Axiom CPA, P.A. - Axiom CPA Blog

Here's a challenge I am facing trying to cater to business clients. At the end of the day it's all personal. We talk business strategy, corporate budgeting, tax planning, dashboards, scorecards, marketing, return on investment and all the other stuff that helps businesses become better businesses. But none of that stuff matters if the owner's personal financial life is left out. Too much financial stress leads to distraction and poor decision making. Too little can help explain a lack of motivation. Sooner or later we need to move off the corporate financial statements and into the personal checking account.

Personal finance 101 is called budgeting. And the first step toward proper budgeting is knowing where the money is going NOW. There is a great little tool that's been around the web for a while that is hands down one of the easiest and best personal financial widgets out there. It's called Mint.com. Here's what I like about it.

It's web based. This means free, no download required and always available.

It's easy. I set up our one primary personal checking account in less than five minutes

It pays off early. After setting up my account Mint downloaded the last three months of transactions enabling me to see exactly where the money has been going. I didn't have to wait a few months for it to obtain the data needed to show me results.

One stop shop. Mint pulls data from bank accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, mortgages, investment accounts...it all ends up in one place.

Easy to maintain. You don't have to DO anything to keep Mint going. It downloads your transactions every night. You can also set email alerts to notify you of strange transactions or balance updates.

There are two drawbacks some people may experience. First, if you are paranoid about giving your passwords to Mint you probably won't like it. In an age where most people are comfortable banking online this probably isn't an issue, but I'm sure some people shy away from it. Second, if you write a lot of checks Mint doesn't know how to classify them. For people who use debit cards or online bill pay it's great. If you're old school, not so much.