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by Tricia

If you haven’t heard about Mint.com yet, it’s a free site where you can upload almost all of your financial accounts and have everything in one spot. From there, you get reports on your spending and Mint will give you suggestions on ways you can save money.

It sounded like a neat program, but I’m a Quicken user and I’m very happy with using Quicken for my finances. I have a method that I have been using for years and it keeps us out of overdraft trouble. I’m also very concerned about security and having all of my eggs (account information) in one basket at Mint.

I wanted something that would help me keep track of our seven credit cards. I was logging into every account online to watch for activity and that takes some time to do. I have email alerts set-up with my credit cards and they alert me if there is activity, but email isn’t always reliable. I am trying to simplify my life, so I decided to give Mint a try.

Setting up an account was amazingly easy. All you needed was an email address, your zip code and a password. From there, you set up your accounts. For that, you logged in using your online username and password for each account (and sometimes you had to answer your secret questions). It took less than 10 minutes for me to have all of my credit cards entered into Mint.

Now when I log into Mint, I see an overview that shows the balances on all of my credit cards. No longer do I have to log into each individual site. I can go to Mint and login once to see all of the info. I can even drill down to see the individual transactions. Then there are the features of Mint that let you see your spending. It doesn’t show the whole picture for us because our checking account isn’t included so I won’t be using that feature much.

I was also impressed by the fact that it shows your total credit limit for all cards and shows your total available credit. For me, that’s a quick way to see my debt to credit ratio (which right now is at 20% utilization). It also reviews your interest rates and gives suggestions on credit cards that have a lower rate.

It really is an amazing free program.

I’m still concerned about security, so it’s unlikely that I will include my checking or savings accounts on Mint.com. Those accounts keep us afloat and I protect them as much as I can. I’m not ready to release that info to a third party yet. But for keeping track of our credit cards, I am VERY impressed. I wish I had done this sooner!

I was hoping to take some screenshots, but there’s too much personal information on it and I’m not comfortable with posting them. To get an idea of what you see when you sign up and upload your accounts, visit the Mint.com features page. Their screenshots match what I saw after logging in.

If you have questions about Mint.com or my experience so far with it, feel free to ask away in the comments.