if they are just projected goals?

I’m just going to play around with it a lot over the next few weeks and try to figure it out. It looks beautiful!

I certainly am sensitive to those who asked for the old interface back. Change is always hard, but mint has taken a HUGE step up in my book. It looks like the developers have hit a home run with this one. Thank you!

I like a lot of the new functionality, but the interface in the budgeting section is a little painful to look at. The typography is nice, but the budget lines for each category are too big and they kind of hurt my eyes to look at. I feel like I need to back away from the computer. I’m finding that Mint isn’t as useful with the new interface, for some reason, as it was to me before. I think some of the intuitive features have disappeared.

Bravo Mint.com! I am spreading the word about Mint.com using three words: Quick, Easy, & Effective. You’re website design and technology makes personal financial planning truly accessible to everyone with internet access (and to us weirdo’s that actually like this stuff – even more fun!). Now thanks to Mint.com there is no excuse for not getting your finances in order.

I am an attorney, accountant, and a personal financial planning hobbyist/enthusiast (yes I wear glasses, short sleeve dress shirts, & a pocket protector). It has been very sad & frustrating to see so many people flushing money down the toilet (including my own relatives, friends, & colleagues) because they thought it was too complex and/or time consuming to develop a budget or plan their finances.

The Mint.com team deserves every award it receives. Your automated categorization system will save MILLIONS OF MAN HOURS (which will translate into thousands of life times), and your effective tools will save billions of dollars in financial fees, interest expense, as well as opportunity cost.

I set up 26 accounts (with 300 transactions) and a detailed budget in a few hours using your website. What a pleasure it was painting my individual financial picture using your website.

Regards,

David T.