Budgeting features/suggestions

[luken3000]

Maybe there's already a way to do this or maybe Mint already has plans in the works. I would love to see budgeting features that:

1. Allow me to enter a budget for a given category and time period.
2. Shows me, graphically, how I stand in each budget category based on the current date within the time period.
3. Alerts me via text message when I reach certain self-chosen thresholds.
4. Alerts me via email summary to tell me periodically (whenever I want) how I am doing against my budget.
5. Enables me to ping Mint.com (via SMS or phone) to see where I stand on either a single budget category or the whole ball of wax. This will help me decide whether I can afford to go out to the bar and drop $50 or if I need to wait until the next budget cycle because I already hit my spending cap.

The goal here is to fill the void that exists in many people's financial lives: we need more frequent (preferrably real-time) feedback to let us know how we are doing against our budget. It's too late to find out 2 days later that we exceeded our drinking budget for the month.

Help! :eek:

[mlebarron]

I'd like to see this graph on the overview instead of the "spending trends" graph.

(or both if the overview will be configurable eventually)

[forgueam]

I absolutely agree with this feature request (I was about to make the same request when I came across this post) and would love to see it implemented.

Before getting my Mint invite, I was using Yodlee MoneyCenter (http://moneycenter.yodlee.com). Yodlee had this feature built in. Basically, you put a monthly "target" amount on any category/tag. Then it shows you how much you've spent in the current month relative to that target.

I also like the idea of being able to query Mint from my phone to find out where I stand relative to my budget. This would be really helpful when away from computer/internet access.

Aaron

[Damon]

Thanks for the suggestion!

[clodhoppers18]

I was thinking about posting about the "ping" thing. Maybe have it so that you can use Mint to track your account easier by say texting to Mint how much you just used on your credit card, and it would take it out of your avalible balance right away. (it wouldnt take it out of the availible total on the bank side, but just the showing availible balance on the Mint website) I have noticed that my credit union almost always has the wrong avalible balance due to debit card transactions that go thru as credit card auths taking forever (like 3-5 days) and I have come close to OverDrafting several times due to this. I now have to carry around my checkbook to track my transactions, and that becomes very troublesome, cause afterall the idea of the card is to not have to carry your checkbook around.

Basicly it could work like this:
You have your phone registered with Mint

You buy $35.94 in gasoline
So you take out your phone real quick and text to Mint's SMS number something like: "c gas 35.94"
c for checking gas as a description and the amount
--if you have several accounts for checking maybe have it so that users can set the abbreviations for each account so say your bank of america checking account could be "bac" and your best buy credit card could be "bbcr" or something like that.
Then after you send it, Mint would send you your current balance for that account, and your total accounts balance to your phone in another SMS message in a format similar to: "c $189.06 all $1029.37" or something like that

This may be an idea for a "premium" service on down the line. I know I would certainly pay for it.

Also this idea could branch into something that could be used for people that have more than one person on an account by registering up to 5 cell phones on one account or something like that, and when someone changes the account balance, Mint would send a text to the other people's phones as an update.

I know people are gonna say, well you could just use internet access from your mobile phone, but I find it much easier and faster to do SMS, since a lot more people have SMS service than mobile internet on their phones. I get charged like $0.05/KB or its $15.99 for web access up to 10MB a month OR I could pay $8.99 for unlimited texting, which I already have. Proving that SMS is more effecient as far as costs go, and also entering into the text keypad in an SMS is faster than trying to go to a site, then login and then navigate to the place you enter your transaction info.

Its all about speed, and ease of access these days.

Hope this idea helps.

Dustin

[mlebarron]

I know people are gonna say, well you could just use internet access from your mobile phone, but I find it much easier and faster to do SMS, since a lot more people have SMS service than mobile internet on their phones. I get charged like $0.05/KB or its $15.99 for web access up to 10MB a month OR I could pay $8.99 for unlimited texting, which I already have. Proving that SMS is more effecient as far as costs go, and also entering into the text keypad in an SMS is faster than trying to go to a site, then login and then navigate to the place you enter your transaction info.

I just wanted to point out that I totally agree with this point.

Bank of America's "Mobile Banking" is mostly a joke. You still have to enter your stupid sitekey password every time you access it, and then "click" through a couple screens to get to your balances.

Yes, it's "Mobile Banking" but it's so inefficient that there's no point to it. If I could just sent a text message to them after linking my phone, then I might actually use it.

[FutureStyle]

I also TOTALLY agree with this suggestion. Prior to Mint, I was using ClearCheckBook because I love their SMS interface.

[dubbs]

Maybe there's already a way to do this or maybe Mint already has plans in the works. I would love to see budgeting features that:

1. Allow me to enter a budget for a given category and time period.
2. Shows me, graphically, how I stand in each budget category based on the current date within the time period.
3. Alerts me via text message when I reach certain self-chosen thresholds.
4. Alerts me via email summary to tell me periodically (whenever I want) how I am doing against my budget.
5. Enables me to ping Mint.com (via SMS or phone) to see where I stand on either a single budget category or the whole ball of wax. This will help me decide whether I can afford to go out to the bar and drop $50 or if I need to wait until the next budget cycle because I already hit my spending cap.

The goal here is to fill the void that exists in many people's financial lives: we need more frequent (preferrably real-time) feedback to let us know how we are doing against our budget. It's too late to find out 2 days later that we exceeded our drinking budget for the month.

Help! :eek:

Yes, yes, yes.

I would LOVE this. I think a lot of people would.

[Cjwelle]

Hello,

Just wanted to add another voice to this feature. I would like to see this as well. Its something I find lacking and extremely needed.

Chris

[cbryan]

Allow me to enter a budget for a given category and time period.

I'm sure most peoples budgets don't start on the 1st of the month. Mine goes along with when my credit card is due... I would love to be able to look at a the spending trends for custom amount of time instead of just the 1st - 31st.

[jplumey]

I would also love a budgeting feature. I also like budgets that make you pay yourself back when you overspend the budget on a particular category. For example if I budget $200 for entertainment and spend $250 then my budget for the next month is automatically decreased by $50.

Also, checking the budget of a category by SMS would be incredible. It would let me make instant decisions on purchases.

[kurtstoll]

There is one feature lacking from Mint that would make me leave Quicken/MS Money and that is the ability to plan out my exact bills and budget amounts for each month for the following 12 months and then be able to do cash flow reports on that information, based on my planned bills/budget and my past performance. This would let me plan for purchases or expenses in the future and Mint could even use the information to suggest ways to save money on future purchases. Finally, also having alerts (emails or sms) that could be timed to be sent out within a certain interval before each bill is expected to be paid/deducted would be great as well.

[jplumey]

I also love the idea of being able to allocate funds for categories on a monthly basis. Some months I make a little more than others and I need to be able to dynamically change budgets for each month. Similar to the target features of Yodlee.

[Damon]

We actually launched some very basic budgeting features today on the overview page. I believe you can do up to 70 different budgets!

[pgogineni]

I'm glad the budgeting feature was added as it was one of the most requested features on Mint. Looks good to start with, but like the rest of the site I was hoping it could be a little more innovative.

I think the biggest hurdle for budgeting for most people is planning to spend less than they earn. If you were able to incorporate a way to input Income and then we can subtract the expenses off of that it would be great.

How about a specific budgeting tab? Then first we would enter income, maybe you could base income on the last few months income category. Then a section of Necessary expenses(you decide some and give the option to let the user decide some) Then comes the savings/planning for a rainy day categories. Finally the categories that are nonessentials.

Maybe putting sliders next to each category and as someone moves a slider up or down you can see how this impacts the category(if I see I am spending too much on non-essentials it might help me better money minded) or the total leftover. I think being able to see how adjusting the slider might impact money left to pay off credit cards or save maybe a good visual indicator to people of where money was going.

As was stated above, having this available for 12 months into the future would be awesome, so that we could do some real planning and budgeting on Mint.
Anyway like I said I am glad to see the updates and look forward to see what the future holds.

[lordscarlet]

We actually launched some very basic budgeting features today on the overview page. I believe you can do up to 70 different budgets!

I am very glad the budgeting feature was added, however I think the interface needs a lot of work. Having one section of the home page set aside for budgeting is severely shorting it's importance. There should be a way to see all of your budget items, their significance by time frame, and a way to add categories. The bar graph should also visually tell how far over budget you are, rather than only how far under budget you are (with something more than a number). Income should certainly be part of the budget as well. I posted in the "top 5 feature requests" thread as well, but this goes hand-in-hand with budgeting all of your specific bills and the date they are due.

[lordscarlet]

...This would also alleviate budgeting problems such as Car Insurance which is typically paid semi-annually.

[Damon]

I would expect many changes over the next few months for this feature (first run at a basic budgeting feature).

[lordscarlet]

I would expect many changes over the next few months for this feature (first run at a basic budgeting feature).

Fantastic. I am definitely enthusiastically keeping an eye on the site and visiting several times a day.

[EV50]

I see it's been over a year since better budgeting tools were promised, and yet nothing seems to have been done in this critical area. If Mint could only offer the same budget features offered by Moneycenter, I'd stop using other programs and go with Mint. As it is, Mint is next to useless for planning out a year of spending or for trying to make sure you live within your means. At a minimum Mint needs annual, quarterly, and monthly budgets, with income vs. expenses included. Seems like the whole point of using a program like Mint is in question if you can't even do this kind of basic budgeting. Simply budgeting month by month is really next to useless for many people.