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.
How to Join Mint
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.
Step 1: Generate a New Mint Account
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:
- Email
- Country
- Zip Code
- Password
- Password Confirmation
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.
Step 2: Link and Sync Your Accounts
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).
Step 3: Formulate a Budget
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.
Step 4: Track All Income and Expenditures
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.
Step 5: Set Financial Goals
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.
Step 6: Level Up Your Mint account
Besides setting financial goals and tracking financial expenditures, Mint has other amazing features to keep you moving towards your goals. It gives you:
- Access to your credit score
- Alerts when you’re going over budget
- Bill reminders including card payments when due
- Advice on improving your financial situation
- Tips on how to save on every budget category