New!  Text Mint.com to get your Account Balances

Starting today, text BAL or BALANCE to MyMint (696-468) from any checkout line in America and we’ll send you the balances in all of the checking, savings and investment accounts you track in your Mint account.  Just think of it, no more embarrassing “your credit card has been declined” moments.

1. Activate your cell phone for alerts (Overview>Set up Mobile Delivery)
2. Text BAL or BALANCE to MyMint (696-468)
3. You’ll get yesterday’s balances (or balances from your last login, whichever is more recent) sent directly to your phone

Send Mint.com email or SMS alerts to your Significant Other

If you’re lucky enough to share your life (and finances) with another, show them you care by adding their email address or phone number to a Mint account that tracks your joint accounts.

1. Go to Your Profile>Account
2. Enter your loved one’s email address in Also Send Email To

You’ll both receive email and SMS alerts on the big events in your finances:  Bills Due, Approaching Credit Limit, Exceeding Budget for Gifts, and more. Last holiday season, the most frequently cited reason for going over budget was “Failure to Create and Stick to a Joint Budget”.  Use Mint’s dual email feature to keep yourself out of hot water and debt, this season.

Share the Joy of a Balanced Budget with your Accountant

As we approach the end of the year, many of you will soon be receiving plaintive requests from your financial planners, accountants, bookkeepers and other, probably underappreciated, folks in your life who need to know where you spent your money this year.  Mint offers an easy solution in our Export Transactions feature:

1. Go to the bottom of the Transactions page to find or filter the transactions you’d like to share, e.g.  All transactions from your Business Account, or tagged Reimbursable, etc.
2. Scroll to bottom of transactions list to find Export All Transactions button
3. Click to download all these transactions into a neat Excel spreadsheet, ready for emailing to your money guy or gal.

This holiday season it’s more important than ever to stay within your budget, to know where you stand at all times, and to maintain good communication with loved ones and friends (okay, accountants) that are your partners in achieving your long term financial goals.  We’re working hard to make all this easier for you…is it working?  How are you handling your holiday spending differently this year vs. last?  We’d love to hear from you.

With today’s market volatility, it’s more important than ever to stay on top of your finances – both your day-to-day spending and your long-term investments.  Here are some of the new features we’ve added to help you better understand your financial picture:

A Deeper Look at Your Investment and Retirement Accounts

You can now quickly see all of your investment accounts in one place. Simply add your investment accounts in the Accounts tab as you would with your banking and credit card accounts.

Want to compare all your holdings to relevant market indices like the S&P 500, Dow Jones, or NASDAQ? Click on the Investments tab, and then click on All Investments. Choose the index you want to compare to the chart above and you can quickly see if your investments are outperforming or underperforming.

Need to drill down further? Simply select the specific investment account you’re interested in to easily compare it, or individual stocks and funds, to the market indices.

See Your Asset Allocation in Full View

If you have multiple 401ks, IRAs, and brokerage accounts, we’ll make it easier for you to see your allocation breakdown in terms of mutual funds, stocks, bonds, money market, commodities and currencies.
Click on All Investments and then the Allocation tab to see a percentage graph of all your assets. You can also switch from seeing the graph in asset type or individual holdings by clicking on Asset Type or Symbol, right below the graph.

Performance Tracking Made Easier

We’ve made it easier to see which funds are performing well and which aren’t, from either your total portfolio or individual accounts. Click on All Investments or the investment account of your choice, and select Highest Value, Best Performers, Worst Performers, or Biggest Movers to see a list of your holdings in the selected categories.

You can also select an individual fund or stock from an account to see its market value and price changes, along with editing the cost basis of your holdings. From the Investment tab, simply select the account and the holding in question, and then click on the value under Price Paid to edit the cost basis.

Categorizing Your Investment Transactions and Highlighting Fees

Once you’ve added all your investment accounts, you can see detailed transactions from all of your portfolios at the Transaction page. Click on the Transaction tab, and select the type of transaction by clicking on Investment (or go to the individual investment account of your choice). You can now see your investment transactions being categorized as Buys, Sells, Dividends, Interest and Fees.

As with other banking accounts, you can receive automatic email or SMS alerts when a fee is charged or an interest rate changes in one of your investment accounts. Just click on Your Profile and select Alerts & Notification, and then choose the alerts and delivery methods of your choice.

Avoid High 401K Fees with the New IRA Rollover Advisor

Our new IRA Rollover Advisor can provide you with IRA Rollover account recommendations and further educational content to help you identify better retirement savings options.  Click on the Investment tab, and then the Old 401k? button to get started.

We believe you’ll find these new investment features useful, and invite you to start staying on top of your investment accounts today. We’re all in this stormy market together, but with Mint on your side, you’ve got the best available information to help you navigate these rough seas.  Everyone’s telling you to stay the course. Mint.com can help you make sure you’re on the right one.

Categorization made Simpler

You can now rename and tag transactions, manage and create categories within the Transactions page itself. Just click on any transaction to edit the description inline, and recategorize via a drop down menu.

Click on Edit Details to add your notes to any transaction, and add one or more tags.

Tags made More Powerful

Click on Manage your tags to create the labels most important to the way you manage your money. You’ll see that you can now filter all of your transactions by tag, with one click.

Custom Fit your Categories

If we’ve been missing a category that’s important to you, or used one category where you really want two or more, there’s good news.

First, we’ve updated Mint’s category list based on user feedback. So, you may find our new list already includes some categories that you’ve been missing. And don’t worry, if we’ve eliminated a category you’d been using, we’ve moved those transactions to the new category for you.

Second, you’re now free to create sub-categories in any category we provide. If Shopping: Hobbies is too general for you, add sub-categories for Golf and Gardening. If you consider your Golf and Gardening spending as Entertainment, add those sub-categories there, instead. Or perhaps under Health and Fitness? Whichever works for you, you’ll find it simple to personalize your categories.

Just click on the category you want to personalize from the drop down menu, select Manage Categories, then type and save the sub-category to start slicing and dicing your expenses as you want to see them.

Separate Business and Personal expenses

We’ve just made it easy to track and analyze your business and personal expenses separately using Mint. Just click Edit Details and tag any work-related expenses as “Reimbursable” in transaction details. You’re now able to filter your Spending Trends charts on any tag, giving you separate charts on your work — and play — related spending. Mint tip: Once you’ve filtered your transactions by “Reimbursable”, click on Export Transactions and save a file to send to your company’s accounting department, your accountant or tax prep firm.

Set Budgets and Alerts for custom categories, too.

Now that you’re measuring it, manage it. You can set up a monthly budget for any category you create. Like other categories, we’ll show you what you typically spend, so you can set a realistic goal. And provide you a choice of email or mobile alerts, to help you stay on top of your progress.

We invite you to start customizing your Mint experience today. And as you discover what works best for you, we encourage you to share your creative ideas with other Mint users who may have similar money management interests and approaches. We’ve set up a few threads in the Mint Forums for some folks we expect to hear from — feel free to start your own!

• Managing Your Business using Mint.com
• Tracking Reimbursable Expenses
• Household Budgeting

If you’ve been waiting until Mint offered customizable categories to open your free Mint.com account, now is the time!

Two we want to highlight: a streamlined transaction categorization and rules interface and automated transaction exporting.

1. Improved Categorization Dialog

No longer will you need to scan through dozens of categories to find the one you want for that all important Coffee Shop, Music or Movie purchase. We’ve made the whole categorization process simpler. You now use a simple drop-down menu to select the category you want. It’s even faster to rename and categorize multiple transactions. Just select the transactions you want to edit and click “Name & Categorize” to apply categories or names to multiple transactions with just a couple of clicks.

          
Click to enlarge

2. Naming & Categorization Rules Management!

You can now easily edit the rules you’ve set for merchant naming and for transaction categorization. Simply click on “Edit Rules,” to make changes to previous transactions or delete conflicting rules.

BTW, we’re constantly improving our categorization algorithm; we think we’re getting it right about 85% of the time now. You should feel free to send us any amusing (or not amusing) miscategorizations you’re finding. We’re trying to keep a sense of humor on the way to 90+%. We’re also learning that some users want to categorize gardening expenses as Home Improvement…while others call them Hobby. We’re all about freedom of choice.

          
Click to enlarge

3. Exporting Your Transactions

Some of our users told us that they want offline access to their transaction data. Others said they want to share with others…like their accountants or tax prep pros. You can now export transactions into a CSV file right from the Transactions page. Simply click on “Export all Transactions” on the bottom of the page and your transaction file will be ready for download.

Click to enlarge

As always, we’d love to hear any feedback on these changes. Did we get it right for the way you use Mint?

Thanks for using Mint.com,

- The Mint Team

We’ve heard loud and clear from our users from Day One (heck, even during our pre-launch beta) that you want to track your investments via Mint. We’re flattered that you want to do more with Mint.com’s personal budget software and we’re eager to deliver. It’s a big project and you’ll see us rolling this out in phases. The first phase is now live.

You can now add investment, brokerage, retirement and 529 accounts from 1,500 financial institutions. When you do, the value of those accounts (closing value from the prior day) will be displayed on the left side of your Overview page along with your bank and credit card balances.

We’re not stopping there. Look out for very Mint-like approach to better understanding and maximizing your investments before the tax man comes.

We also released an improvement to our Labels tool. Now you can just point and click to apply frequently-used labels (like “Valentine’s Gifts”) to your transactions. We’re all about point and click here… we hate typing and wanted to save you keystrokes, too.

As always, we welcome feedbacks and comments. Feel free to use the contact form or leave a comment here.

Thanks for using Mint.com,

- The Mint Team

Now you can track spending online and compare your spending on all the categories you spend on, such as Coffee Shops, Movies, Clothes, Groceries, to the average spending of people in over 30 US cities, all 50 states, or the entire US national average.

Worried that you’re spending too much on gas compared to your neighbors? Too little on Charities? Wondering if Seattle really is the coffee capital of the US? Who spends the most on Fast Food? It’s all in there. We hope you will play with the feature and tell us what you think!

If you’re not using Mint.com yet, now is the time!

Personal finance software is something that we care about here at Mint. Learn more with great finance software tips in our blog article index.

We’ve just released a number of improvements to the Mint.com finance software service — including some new features which have been at the top of our users’ “wish list” for online financial management. We hope you’ll find that these additions make your mint.com experience even better, and that you’ll see them as an early holiday gift to all of our users. You’re all on our “Nice” list.

1. More Personalized Ways to Save — Just in Time for the Holidays
   
   Whether you’re anticipating a flurry of December spending, or congratulating yourself on saving some dough this year, you’re probably wondering how to find the best financial product for you.To make that shopping easier, we’ve just added information on interest rates and rewards on tens of thousands of financial products to our proprietary database. This increases Mint’s ability to match our credit card and bank account recommendations to your individual needs. Log in to Mint.com today and check out your personalized Ways to Save page for some new ideas.
2. It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year — to Know Where Your Money Goes.
   
   Mint users can now divide a single ATM withdrawal across the categories in which the cash was spent (e.g. Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh? … or maybe: Gas, Restaurant, and Groceries?) Likewise, users making a large purchase from a department store like Target can now divide that transaction into Food (egg nog?) and Gifts. This should help give you an even more detailed view on where your money goes each month…and what you’re spending on presents this month. Click on the image below to see transaction splitting in action.
   
   
3. Helping you spot “Scrooge-Like” ATM fees.
   
   Mint.com will now automatically detect and categorize ATM fees from ATM transactions. For example, an ATM withdrawal of $103 will split $3 into the fee category and $100 into the cash category – giving you a sharper view on fees charged by your banks. Online financial management has never been this easy!

To learn more about these new features, check out the full press release.

And just in case finding the perfect Halloween costume caused you to miss the news on the new features released in October, including Budgeting and customized Account Naming, please click here to read more.

Please share your comments on any of Mint’s features below. We always appreciate “the gift of feedback.”

Thanks for using Mint.com.

- The Mint Team

Further Reading on the Topic

Online Financial Management
Finance Software
Finance Management

We released a number of improvements to the Mint.com service last night. These include new features which you, our beta users, requested, suggested or demanded (but always politely). Everyone at Mint appreciates it when our users take the time to provide us great feedback; its helping us get better every day. Thank you.

Here’s what you’ll find at Mint.com now:

1. Create a budget template!
   
   You can now set monthly budgets for any spending category you like, and then see how your spending is tracking vs. that budget throughout the month. And, as you might expect, we’ve simultaneously added a Budget Alert. So when your spending exceeds your target, you’ll get a prompt and courteous reminder…but only if you ask us to
   
   
2. Easier Work:Life Balance.
   
   Okay, not exactly, but you will now be able to separate your business and personal spending on Mint. Or separate your individual accounts from your joint accounts. Just “hide” accounts to create a clean and custom view of your spending in the way that works for you.
   
   
3. We’re into Labels.
   
   You can now label your bank and credit card accounts with whatever account name is most intuitive for you. And you can now change categories and rename transactions just by double clicking on the category or merchant name shown. On reflection (and with the benefit of your feedback) that just seemed more intuitive to us.
   
   
4. Little Knowledge = Dangerous Thing.
   
   Now that you’re getting accustomed to seeing all your spending in one place (remember last month, when you didn’t have Mint?) you tell us you want more. So, we’re giving you more in a budget template…More insight into your favorite merchants via an expanded, sortable list of your top spots; Easier access to the detailed transactions within any category. Just click on any wedge of a pie on your Spending Trends page and you’ll link straight through to a transaction list. You’re welcome.
   
   
5. Supporting More Banks.
   
   No, we’re not the Fed. But you’ll find that some of the accounts you may not have been able to add in your first visit(s) to mint can now be added. So, please try again. The more accounts you add, the better your budgeting and overall decision-making about your money. And you may just find that we find some more savings ideas for you.
6. Mint Maintenance Crew at Work.
   
   As our user base expands, we’re discovering and fixing a lot of dirty bank data just for our users. This month, that means you’ll see less instances of duplicated transactions, or mislabeled transactions. Next month, we’ll no doubt find even more messy surprises. We’re thinking of buying some of those snappy janitor jumpsuits in Mint green. If we do, we’ll definitely post the pictures.
7. A fresher Mint experience for you…and for your friends?
   
   We hope that these and many other enhancements, bug fixes, and redesigns create an even more valuable free money manager for you. If we’re on the right track, we’d be honored if you’d share Mint with your friends using our new Tell a Friend feature.

Thanks for using Mint.com,

The Mint Team

Further Reading on the Topic:

Budget Template
Free Money Manager
Online Money Software