Start Budgeting with Mint (Part 1 of 4)

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel.  This is the first video in a four part series where I will walk through the steps to start budgeting using Mint.  In this first video we will talk about gathering historic data (which involves linking your accounts) and choosing budget categories.

Okay -- I've done a bunch of videos recently about budgeting.  The last series of videos that I did was an overview and explainer on the process of budgeting and the types of budgets that exist.  This series will break down exactly how to get started with budgeting using the platform that I use -- Mint.com.  There will be some repetition from my other videos, since the overall budgeting process is similar, so apologies about that in advance.  

If you watched my 3 part budgeting series, you'll know that the 4 steps to successful budgeting are: determine your current behavior, set a new plan, track your behavior, and make adjustments.  So, we are going to make this a little more specific for the purpose of budgeting in Mint.  The steps will be:

• Gather Historic Data - this involves linking Mint to your financial accounts to pull in about 3 months of historic financial info
• Create a Budget - This is a multi-step process and involves analyzing your historic data to create a workable financial plan. 
• Track Progress against Budget - this involves categorizing your transactions and reporting on your progress and finally
• Making Adjustments - which is either changing your budget or your behavior so you can reach your financial goals. 

This first video will cover gathering historic data and the first step of creating a budget, which is to determine your budget categories.  The following 2 videos will cover all of the steps in creating a budget and the final one will deal with tracking progress and making adjustments.  So, let's get started with

Gather Historic Data

This is an important step.  You'll need about three months of historic data in order to determine what your spending has been so that you can make an achievable budget going forward.  This would normally require you to get out your credit card and bank statements, go through your bills and make long lists of all of your expenses.  Mint makes this both a little easier and a little more confusing.  Instead of all of that paper, you will be connecting all of your spending accounts to Mint.  Mint will then pull in several months of transactions from each of the connected accounts to gather all of that information for you.  Easy, right?  It can be -- I've seen it go super smoothly.  It can also be tricky and require repeated calls to customer service (which I HAVE found to be very responsive).  Just know it might require some persistence, but it will be worth it in the long run.

Here's how you do this.  Obviously, you have to first create an account within Mint.  I'm going to assume you've already done this.  Okay -- so here you are.  Since you want to connect an account, look for Accounts and click on "Link an account".  If you don't see your bank down here, enter a search term.  Mint supports most financial institutions, but if you don't see yours, you can click this link to "request an account."  Once the screen pops up to link your account, you need to put in your log-in information for online banking.  If you don't have online banking set up for your account, you'll need to set up that access first.  Once you have logged in, you'll need to grant Mint access to read your accounts -- it can't transfer funds, taken anything out, or create transactions.  All it will be doing is reading the information already in the account.  If all goes well, it will sign in and start downloading your transactions to Mint.  You will want to connect any account where you spend money regularly -- your main bank account or accounts, credit card accounts, and maybe savings accounts.  I don't connect any of my investment accounts since I don't track those using Mint and I think it just clutters things up and makes it confusing.   

Once you have all of your spending accounts linked to Mint, we will have completed the first step -- gathering historic data.  Yay!  Next

Create a Budget

This is a multiple step process, which does require some time.  I'm going to cover this step over the course of the next two video.  Essentially, a budget is a plan for how you want to spend and save your money in the future.  It's a break down of how much you want to spend or save in each budgeting category.  The first thing you'll need to do is

Choose Your Categories

I'd like to tell you there is a a magic list of categories and a magic budget number for each one, but of course this is going to be different for each person.  Budget categories are really just units of scrutiny and control.  You will have to figure out how many categories you feel comfortable tracking.  Too many and it's overwhelming and hard to maintain, too few the information is too general to be of any use.  I think somewhere between 10 and 25 categories is about right.  I'll give you my list of categories in the notes section below, but you'll need to make your own choices.  For example, some people separate groceries from dining out since they want to control restaurant spending.  They feel like having it thrown in with groceries just hides that info.  Some people are perfectly happy with just a "Food" budget that contains both kinds of spending.  Some people need categories for Kids and Kids Activities -- if you don't have kids, you obviously won't need that.  Mint has way too many categories, if you ask me.  Here is their list.  You can find it at https://www.mint.com/mint-categories.  You can start with Mint's list and cut it down to about 20 categories.  Or you can start with my list and replace the categories you don't need with ones you do.  Let me give you some notes on how I use my categories:

• Auto All - I have a category for Gas, but everything else having to do with our cars with the exception of insurance goes in here: oil changes, registration, maintenance, toll fees, and parking.
• Household - I don't have a miscellaneous category, so this is really the closest thing.  Obviously, household purchases go in here like kitchen appliances and house furnishings -- but also some random stuff like stamps, shipping, and newspaper subscriptions.
• Kid Stuff and Kids Activities - Our kids are involved in some relatively expensive activities, so we like to keep these separate -- probably just to torture ourselves.  Kids allowance comes out of Kid Stuff as does any other expense that isn't related to their extracurricular activities.  
• Xmas - there are some categories that only come up once a year, but you need to save for them throughout.  I have a Xmas category so that by the time December rolls around, we have built up a budget for gifts.
• Allowance - my husband and I both get a monthly allowance.  I have found this to be a controversial topic at dinner parties.  I'll probably do a full video on the benefits of this -- which I think are enormous -- but suffice it to say, we each get some money each month for our own use.  We use this when we have drinks or a meal with friends (as long as other members of the family aren't present -- otherwise that would go in Restaurants).  We use our allowance for hair cuts, clothing, and solo activities.  My husband pays for his Sunday Ticket subscription with his allowance.  I pay for my Audible subscription.  Each of us has our own budget category.  

So, now that we have a draft of our list of budget categories, join me in my next video when we continue to create a budget by tagging historic transactions and set an amount for each budget category.  Let me know what you think!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!

My Budget Categories:

• Auto All
• Husband's allowance
• Charity
• Cleaning & Lawn
• Dry Cleaning
• Gas & Fuel
• Gifts
• Groceries
• Gym
• Household
• Insurance
• Internet, Phone, TV
• Kid Stuff
• Kids Activities
• Lara's Allowance
• Medical and Dental
• Mortgage & Rent
• Mountain House
• Pets
• Restaurants
• Utilities
• Xmas