Synopses & Reviews
Sams Teach Yourself Mint.com in 10 Minutes gives you straightforward, practical answers when you need fast results. By working through its 10-minute lessons, you’ll learn how to use Mint.com’s free tools to simplify your finances, take control of your money, get better deals, and build lifelong financial security!
Tips point out shortcuts and solutions
Cautions help you avoid common pitfalls
Notes provide additional information
10 minutes is all you need to learn how to...
- Create your Mint.com account, and get started fast
- Consolidate all your checking, credit card, loan, and investment accounts on one easy web page
- Discover your total net worth right now
- Avoid financial “information overload”—but get all the details you want, when you need them
- Find better deals on loans, credit cards, checking accounts, and other financial services
- Easily create a personal budget and monitor your progress in following it
- Track your outstanding student loans, car loans, and mortgages
- Monitor all your investments, from stocks to retirement and college savings accounts—even art and antiques
- Get instant alerts about events affecting your finances
- Keep your financial information safe and secure
- Access your Mint.com pages from your smartphone or tablet
Synopsis
With more than 1 million users and growing, Mint.com has proven its value as a tool for helping you manage your savings, investments, loans, and more. Mint.com provides a free - and simple - service: an online single-point-of access for all areas of your financial life. This includes savings, mortgage, credit cards, student loans, retirement accounts, stocks and mutual fund investments, and car loans. In addition to providing you with a single login to check on the status of all your financial dealings, the site also offers you services to improve your financial situation. Sams Teach Yourself Mint.com offers straightforward, practical answers for fast results. By working through the 10-minute lessons, you will learn everything you need to know to quickly and easily get up to speed with Mint.com. Step-by-step instructions walk you through the most common questions, issues, and tasks... "Did You Know?" tips offer insider advice and shortcuts... "Watch Out!" alerts help you avoid problems. Whether you're a beginner or experienced user, Sams Teach Yourself Mint.com will provide you with fast, at-a-glance tips, pointing out helpful shortcuts and solutions, cautions to help avoid common Mint.com pitfalls, and is written in a clear easy to understand format.
About the Author
James Floyd Kelly is an author and blogger from Atlanta, Georgia. He has a B.A. in English (University of West Florida) and B.S. in Industrial Engineering (Florida State University). He has worked in technology for over 15 years, including work as a technical trainer, a network systems administrator, and as a technology outsourcing consultant. Jim has written books and articles on numerous subjects, including building a CNC machine, programming and building robots, using Open Source software, video editing with Movie Maker Live, and building an Ubuntu Linux PC.
Jim is the Editor-in-Chief of the most popular LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robotics blog, The NXT Step (www.thenxtstep.com), and provides robot building and programming training and coaching to local teachers and students.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Who Is This Book For? 2
Conventions Used in This Book 3
1 Mint.com Overview 5
What Is Mint.com? 5
Financial Overview 7
Stick to a Budget 7
Save Money 7
Spot Trends 10
Details, Details 10
One-Click Tool Tabs 11
The Mint.com Community 13
Security 14
Sign Up 15
Log Out 20
Summary 21
2 Checking and Savings Accounts 23
Your Checking Account 23
Linking Checking to Mint.com 25
Your Savings Account 29
Deleting an Account 33
Summary 35
3 Credit Cards 37
Your Credit Card(s) 37
Linking a Credit Card to Mint.com 38
View Credit Card Details 43
View Similar Charges 46
Use Tags 47
Export Your Data 49
View Other Accounts 50
Using Tags 51
Summary 53
4 Loans 55
Your Loans 55
Linking a Loan to Mint.com 56
Add a Mortgage 61
Adding Loan Details 65
Mint.com Progress Bar 68
Summary 72
5 Investments and Account Updates 73
Your Investments 73
Linking an Investment to Mint.com 74
Update an Account 78
Other Types of Investments 82
Summary 86
6 Email and SMS Alerts 89
Stay Alert 89
Basic Alerts 90
Configuring Alerts 93
Summary 101
7 Categories 103
Creating a Budget or Setting Goals 103
Transaction Categories 104
Assigning a Category to Multiple Transactions 106
Creating Custom Categories 110
Credit Cards and Categories 112
Summary 114
8 Budgets 115
Budgeting Made Simple 115
Creating a New Budget 116
Editing an Existing Budget 122
Deleting a Budget 124
View Other Budgets 126
Using the Budgets Tool 126
Summary 131
9 Goals 133
Setting Financial Goals 133
Adding a Goal 134
Use a Mint.com Goal 135
Editing a Goal 144
Creating a Custom Goal 146
Summary 151
10 Trends & Ways to Save 153
Trends 154
Ways to Save 159
Summary 163
11 Mobile Mint 165
Take Mint.com with You 165
Mint.com and Android 165
Mint.com and iOS 172
Mint.com and Tablets 174
Summary 176
12 Educate Yourself (Blog/Forum Usage) 177
The Mint.com Community 177
Frequently Asked Questions 178
The Mint.com Community Forums 181
Mint.com Blog 186
Summary 189
Index 191