Mint.com has got my Back

I love using Mint.com for monitoring all of my personal financial activity. A perfect example is the email that I recently received from Mint.com regarding a credit card that I use. Could a company position themselves any better to appear that they are on my side?

I can't recommend Mint.com for all personal finance activities (yet) but I must say that I really like where this service was heading. With Intuit recently acquiring Mint.com, I am now tempering my expectations, but we'll see how things go.

How I Met Mint.com

This summer, I was in a financial management software squeeze play. Microsoft had declared an end of life to their Money line of products, and my license was about to expire. I was scrambling to find another tool for managing my finances. I used Intuit's Quicken in the past, but preferred MS Money and was looking for any other options.

I gave Mint.com a try on a whim, and had most accounts linked up in a half hour. I currently use Mint.com to see all of my transactions from all accounts in one single page, as well as those wonderful notifications they send out. Other benefits I have found include:

• Easy to quickly check all transactions for any suspicious activity
• Great for tracking expenses across different accounts tied to one event
  (vacation, home improvement project, etc.)
• Able to adjust Rolaid intake proactively based on wife's credit card spending

I can't recommend Mint.com as a replacement for MS Money, as there is no cash flow forecasting, which was a must have for me. I am also not 100% thrilled about a single web site having access to my accounts, even if they are read-only, but I am somewhat reassured by the Intuit acquisition in this way.

Looking forward, Intuit is working to migrate large MS Money files to Quicken again, so we shall see what the early conversions on that look like. For me, I was able to score another boxed copy of MS Money through a retailer and use the code to extend my license and updates for another two years. Phew! So the pressure is off (for now) while we see how Intuit brings Mint.com and Quicken together!