I recently found Mint.com and signed up for an account because I had been looking for a good way to manage my finances. I had thought about purchasing Microsoft Money but just never got around

So today I sat down and created an account on mint without knowing a great deal of its feature set.

Let me tell you, I am extremelly impressed with the service this site provides. You input the login information for savings accouns, checking accounts, investments, loans, and credit cards and mint checks them every night for updates.

Mint connects to more than 5,000 US financial institutions. Your account information is updated daily. Mint automatically categorizes all your purchases, showing you how much you spend on gas, groceries, parking, rent, restaurants, DVD rentals and more, with amazing precision. An advanced alerting system highlights any unusual activity, low balances, unwanted fees and charges, and upcoming bills so you’re in constant contact with your money—effortlessly.

Mint goes way beyond just reporting and budget tracking. Using a patent-pending search algorithm, Mint constantly searches through thousands of offers from hundreds of providers to find the best deals on everything from bank accounts to credit cards; cable, phone and Internet plans; and more. Mint’s suggestions are “unique to you” based on your individual spending patterns. For example, if you have $20,000 in a bank account that’s earning no interest, Mint might recommend a high interest rate savings account from ING or HSBC. Acting on that suggestion would give you an extra $900 in interest income over a year.

Key Benefits

You don’t work for Mint, it works for you. It’s an entirely new approach to personal finance management. We think you’ll love Mint because it’s:

• Easy to use: You’re up and running in less than five minutes. And Mint does virtually all the rest.
• Comprehensive: Mint provides detailed visibility into virtually all your financial relationships with a single, secure login.
• Visual and Analytical: Mint gives you powerful insights into your personal finances making–it easier to practice smart financial management.
• Constantly working to find you savings: Mint typically finds users $1,000 in savings opportunities in their first session—minutes after registering. And Mint keeps looking for new ways for you to save every day—continuously comparing your needs to product, service and bank offerings most relevant to you.
• Secure: Mint provides bank–level data security and industry–leading identity protection. Its security and privacy have been validated by VeriSign and TRUSTe.
• Always On: You’re automatically notified of upcoming bills, low balances, and any unusual activity in any of your accounts through one (m)interface.
• Anywhere/anytime access: You can get to Mint anywhere, anytime over the Web.
• And it’s Free

One of its strongest features is that it allows you to chart trends in your spending patterns and setup a budget so that you work on spending less on a certain area.  So if you realize you are spending all of your money on beer and fastfood you can see it with your own eyes. What I also liked is that you could edit the categories that Mint automatically used to bin each purchase. This is good for the small places that are less known and not available in Mint’s database.
So all in all I integrated about 19 accounts between my wife and I. It was sort of a pain to try and figure out the username/passwords for all of the accounts but once it’s in, it’s in for good.

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