Earlier this week, my colleague, Donna Jones shared a valuable resource with our readers in her Blog, “Understanding Your Net Worth”. If you hadn’t already, hopefully her Blog inspired you to begin focusing more on one of the most critical pieces of financial information, personal Net Worth.
Intuit’s Mint.com is a great free tool providing users with up-to-the-minute access to their complete Net Worth, at a glance. Mint’s smartphone app puts this critical information literally, in the palm of your hand.
With bank level security, users create an online account and with easy navigation in a matter of minutes you can be up and running with access to 100% of your financial information (Home, Property & Automobile Values, Bank & Credit Card Balances, Consumer Loan Balances, Mortgage Loan Balances, Investment Account Balances, 401K Balances, etc.). When you need to prepare a Personal Financial Statement for a lender, the data is at your fingertips.
In addition to having your personal Net Worth at your fingertips the app enhances security for all of your accounts because the data is live making transactions visible almost as they happen with the touch of a button on your smart phone. The app is “read only” and access can be password protected. If your phone is lost or stolen, there’s nothing anyone can do with the data – it doesn't display account numbers and so there is no way to access the various accounts via the app.
I blogged about Mint a number of years ago and I've been using Mint for some time. It’s proven to be a “must have” tool in my tool chest. The only “down” side if I had to point one out is that you can see on a daily basis the volatility of investment accounts, which can sometimes be alarming.
Let us know if you’ve used Mint and what you think. We’d also like to hear from you if you've tried other solutions/applications that you've found useful.
Lisa Wagner
Senior Vice President, Client Services
Photo Credit: 123RF Stock Photo