I recently signed up for Mint.com. It’s a relatively new, Web 2.0 financial management tool. You provide it with your online user IDs and passwords for bank accounts, credit cards, etc. and every time you log in to Mint, it pulls your most recent transaction information. Then it analyzes your spending.

It sounds really cool and very useful and, in theory, it is. However, there are still a lot of bugs which make for a rather clunky user experience. For instance, it has trouble classifying certain types of expenses, such as credit card fees. It displayed one of mine under the header “Annual Chimney Clean.” It also displayed *all* the transactions on one of my cards *twice*, which gave me a mini-heart attack upon log in. I had to go scan my credit card statement to ascertain that I did not, in fact, spend the $1500 last month in groceries that it said I had.

It has some cool features, though, such as ability to track your spending month-to-month and create a budget based on your average spend by categories (groceries, home, entertainment, etc.). It also tracks your spending habits against the US average and makes recommendations when it finds ways to save you money - things like high-yield savings accounts and credit cards with better rates.

All in all, I love the concept. I don’t love the fact that it has incorrectly tracked my spending each month without fail. So, while I’m not an avid fan just yet, I have high hopes for the product and am really looking forward to Mint 2.0.

(Oh, and I did not get paid in any way to review Mint. I just like analyzing my finances and sharing new, cool ways to do so.)