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Mint Team Spotlight – David Michaels

Mint.com — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 13:00:33 +0000

Name:: David Michaels
Title:: VP Engineering
Education:: BS in Computer Science from NJIT, and a MS in Computer Science from Stanford.

Current Financial Strategy:

Work really hard now so I won’t have to worry about tracking my money later.

Worst Financial Move:

Thinking I could win back my online [Texas] hold’em losses more quickly if I moved up to a higher-limit table. Then repeating that again.

Best Financial Advice:

If you must play [Texas] hold’em, do it in person. It’s less convenient so you’ll do it less often. And all that time the dealer spends shuffling cards the old-fashioned way is time that you’re not losing any money!

How Do You Keep Spending in Check?

I almost had an answer for this, but I realize it’s mostly wrong. I don’t really keep my spending in check very well! However, by working typical startup hours, I limit my idle time when I would be inclined towards tracking my money.

Who Taught You About Finance?

I’m mostly self-taught.

How Many Credit Cards Do You Have?

Right now I have 4, but I never carry a balance on them. I collect frequent-flier miles on two of them and use them for international travel — there were lucrative bonus miles offers upon sign-up worth over 60,000 miles.

Where Did You Work Before Mint?

I was building encryption-related security products for PGP Corporation.

What Difference Do You See Going From A Large Company to a Start-up?

I tend to join startups very early on, and stay with them as they grow into bigger companies, so I have gotten accustomed to the differences and don’t really focus on them anymore. At Mint in particular, we all wear our titles lightly — everyone contributes in multiple ways. No job is too small to be done by a VP here.

What Drew You to Mint?

Every start-up has at least one reason they think they’re going to win — why they are better than existing solutions. The problem is that the future is hard to predict and one reason might not pan out. Although I am willing to take certain risks and join very small companies, Mint is not the first company I joined that had only 3 employees. So, I am very conservative when it comes to choosing one reason. Mint had at least eight distinct kinds of competitive advantages:

Effortless – Thanks to account aggregation and accurate automatic categorization, we can provide lots of value with little user input.
Simple – We make usability a primary focus, and emphasize simplicity over feature-bloat.
Accessible from Anywhere – Unlike desktop personal finance software, we are not tied to a particular computer.
Save & Make Money – Mint can apply intelligence to make you offers that improve upon what you’re doing now — and we quantify our suggestions.
Always-On, & Notification – Being server-based, we can constantly monitor your personal situation as well as the marketplace. PC-based software can only act while you’re running it. We can reach out to you and alert you in real-time when necessary.
Collaboration – We can enable users to work together in pursuit of their financial objectives. This can be limited to husband and wife, roommates & friends, or a broader community. This can be structured or unstructured, but the former is better.
Aggregate Knowledge – Mint is in a position to learn from other users, and can apply that information to benefit you.

The sheer multiplicity of these opportunities was very rare in the business plans I’ve seen — and I was sold.

How Will You Help Mint Grow?

Web businesses thrive on technology, and it’s exciting to be in a role which has such a direct impact on the company’s success. In particular, Mint’s security has to be absolutely airtight for us to earn and keep users’ trust. If we architect our system smartly, we can ensure that we maintain uncompromising security while having the high feature velocity essential for an Internet startup.

What are Your Typical Hours?

To say I’m not a morning person is a colossal understatement, so I come in well after rush hour, but usually before noon. As for when I go home, that’s usually before noon too, but typically on the next day.

What’s your Favorite Things About Mint?

Working with such a motivated and talented team in pursuit of solving a real need.

What Has Been the Weirdest or Funniest Moment at Mint?

Telling someone on my team to install “ant on bomber1″ and then finally understanding why they broke out laughing. “Anton” happens to be the name of our VP of Business Development, and that sentence can be parsed as “Install Anton bomber 1″, which conjures up a pretty funny mental image. (”Ant” is a java build tool that we use to compile our code, and “bomber1″ is a load-generating server in our performance testing lab.) Anton is a perfectly likable fellow who should not be bombed by anything.

What Do You Do At Mint that You Never Thought You’d Be Doing?

I can’t think of anything. This is exactly what I always wanted to do.

What Do You Look Forward to Every Day?

Watching how quickly our product gets better and realizing all the dreams we have for it. There’s so much left to do.

Money Saving Tips: The Laptop That Doubled in Price

Mint.com — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 14:00:37 +0000

Money saving tips are something that we care about here at Mint. Learn more with great money saving tips in our blog article index.

I got into some bad credit card debt, making bad decision after bad decision that seemed like a good idea at the time and paying no mind to my future. I really I wish someone had given me money saving tips these back then. About two and a half years ago, I was issued a credit card with a limit of $1500 — five times as much as the current card I had that I used for gas or groceries or whatever and always paid off at the end of the month. For a year I had been trying to save up to buy a laptop computer, with it just never quite panning out. I decided, then, to get my laptop with this new credit card, under the assumption I would pay it off in about four to six months.

As it turns out, about three weeks after I bought the laptop a lot of stuff in my life changed, I had to move 3000 miles across the country with no real job prospects at all. I ended up jobless for about three months, unable to pay the credit card company anything. I finally did get a job, but it barely got me by financially and I still couldn’t really put a dent in my credit card bill.

This went on for about two years, never making enough money to pay off my bill. Since then, I’ve racked up an additional $700 in over-balance fees and late fees. Today I’m finally getting into a comfortable place financially, and I’m paying this debt back in large chunks. All of this, though, has taught me a very important, yet very expensive lesson about credit cards. My $1000 laptop ended up costing me over $2000 as well as two years of stress and harassment from the credit card company.

Lesson learned: If you need to borrow money to buy something, chances are you can’t afford it, and should not buy it. The best way to know if you can afford it is to use a free online financial calculator and do the math. That is what I live by now. I hope to be able to get another low-limit credit card like I had previously, for gas and groceries, because it was always easier to plan on that $300 as a fixed amount. My credit is so messed up right now, though, that I don’t know if I will ever get another credit card.

Train Wreck Tuesdays are a weekly post of horrible financial mistakes. They are posted anonymously. Submit your story; if you’re selected, you get a free personal finance book. The best comment gets the same prize! Check out past Train Wreck stories here.

Money Saving Tips: Lunch on the Cheap

Cap — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 05:00:56 +0000

Money saving tips are something that we care about here at Mint. Learn more with great money saving tips in our blog article index.

Looking for some money saving tips? How about saving $295 per year by packing your lunch? Awesome blogger Clever Dude and his wife, Clever Dudette (a Registered Dietitian) shows the world a lunch menu that’s both enjoyable and easy on the wallet.

Clever Duette Frugal Lunch Idea:

Turkey sandwich on wheat bread with lettuce, tomato, light mayo, carrot sticks, canned pears in light syrup and a snack pack of Oreos (the husband’s favorite):

Turkey sandwich on wheat bread ($1.30)
Lettuce ($0.25)
Tomato ($0.25)
Light mayo ($0.14)
Carrot sticks ($0.12)
Canned pears in light syrup ($0.69)
Snack pack of Oreos ($0.41)
Fountain or cooler water (free!)

Cost: $3.16

Comparison with eating out? Let’s assume an average lunch is $6 and that you have the frugal lunch idea twice per week. By packing your own lunch twice per week, you will save annually $295!

What more money saving tips? Check out more frugal lunch ideas from CleverDude.com!

Have your own frugal lunch idea? Sharing is caring

Tracking My Money: The Financially-Challenged Husband

Mint.com — Tue, 08 May 2007 09:30:33 +0000

Personal Budget Management is something that we care about here at Mint. Learn more about personal budget management in our blog article index.

My worst financial disaster was marrying my husband. A few months before the wedding, we both checked our credit reports and shared the info with each other.

I have always been great about tracking my money. My credit score was great (790), and I knew that his would be a bit low since he had missed a few credit card payments. But I really wasn’t prepared for when he asked me, “560…. Is that good?”

Turns out that when he had consolidated his student loans he forgot one. So for two years he hadn’t been paying on a $10,000 loan, and it was now in default. Not only do we now have a ton of extra money to pay, with fines and interest, but we also have to wait for his credit to improve before getting a mortgage.

Needless to say, I control all our finances now. (Luckily, he is very happy with that!)

Train Wreck Tuesdays are a weekly post of horrible financial mistakes. They are posted anonymously. Submit your story; if you’re selected, you get a free personal finance book. The best comment gets the same prize!