What is Mint and how does it work?
Mint is a free personal finance app that makes managing and saving money easy. Developed by Intuit, Inc, the creators of TurboTax, this mobile app is a budgeting tool that lets users manage and keep track of their spending. You can also set category-specific budgets and savings goals.
The Mint budgeting app connects with your financial accounts, so that users can get a clear picture of their personal finance health and total debt within the app. It's useful because it can teach you to save money more effectively while also helping to improve your financial literacy.
You'll need to download the app and sign up for an account to use Mint. You can then set a monthly budget, categorize expenses, track your spending habits by category, and monitor your credit score.
With Mint, you can set up bill reminders and get alerts when you spend beyond your set budget, get charged a late fee, or when an upcoming bill is almost due. This budget app also includes goal-setting tools to set financial goals and track your progress.
All the features in this version of Mint are free to use, and they can help make managing personal finances less daunting.
Top perks
Free to use
It's free to use the standard Mint app, and it's loaded with useful features. Students and others new to saving and budgeting, or those trying to spend less while improving their budgeting skills will find this free app a good fit.
A paid app version, Mint Premium, is available for $4.99 a month. This app version includes additional features like advanced spending graphs and subscription cancellation tools. Mint Premium also has no ads. This paid upgrade is only available to iOS users at this time.
It's secure
You should feel comfortable using Mint. Intuit uses VeriSign to securely transfer data and multi-factor authentication to protect your account.
Free credit monitoring
With Mint, it's easier to monitor your credit. Users can view their credit score at any time and track changes. And your score won't be negatively impacted by this feature because Mint performs a soft credit check.
RELATED: What affects your credit score?
Supports different financial accounts
Mint supports various financial accounts, giving you a clear picture of your total debt without using other budgeting apps. With this app, you'll be able to see all of your accounts in one place, including: