The only negative I have discovered about Mint categories so far is that you can’t delete the pre-programmed Mint one (or at least I haven’t figured out how) – which can lead to your pull-down menus looking a little sloppy. The pre-programmed Mint categories are already there, but underneath that, you can add in your own categories.Ĭlick on the Add a New Category button, fill in the name of your category and click Save it.įor example, I added a category for my boys’ school and my daughter’s preschool. Scroll down to the link that says Add/Edit Categories and click on it. When you roll over the category, the pop-up menu with the sub-categories will automatically open up on the right. What if you have a category that Mint doesn’t have? Never fear, you can add it yourself. You can select either a subcategory or an overall category for your transactions – both are fine in Mint. If you haven’t set up your own categories yet, you will only see the Mint preset ones. In this case, I categorize all three expenses as Travel. In order to change these transactions from “hotel” or “gift” to “travel”, I just need to click on the arrow in the Categories section, and then scroll to the category I want. Travel is a category I have in my budget (we set aside money every month for our vacations). Instead, I want all of our Cape Cod expenses to go into one category – TRAVEL. I don’t actually have budget categories called “hotel”, “fast food” and “gift”. You see, I want my transactions to align with my budget categories (*hang tight if you don’t yet have budget categories – I’ll be talking about how I do that soon). This is quite logical – but it’s not the way I want it done. categorized these expenses as “Hotel”, “Fast Food” and “Gift”, respectively. Mitchell’s Gift Store was a store in Hyannis where we got more souvenirs (ha! lots of tchatchkes!) The Cape Cod Potato Chip was the Cape Cod Potato Chip Factory, where we took a factory tour (free) and bought some souvenirs for our kids.We took out cash for incidentals, but most of our expenses actually were put on our credit and debit cards.įor example, see the above three transactions: If you really want Mint to “work” for you, you need to categorize these expenses the way that makes sense for YOU.įor example, we just got back from our trip to Cape Cod and have a ton of expenses in our transaction rosters.Since you have already set up your accounts, all your transactions will automatically be entered into your list of transactions however, will have categorized them the way they think makes sense.Click on Transactions (it’s the second tab, after Overview, on the menu across the top).Categorizing is how Mint goes from being a general budgeting tool for the masses to a one-of-a-kind tool that is fine-tuned for me and my family.Ĭategorizing takes a bit of time – about an hour to set up the right categories and then another couple of minutes every few days to go in and make sure all my recent transactions have been properly categorized. To me, the heart and soul of lies in the categorizing of my transactions. If you haven’t read part 1 of my tutorial, you can go here to learn all about adding accounts. All of our financial transactions are in one place, so I never miss a beat – or a payment. Instead of having to check through all my credit cards and bank cards, or remember to save every single receipt (only to inevitably lose one or two), keeps me 100% accountable. While there is no right or wrong way to track expenses, I have found that the best way for my family is with.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |