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Not everyone is good at maintaining financial health. Most people struggle to budget properly with the money they have. Spending beyond one’s budget is a common struggle that lands many people in trouble. In most cases, doing this means you fail to achieve your financial goals and you might even have pending bills to pay for. Most people who find themselves in this situation often resort to taking loans, which further messes up their financial health. However, this can all be avoided by using Mint.
Mint is a software designed to help you manage your money to avoid spending out of your budget. It gives you an overview of your financial health by connecting all your financial accounts in one digital space. With Mint, you can track your savings, expenditure, and budget goals. Mint is an exceptional software with multiple awards for its usability, simplicity, and efficiency. Since the software saves your financial details, you might be concerned about the safety of your data. With Mint, you can be guaranteed of the safety of your data. The software doesn’t share information with third parties for marketing purposes.
Mint is a widely used software due to its efficiency in helping people maintain their financial health. Mint is owned by Aaron Patzer and has been on the market since 2006. The software is popular for its effectiveness. Most Mint customers are impressed with the effectiveness of the software, and recommend Mint widely among their friends and family. Currently, Mint has over 10 million users.
As noted earlier, Mint is efficient and easy to use. The following are the steps you need to go through to begin using Mint after downloading the application from Google Play.
Mint is a financial platform that offers account accessibility for easy accounting and record keeping. It is available as a mobile app. After downloading the app, you will be required to enter the following details:
After providing the above information, your account will be created within minutes. However, you must confirm that the email offered is accurate and personal for security purposes. Setting up an account is free.
The second step is intense and sensitive. Therefore, it requires accuracy. The time taken at this step depends on your account number. Although you might find the whole process overly involving, it improves efficiency and speed. Mint will always ask you to link your bank accounts. Therefore, you need to have your login information close by to save time. The software was developed to sync with nearly every financial institution to offer a wider solution for various accounts. You can add your credit and bank cards or choose from the popular accounts linked to Mint, including Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Discover.
Alternatively, you can search for your financial institution on the search bar and click on the logo to sync. Afterward, you can add personal accounts, student loans, credit cards, investments, and mortgages. After linking all your accounts, information and transactions on all the accounts will be displayed, as well as your net worth without the debts. You can access all the account information on the sidebar, including goals, budget, overview, and transactions (upper right-hand corner).
Mint helps you establish a sample budget based on your transaction history. However, the budget is just a suggestion. You might find that you need to customize it to suit your needs and spending. Commence the process by clicking on the Budgets tab in the upper right-hand corner. Before you create a budget, you must choose a category that helps you classify your income and expenses. Begin by offering the income before outlining the expenses. Proceed and create the other parts of your budgets and expenditures. It is important to clarify whether the expenditures you enter are weekly or monthly then save the information. Although you might have addressed various categories, including utilities, gas, restaurants, and groceries, among others, life is always unpredictable. Therefore, you should incorporate a budget for other expenses that might arise. Notably, the software offers an average amount for various expenditures such as gas and even groceries. This makes the software nifty and convenient.
Tracking your budget is the ultimate aim of Mint. Mint helps you track every source of income and expenditure. After two to three months, you will know whether you stay within your budget or not. If you are out of budget, it is easier to know where you have spent the most so that you can decide whether to put in more or reduce your spending to fit within the budget.
Another amazing key feature of Mint is helping you establish financial goals for significant life events such as buying a home, building, emergency funds, or getting out of debt. This is exactly what the goals section in the upper right-hand corner is designed for. If the included goals don’t match your desires, you can customise your own. Depending on the amount targeted to achieve your goals and the duration, Mint helps you calculate the monthly savings required. The goals section is especially effective for financial accountability.
Besides setting financial goals and tracking financial expenditures, Mint has other amazing features to keep you moving towards your goals. It gives you:
You would expect such software to charge you for helping to keep your financial expenditures in line. On the contrary, all Mint services are free. The software also offers exclusive services to help you put your budget in line and achieve your goals. Its features are accessible and free for anyone to use for an unlimited number of transactions. You can use Mint both for individual and business use cases. However, you will need to create separate emails and accounts for your business. Doing so will make it easier to separate your business and personal accounts. Mint business helps in tracking the expenditures of your business and profits.
Mint was accurately designed with zero errors. The website works well and is easy to navigate. Its features are easily accessible and work perfectly. Rather than using specific browsers, I would recommend you get an application. Any transaction on all the incorporated accounts will be reflected on the app. Moreover, your total net worth will be calculated automatically and updated in real time..
Although various websites help you track your budget, very few offer this exclusive feature. You might wish to know where you spend the most by the end of the month and note where to make adjustments or allocate more money to avoid spending beyond your budget. After making payments using any linked accounts, the software automatically categorizes the expenditure. Although there might be errors at first, as you continue to use it, it gets better at categorizing the expenditures.
When joining Mint, you will input various accounts, credit cards, investment accounts, lenders, and more as you set the app. With all this information, it will be easier to calculate your net worth using Mint. Knowing your net worth from time to time is important to familiarize yourself with the stand of your assets. If it drops, it is easy to identify ways to increase it for greater financial wellbeing. The app also helps you to keep track of your liabilities.
Mint has partnered with multiple financial organizations to incorporate nearly every customer who wishes to enjoy the Mint services. The platform allows you to link all your financial accounts credit cards, and debit cards you have on your account. However, if you have two Mint accounts, for personal and business, you can't link them. You can only use one account and one user per Mint account. If you wish to share your financial records with another person, the only solution is to open a Mint account in the other person’s name.
Mint has multiple features that make it amazing and easy to use. Understanding the features is important if you truly want to understand how the software can boost your financial health. The main features that make Mint more effective for budgeting and improving financial health include:
Mint helps with budgeting when you are poor at putting your budget into action. After receiving your financial details, the software accesses your expenditure history, which is used to develop a tentative budget. However, if the budgeting done by Mint is not accurate, you can adjust or customize it to suit your priorities. Mint is an effective solution for budgeting because it uses the income suggested.
With several accounts and different incomes, it might be difficult to always add up the money you have and use it to pay bills and budget for significant purchases. The main role of Mint is to help you know your total net worth by offering a reflection of all the money in any of your cards and bank accounts. With Mint, losing track of your net worth is impossible. Therefore, whenever your net worth drops, it is easy to know where to put in more effort to maintain or improve it.
Forgetting to address or pay bills in time is impossible with Mint. The bills payment tracker is one of the amazing features of Mint that most people use to their advantage. With a Mint account, you will always receive alerts of bills that will be due in 24 hours. Mint sends these alerts in terms of priority to help you settle important bills first. However, you can also customize the bill alerts to a week or two earlier.
Mint also helps you track your investments. If you have a busy schedule, keeping track of your investment can be difficult. Mint offers a key feature that will help you go beyond tracking your portfolio, whether you are busy or not. It helps you catch fishy or hidden fees from investment brokers or advisors, which helps the long-term growth of your business.
As is evident above, Mint does a lot to help you budget, track your expenditures, update you on upcoming bills, and help you stay within your budget. If you are concerned about the charges for doing all this, you’ll be thrilled to hear that Mint is totally free and there are no charges for accessing any features.
Mint has been effective and beneficial to a significant customer base that aims to improve their financial health and put their budgeting in the plan. The software is unique and efficient, with zero errors. Mint has received various awards for its effectiveness, including The American Business Awards, Best Financial Services, and Best Personal Finance Service.
If you are struggling to get a handle on your financial health, Mint will work well for you. The software is fast, effective, and secure. Mint can be entrusted with the personal financial information you enter for planning and setting up your goals. Mint doesn’t share your bank details with third parties. Having all your accounts connected and the total amount calculated makes planning for expenses easier. Mint also helps you prioritize your bills and avoid overspending. Using the software for a while will make your budgeting easier and focus on more important bills. In addition, it categorizes the bills, helping you understand where you spend the most. Notably, a Mint account can only be used by one person at a time. Therefore, if you wish to share your statements with another person, they must create a separate Mint account with similar linked accounts.