A Penny Saved Is A Penny Earned

i just spent the past hour setting up a mint account, a free personal finance website that my friend recently told me about and being bored at work, i decided to take the plunge and see just how good this site is. now i should divulge that i am an accountant and that i already have the habit of logging in all my expenses to an excel spreadsheet (by category no less) so i have a pretty good idea of where my money goes each month but this site is supposed to help you find ways to "save" which piqued my interest.

after i set up my bank and credit card accounts, it calculated that my net worth is at a whopping $112. and no i didnt leave off any zeros in case you were wondering. and this was before i even put in my fixed monthly expenses. but herein lies the problem, the net worth calculation doesnt really mean anything since it doesnt take into account your incoming paychecks so its really just a timing issue. and net worth shouldnt be based on a point in time. it should be based on your net worth overall.

and on top of that, i couldnt figure out where to put in my salary info or add in my expenses that i paid for in cash or where my rent and cable go. and the alerts that are supposed to be oh so helpful are pretty useless too. all it says for example is you have spent $600 on home improvements whereas you usually spend $100. um ok? how does that help me? and right now it shows that my monthly budget should be $800 which isnt very realistic i dont think.

finally the feature that i probably find the most annoying but was the most excited to see was how they suggest you save money. its basically one big ad space for you to sign up for a new credit with a lower APR or one that is giving rebates on gas and groceries. anyone can do that on their own if they wanted to but it just isnt practical. everyone knows that its not the best idea to just sign up for credits cards nilly willy (or is it willy nilly) like that. its horrible for your credit score.

i think this is why ive always tended to stay away from these type of personal finance sites. when people find out that i record everything manually they always want to get me to start using MS money or get a pda but ive always been very opposed to it. it sounds lame i know but i like the act of writing down my expenses in my planner and then entering it into my excel spreadsheet. its comforting in a way and while i wouldnt really call it a "budget" since i always overspend, i at least know what im spending on and thats the most important.

so for the time being, i think ill stick to my trusty planner and excel spreadsheet thank you very much although my friends have been raving about this so i should probably give it another chance and play around with it some more.