Busy, Busy as a Little Bee.

Man. It’s been a great couple of weeks. You know those fleeting time frames where you feel like you’re in a real groove. With your marriage. Work. Social life. Spirituality. Thoughts. Stress level. Finances. Where everything is integrated and feeding off each other. I think it has to do with the weather. Because I’m always in a good mood in the Spring and Fall. I think everyone is. But I get depressed in the winter and worn out during the summer. There’s about 3 weeks of transition on both sides where I feel super good. Alas . . . even despite being extremely busy with 4 fairly large web sites, I’m enjoying life.

Anyway . . . I’ve found a new tool/toy.

It’s called Mint.com. There are other sites that have been floating around for a while similar. Where they take all of your banking and loan accounts, integrate them into one site, and let you manage all accounts from one source. I’ve dabbled with those sites but just didn’t like the feel and look, as well as some of the features. From what I can tell so far, Mint is different. I know some people like my parents are freaked out handling their banking online because of privacy concerns, but for those who do handle paying bills online and managing accounts, this might be a site worth checking out.

It only took me about 10 minutes to set up all of my accounts . . . checking, 2 savings, mortgage, business, credit card, etc. You simply type in your login and password and it pulls from your account. Right off the bat . . . it shows me what I’m spending at the pump and gives me the comparison to everyone else. It shows me where we spend most of our money (Fresh Market surprisingly enough). It shows my interest rate in comparison to the average rate and the “best” rate. It then lets me compare and browse through competing companies that can offer me better. It shows what I’m drawing in my savings account as opposed to the banks where I could be drawing more. And that’s just the home page.

And believe it or not . . . it’s not a crowded financial looking page! It looks like Facebook or something very similar in design. I’d take a screen shot but then I’d have to kill you for knowing about our dough. It gives me my Spending Trends and Ways to Save. Not bad for a free site. Within 10 minutes I had all of my finances and accounts represented in front of me and I was comparing interest rates on home equity lines.

I think what it does is flatten the market and increase competition for my “money”. Something that the other sites don’t do. And definitely something worth checking out for you technological finance types. ahem Eric, Nick.