The transactions are matched directly based on your bank/credit card statements but only if you link the accounts. Otherwise you’ll have to enter them in by hand, which you’ll have to do for cash transactions too. They get categorized based on where you spent it, but you can change it by hand too. It lets you set budgets based on category and lets you know if something happens out of the ordinary like… “unusually large expenditure of cash this month” or “reaching the upper bounds of your credit limit” etc. It also keeps a bar graph through the months of when you went over budget and when you went under budget. You can create savings goals like… have $30,000 in 5 years for a new house and lets you know how much a month you should be socking away to whatever savings you have. You can sync your online brokerage and it’ll manage those finances too.
I’ve been seeing ads for “Simple bank” which is an all-online bank that does a lot of the same things Mint does. It takes in your cash reserves, factors in what you’ve said to be recurrent payments like rent/mortgage/insurance/bills and lets you know how much “actual” money is in your account.
Frylock, sorry for the late reply. I have had the flu for the last couple of weeks. It’s an interesting budgeting idea, but I think I may try it manually first, or at least with envelopes. Perhaps in the future I will try the actual program. Yeah the, “I probably have enough to cover it” idea would probably be stopped (at least when it’s wrong) if I use this system.
I am now much less likely to do it because I now know I’m going to have to take that money away from Christmas, or car registration, or whatever–not just away from some vague “savings” amount. This is a good point. It’s interesting too that its about how you are looking at it that leads to the change…
Well… did all that seem to communicate sense? Yes it did and thank you very much for sharing.
Hmm, why is it a pipe dream? I mean, I am unfamiliar with the investing world to a large extent so I am not saying you’re wrong, however I have heard of people making it rich in stocks. Also, I checked the Forbes 400 and most of the people on there were rich through owning their own business or playing stocks. It has been seeming to me that it’s a good vehicle to get rich.
Thank you for your reply
In case anyone missed it in an above message, I have been sick lately and so I have not been answering the most recent posts on this thread. I am still sick but less so, and am getting to them now. Thank you all for the info
You might want to look into what you can do with a personal retirement account. I’ve heard that some accounts allow you to purchase stock within the account. I haven’t looked into it, so someone else will have to confirm. And what’s allowed here wouldn’t necessarily be available in Australia.
You may be able to set up other deductions, depending on your employer. I used to be able to assign X dollars to buying savings bonds, which are harder to spend than cash and earn some interest. No clue what might be available for you, but sometimes something as simple as having your automatic pay deposit put 10% into savings and 90% into checking can help.
Yes, in the US at least, you absolutely CAN do this - while my personal IRAs are all in mutual funds vs. individual stocks, you can invest in a fairly wide array of choices (including real estate!).
The beauty of an employer-sponsored plan (401(k) and so on) is that the investment limits are a lot higher (e.g. 15,000 a year or more versus 5,000 for an IRA - figures not the most current but you get the idea), and also the employer match which is basically free money.
You’re basically asking how to get people to give you money so you can invest it. Well, why would anyone do that? Are you going to guarantee them a return on that investment? Why should they believe you? Do you have a Series 7? An MBA? Do you know how to perform a valuation or even read financial statements? If you were to open a business, what sort of business would it be? Do you even know how to run a business?
Typically people who raise capital do so by having something people want to invest in. A business or a piece of software of some other way to make money that will give them a return on that investment. No one is going to put money into your Kickstarter account so you can speculate on the market. I don’t think it’s even legal.
