Saturday, April 2, 2011

Mint.com

Today was Jay and my first Alumni Softball Game. I am proud to announce that we had a lot of fun and I am looking forward to playing this season. Good-bye kickball.

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After Softball, Jay and I went downtown to the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler Expo. We went a little overboard with our purchases, including Run Baltimore shirts, an IT Band strap and stickers (eek!). But, by far, my favorite shirt was the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler upgrade.

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The design is the race course. How cool is that?!?! As I have mentioned before, this race will be a lot of fun for Jay and I as we did not train as well as we wanted. The goal is to finish and have fun. Honestly, I think that should always be every runners goal.

And of course today ended with our traditional pre-race dinner, My Vegetarian Pasta and a Blue Moon. The pasta had a little variation, no zucchini, add frozen mixed peppers and left over jarred sauce. Regardless, it was delicious and the perfect pre-race meal.

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And, finally, yes, I caved! I decided to try Mint.com. I like the idea that Mint.com gives me pretty pie charts that I am too lazy to create in excel and it is nice that Mint.com automatically attempts to sort my spending into categories.

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OK, okay, I now know why so many people like it. Mint.com is a very easy way to budget your money if you have NOT been tracking your spending like I have, since your freshman year of college.

For the month of April, I am going to use Mint.com and excel. If Mint.com proves to be the easier more practical solution then I will say good-bye to excel and join the masses. It is about time right?

My complaints so far is that I can not figure out how to change the master categories. In my excel budget, I am used to sorting my variable expense by: Jay, Gifts, Clothing, Restaurants, Travel and Miscellaneous. Mint.com does not think Jay is a worthy master category.

As for sub-categories, I really do not like that Groceries and Restaurants are grouped together under Food & Dining. In my mind Groceries are a necessity and Restaurants are a luxury. My other pet-peeve with this category is that Mint.com always wants to sort every Restaurant purchase into Alcohol, Fast Food, Restaurant and Coffee. I do not spend enough in some of those categories every month (if I even go) to budget for it. Instead, I only keep track of my Restaurant purchases and that includes everything: Alcohol, Fast Food, Coffee, Frozen Yogurt, etc.

I know technology upgrades take time. And, I know in a year I will pull up this post and laugh. I just think it is a good idea to document the transition.

If you use Mint.com, what do you think? You love it, hate it, neutral?

If you do not use Mint.com, how do you budget?