Thanks for your feedback!

Agreed, if you’re interested in maintaining the use of detailed categories, then tags are a great option for implementing the Balanced Money Formula.

As Alex mentioned though, there isn’t an automated tagging feature based on rules with Mint, so you need to update your transactions manually, either one-by-one or in batches.

Since my goal was to develop a ‘light-touch’ budget, this manual update requirement lead me to pursue a different approach.

Geoff

js

For those who would like both views, perhaps it would be possible to have two mint accounts–one that tracks everything, and one that tracks only income and spending. In the first account one could set up things to function the “normal” way, and in the second one could set up rules that classified transactions as needs, wants, and savings transfers.

Just had a look over at Mint to confirm…

Unfortunately, you can’t delete the standard categories…you can only Add/Edit/Delete categories that you’ve added yourself.

Sorry to not have better news for you!

Thanks,

Geoff

Glad to hear that you found the article to be helpful!

Your idea sounds great…hope it works out well, provides you with the level of detail you require and frees you from having to micro-manage an overly complex budget.

Best of luck! Thanks for your feedback.

Thanks for sharing your experience…that’s quite the endorsement!

Glad to hear that you’ve found a budgeting solution that works best for both you and your wife.

Appreciate your feedback.

Thanks for your comment, glad to be able to contribute to the great discussion in this community.

Had a quick look at MyJibe…looks pretty slick. Will have to spend a bit more time reviewing it in order to get smarter on the overall functionality. Thanks for the tip!

I’d also be interested in hearing if others in the community have used it.

Thanks for your thoughtful feedback, much appreciated!

You’re right, Mint isn’t perfect…in fact, while my article/review of its functionality has an overwhelmingly positive tone throughout, the fact that I wrote a whole post outlining a necessary workaround highlights the fact that it has specific shortcomings…I definitely recognize that point.

While I encourage people to give Mint a try, to see if it works for them, I certainly hope that they won’t waste hours upon hours if it isn’t the right tool to meet their needs. As I mention at the close of my post…Mint isn’t a ‘silver bullet.’ The functionality and charts are great, but they don’t/can’t replace the fundamentals and it isn’t necessarily perfect for everyone.

Agreed, those are some great suggestions for enhancements…let’s hope they listen and begin implementing them in the not too distant future!

Using Mint with simple budget catagories and tags to reconcile transactions has been a fool proof solution. It does the work I used to do manually and no more surprises. Imagine that, less work with more accuracy. It’s been liberating for me and my wife with no arguments.

However, I don’t think Mint is the best tool to implement this Balanced Money Formula.

A friend turned me on to a new product called MyJibe that is actually built around a lot of these principles. It allows me to split out Fixed Expenses (bills) from Flexible Expenses (discretionary). I can also quantify my savings goals so I know I’m saving enough. Like Mint it automatically imports from my bank and categorizes my transactions.

I think the Balanced Money Formula is great for its flexible practicality. Mint just isn’t geared to do it as well as MyJibe in my opinion.
Have others used it?

I’m actually starting to get really disappointed with all the love that Mint receives without any mention whatsoever of the vast shortfalls. Don’t get my wrong, Mint is a very large step forward in terms of highly accessible personal finance, but it seems to me that they are far more interested in getting me to switch credit cards then they are in implementing basic functionality that people have been screaming for almost a year. How long have people been asking for the option to auto categorize transactions based on source (expenses from my corporate credit card are auto tagged as “reimbursable,” transfers from a savings account are auto categorized as saving)? How long have people been asking for a way to more easily handle reimbursements from employers and shared accounts (expenses paid from the account I share with the people I live with are automatically split)? These examples represent very basic functionality that is standard in many other personal finance packages. It seems that I see new ways for Mint to save me money (and earn them a commission) all the time, but it took them almost 9 months from when I first signed up to implement a very simple goal setting functionality that doesn’t provide any sort of automated check as to whether you actually saved the money (transfers to saving are automatically categorized and progress is only show in the goals utility if the transfer was made). They have a lot of nifty automation, but I believe that one of the main barriers to long term use of any personal finance tool is the time that is spent dealing with those relatively frequent transactions that don’t fit the normal molds (we accountants enjoy it…but we aren’t kidding ourselves about how lame it truly is)

I know…if I don’t like it, then just don’t use it, but I see sooooo much potential and the idea is such fantastic one. I’m not paying for it (hell, I would pay a couple bucks a month for the functionality discussed above), but I really WANT to be a satisfied Mint user. The funny thing is that I really think Mint would have a hell of a lot more users to which “saving opportunities” could be pushed on if they made some of the changes discussed above.

Thanks so much for your feedback!

You raise some excellent questions/issues in your comment…I’m sure that many other GRS readers encounter similar challenges when trying to allocate/track their budgets each month…I’d be interested in getting some of their opinions on this topic.

Wish I had some more tactical suggestions/guidance for you…but overall, my suggestion would be to spend some time developing a simple (and easy to implement) formula for the allocation of the certain expenses you’ve outlined above. I’d point to the advice that @SupportingParents (#45) offered, that is ‘less is more.’

In my experience, there seems to be a direct relationship between the simplicity of a budget and its overall success! The more complex you get…the less likely you are to stick with it!

If you try one approach and it doesn’t work out, don’t get discouraged…testing is a necessary (though often frustrating) part of the process…but I have no doubt you’ll eventually arrive at the right answer if you keep up the good work!

Thanks for your feedback.

Seems like you’ve been able to develop an effective approach which best meets your unique budgeting needs…though perhaps it’s not as centralized/automated as you might want it to be!

Glad to hear that you’ve found tools/approaches which best meet your budgeting needs!

Thanks for your feedback!

Agreed, it’d be great if we were able to create our own main categories…suppose our workarounds will need to suffice for now…sounds like you’ve implemented an effective method.

I’d be very interested to hear how my approach worked out for you.

Happy tracking to you as well!

While I love the budgeting and automation features of Mint, I wish they’d let me use it to balance accounts. I end up using my old, offline Money software to balance, and then I track it again in Mint just because I like to see all my account balances with the touch of one button (vs. logging into 4 or 5 different websites.)

As an avid Mint user, I would have to say not being able to set up my own main categories has always been my #1 complaint. Right now, I set up “wants” under entertainment, “needs” under home and “savings” under kids (as I don’t plan on ever using this category).

But I think I’ll try your version out tonight.
Happy tracking!

Sorry to hear that you haven’t had a great experience with Mint, there are often several posts in the Mint forums from users who have problems connecting to their accounts.

Whenever I’ve had an issue with connectivity in the past, the Support Team has been responsive in delivering an update on status/solution, etc.

You can ask a question via the ‘Get Help’ link at the top-right corner of the page.

Hopefully they’re able to identify a fix for you so that you can assess the functionality and see if it is right for you.

That’s outstanding, I’m so glad to hear that you were able to successfully implement the approach and are enjoying the results!

Definitely know what you mean about micro-managing to a fault, I was there for quite a while, without much to show for it. And you’re absolutely right…less is more…more or less : )

Those are some very impressive savings/debt reduction numbers, congrats! Best of luck in reaching your debt-free target for the end of 2011, seems like you are on the right track!

Glad to hear that you enjoyed the post!

Sounds like you’ve developed a system that really meets your unique needs, that’s excellent. Those six categories make a lot of sense for high-level/middle way budgeting.

Hope it continues to work out well!

I would count the mortgage prepay as an expense because you still owe money. You are saving on interest but technically savings (for me) is money set aside to use at a future time. Since the money is going out, not coming in, it is an expense that in the long run will save you interest money.

However, if you like the idea of the pre-pay portion as savings you could use the basic mortgage payment as an expense and split the transaction so the extra portion is savings.