Save a G game!

OK so based upon me pulling in about $6000-$7000 Net income per month (for those of you who do not live in San Francisco, don't get too excited, it goes fast here), I have decided to see if by clever means I can reduce my expenses by $1000 per month.

Being a tech geek, I decided to harness the power of the internets for both information and services that may help me on my quest.

First up, I need a fair estimation of where I stand, where is my money going?

I went to a handy Web 2.0 review site called Webware and searched under "personal finances" and found a site called Mint.


















REVIEW: I can say I can be hard to please with services like this. I don't like to have to work very hard at any administrative tasks (This may be a reason I got into financial difficulty). I expect things like this to be simple, easy to setup and intuitive.

Mint delivers so well in this category. I gave it my email address and a password, gave it my bank account online log-on details and it went to work. It categorized about 66% of my bank account transactions over the previous 2 months and gave a nifty and fast method of mass categorizing the remaining third. Selecting the "Spending trends" tab brought up a full display of graphs and details regarding my spending and income. I can honestly say that the task of tracking my spending was 90% done in 10 minutes of using this site.

There is a section called "ways to save" but I did not have enough information for it to do its thing so I cannot comment on this function. Apparently it is in beta and will offer best credit cards, savings account and cellphone and other potential savings. Shame about that since that is the core purpose of my even looking for a site like this.

I was initially going to check out its competition but feel no need to search any further as Mint handles what I need so there may be better but I am pleased with this.

A