Last week I went to a talk hosted by the Cornell Young Alumni Network about budgeting.  Avi and Matt, the Co-founder and Lead Scientist (respectively) of JustThrive.com spoke about money, budgeting and the psychology of financial choices.  They also took us through their online tool at JustThrive.  I’ve mentioned Mint a number of times, but am now evaluating JustThrive as an alternative.  Next week I’ll be interviewing them at their headquarters downtown, so look for a future post on that.  For now, I wanted to pass on their list of 10 ways to improve your finances right away (along with my comments).  Why not check off a few this weekend?  These things take very little effort, so listen to your sneakers and just do it!

1. Open an online savings account.  If you don’t have one already, you are missing out on interest (aka LOST MUH-NEE, which we don’t like)  Yes, rates are falling, but they are still higher than the 0.25% you get in say, your Chase checking account.  I use ING Direct, which isn’t the highest anymore but since I have checking there as well it’s easier for me.  Here’s a review of the best online savings accounts at Consumerism Commentary.
2. Use a rewards card and get cash back. Of course this only applies if you’ve paid off your credit card debt, as rewards cards usually don’t have the best interest rates.  But if you always pay off your bill, you should at least get some perks.  If you fly a lot, concentrate purchase on a single airline’s card - we love the Amex JetBlue card - for us, the $40 annual fee is well worth it because we use JetBlue’s routes a ton.  I’ve also used the Amex BlueCash card, and also like that one.  Here’s a really useful site to help pick one.
3. Use 0% interest. If you MUST carry a balance (but are working it down, of course), pick a card that gives you 0% interest (again, see site above).  Watch the fine print - often times these deals expire.  You’ll still want to pay off your debt as fast as you can, since jumping cards too often lowers your credit score, and improves the chances you’ll mess up the balancing act and get hit with tons of fees.
4. Pay down debt with your tax refund. It might feel like you could be impulse shopping if you get a windfall refund in 6 weeks, but resist the urge if you have credit card debt.  Use your refund to pay it off as soon as possible.
5. Don’t pay ATM fees. Pick a bank that has lots of ATMs, and only use them.  In NYC, Chase is really the best, they have the most ATMs of any bank (see how my automated finances allow me to use online checking to improve interest rates, but still use Chase).  Or, choose an online checking account that credits you the ATM fees.
6. Go to the gym and get paid. Many health insurance plans will credit you cash if you go to the gym a certain number of times per year.  How’s that for motivation??  Call up your health insurance provider and see if they offer this (I heard Oxford does).
7. Order your credit report, and check for errors. Did you know 76% of Americans have an error on their credit report?  The accuracy of your credit report is important, because anything that tarnishes it can affect your ability to get loans (credit card, auto, home) and also affects the rates you are offered.  By law you are entitled to 1 free credit report each year from EACH of the 3 reporting agencies (Experian, Equifax and Transunion).  I order one from each agency every 4 months on a rolling basis, so I can see my report more often than annually.  Make sure you use annualcreditreport.com and NOT (stupid)freecreditreport .com (the commercials may be funny, but they are a for-profit company offering a service you probably don’t need).  If you find any errors, make sure you call all 3 agencies to have it fixed right away.
8. Roll over past employer 401(k)s and 403(b)s into IRAs. You can’t roll over your current account (if you still work there) but if you left a job a while ago, chances are you are paying too much in fees in that old account, and the choices might be limited.  An IRA has the same tax status and can be invested in almost anything, so you can roll over the old account and then buy low-cost index funds, your best bet for investing, says the New York Times this week (thanks Adam!).
9. Use Online Statments. This is a quick and easy way to save the environment, save time and save space.
10. Setup automatic investments. Even if the markets have you in a tizzy and you are still deciding how to invest new money, setup an automatic amount to transfer into your brokerage account each month.  Most brokerages offer this (it takes 2 seconds to setup on Fidelity), and you can just sideline the money in a money market until you decide what to do.  The point is it gets they money out of spending territory, one step closer to making you rich. (OK you got me, I added this one - their last point was a non-starter)

Do you have other tips that are dead easy and we can do this weekend?  Tell us about ‘em in the comments!

Starting today I’m offering readers the ability to ask a question privately to me through MoneyMerc.  If you have been wondering anything about your personal finances, or just don’t get something you heard about, go ahead and ask!

I promise to respond as soon as I can, usually in a week or less (so don’t ask me a tax question on April 13th!)

A little disclaimer: I am offering this service for free, and by submitting your question you agree to let me use it in future posts.  Of course any use will be anonymous, and I may change the situation a bit if that makes sense for a wider audience.  So ask away, knowing that you are benefiting all the readers at MoneyMerc!

To ask, click on the “Ask me a question” link at the top of the blog.

[Photo: QuintanaRoo]

I’ve written previously about the usefulness of Mint.com for tracking spending.  Recently they’ve released a whole bunch of investment-tracking features that allow you to see all your money, investments and assets in one place.  This eliminates the need for Fidelity’s Full View, which does pretty much the same thing, but requires that you have a Fidelity account.  It still leaves a couple things to be desired for the financial planner in me, but for most it will do very well, and I highly recommend it.

What is Mint?

For those who haven’t tried it yet, Mint.com is a financial management web site which you put in all your log-in details of accounts, and it automatically logs into all of them for you every day and downloads the activity.  Then it takes each transaction and categorizes it for you.  This is insanely useful if you “don’t know where all the money goes.”  It gives you all kinds of fancy pie-charts on your spending, integrates budgets into each category, and even sends reminders to pay bills (if you don’t have them automated already).

OK, yeah that sounds a little scary to give out all those log-in details.  To make you feel better, they go to extreme lengths to keep all your info safe.  Good enough for me…

If you tried Mint a year ago and weren’t happy with it, I recommend trying it again.  The categorization and other features have gotten much better since the initial version.

My Favorite Mint Features

Spending Trends

This is the most obvious one, and is the real reason to use a tool like this in the first place.  It allows you to look at spending categories over chosen time periods, and to drill down and see the details of what make up those categories (for example, my “Lunch at Work” category shows that I spend more at “Dishes” than at Subway.  But I go to Dishes way less often!  Something I will now consider when deciding where to eat…)

I especially like the ‘SpendSpace’ area, where you can compare your spending to others in your area.  For example, here’s how much we spend on food and dining compared to others in NYC (yikes!):

Net Income

Here’s an easy way to spot a big problem - do you spend more than you earn?  How often? This bar graph in the lower left of the Overview page gives you a quick look.

Of course, if your income or expenses are uneven, this might have less value to you.  But the income/spend/net numbers at the bottom are good ones to be constantly aware of.

“Quick” Budgets

Mint automatically recognizes about how much you spend on certain categories and adds these budgets to the main screen.  This makes it easy to see where you are off track in a given month - spent $50 more on groceries than usual?  wow, why is that?  So if you hate budgets, this is a good way to still get a handle on your spending trends.

Investments

The biggest benefit to this is I can see all my accounts in one place.  This includes assets (my car) and liabilities (my mortgage).  So I can get a total picture of my net worth in seconds.

Comparison - You can easily compare the performance of your portfolio to S&P500 and other indicies.  Be careful though - your risk profile and asset allocation might not be expected to match one of these indicies.  But it’s good to get an idea of how to compare.

Best Performers/Worst Performers - this view let’s me see what’s working and what’s really stinking in my portfolio.  If I’m looking to get rid of something, I come here first.

Some issues. The investments tool still has some things to be desired.  On the Allocation screen, it would be great if it was broken up by actual asset type, as this would help you with your asset allocation.  For example, a bond mutual fund contains bonds, while a stock mutual fund contains stocks.  These are very different investments, and fall into two of the biggest asset-allocation categories.  However, in Mint both show up as “mutual funds”.

Another problem with the investment feature is it doesn’t grab historical transactions.  So you should add accounts asap, and then as time passes the features will become more useful.

Ways to Save

Mint is free.  The way they make money is by making you offers that will save you money (but make money for their partners), like increasing your bank interest rate, or decreasing the rate on your credit card.  The offers are very unobtrusive.  But I have yet to use one, mainly because I already spend a lot of time finding the best savings rates and because I never have a credit card balance.   But it might be useful for you.

Are you using Mint?  What do you think of it?  Are you using it in a cool way I haven’t talked about?  Share it with us in the comments!