How to Make a Budget with Mint.com

One good thing about debit cards is their convenience. One bad thing about debit cards is their convenience. If you use your debit card for most of your purchases, it is easy to let your spending spiral out of control. Mint.com is an easy-to-use, free web application that makes the creation of an online budget easy and also helps you to practice frugal living even when you rely heavily on a debit card.

Instructions

1

Make a list of all of your online accounts, noting your username and password for each one. While Mint.com will do all the math for you, it needs a starting point. Include your cash accounts (checking and savings), credit, loans, and retirement and investment accounts.

2

Sign up for a Mint.com account and get started by entering your username and passwords for each account. You will immediately be able to see your spending, balances and even monthly payments and due dates for credit card accounts.

3

Add your property information and values. This will help you see your net worth in contrast with your debt and will provide the information necessary to set goals.

4

Personalize your spending categories. Edit your spending categories to match your current financial lifestyle or the lifestyle you seek. To do this, go under the transaction tab and view your transaction list for the last 90 days. Go under each merchant and manually edit the category. For example, some online service subscriptions may be marked as a bank fee. You can change this to say something like, "Website hosting fee" or something more specific.

5

Add your budgets. Under the overview tab, go to the "your budget" section and begin adding budgets. This is spelled out for you and easy to manage. Simply choose a category and fill in the budget amount per month. Mint.com will display your over-budget or under-budget amount as well as send email notifications with the figures.

6

Edit your notifications to establish if you want to be notified by email of a due date or when you are getting close to your spending limit.

7

Set up Mint.com mobile to keep track of your finances on the go.