I pop into a personal finance forum every now and again to give my $.02 worth of advice and commentary. One of the posts was about Mint or one stop shop sites/software for personal finance tracking. Almost all the comments were bashing the use of them or claiming it was for the novice budgeter. Below is my comment.

I use mint and love it. Sure, my “data” is all in one spot. Big deal. It is well beyond my control if joe blow wants to steal files from his company and sell them. Sure the risk is higher, but your information is out there regardless. I just spoke about identity theft the other week.

My reasons for using Mint (or other aggregators):

• Instant Access. All in one place and I can access anywhere, any time.
• Efficiency. Instead of logging into 10+ places, I log into one. If I have 10 minutes to kill, I might log in just to see how my entertainment spending is going.
• Budget tracking. I get up to date information on all my spending. I can set up a budget and it will show me how much I’ve spent in the month so far. Very easy.
• Micro managing. I refuse to micro manage my money on my own. I think people who have a budget for toothpaste or staples are clinically insane. These sites do just enough.
• Deals. Sure, they get their money through affiliates and clicks, but they do present offers that can be useful.
• Updates. I like getting an email notice when I’ve spent too much on groceries or my bill is coming due. I don’t track my finances every day, so this is a great benefit.
• Charts. Although I am, not many are Excel wizards who can graph/chart data easily. Mint and the like do that, and are able to slice the data into several ways.
• Data Loss. No worries of corrupt files or busted hard drives. Sure, I could safeguard my information myself, but that would require effort, right?

Those are my reasons. I’m sure any one of you could poke holes into them, but that doesn’t dismiss their benefits.

What are your thoughts?