When I first entered college at the ripe age of 18, I only had one debit card that my mom insisted on making for me in middle school. Fast forward to 2018, I am now the owner of 3 credit cards, 2 debit cards, and 14 student loans from multiple lenders which can make it hard to keep up with each and every one of them.

After years of experimenting, I have finally found how to manage my finances in one place to keep myself from feeling overwhelmed.

 

When Life Became More Complicated

** As a disclaimer, I am not sponsored by any of the companies talked about in this post. I do have some referral links for the credit cards I own and recommend that will be at no additional cost to you if you decide to apply.**

It all started just before I entered college. when I acquired my first credit card, which was a Discover It credit card that I still have today. It is geared towards students which is how I was able to get approved with no credit history.

I remember not understanding the need for a credit card except to “build credit” as they would say. The only reason I would use it was the 5% rotating cash-back bonus on purchases from different categories every 3 months. I only had a $500 credit line which I paid off in full every month.

Two years later, enticed by the $150 sign up bonus, I applied for a Chase Freedom credit card which came with a Chase debit card. The credit card had the same rotating cash-back concept as my Discover It card but came with a higher credit limit and therefore more responsibility.

Thankfully, I did not get into the hype of “just put everything on your credit” as my roommates and suitemates in college were accustomed to saying and doing. After my second credit card, I took a break from getting any new cards as I found managing them already a handful.

It was not until last year that I obtain my third credit card, the American Express Blue Cash Everyday card. I was well into grad school and my friend had explained her strategy of getting a new card with 0% APR for the first year to put balances on the card that she would only be making the minimum payment on.

To say the least, I was awestruck by this idea.

I plan on writing a separate post on this concept and how I’ve used it successfully in helping me tackle my student debt so I won’t go too in-depth with it in this post.

After grad school, I am also now the unenthused owner of 14 student loans. Needless to say, it has become quite overwhelming to keep all my finances on track.

How I Made Checking Finances Enjoyable

Growing up, I would see my mom checking every receipt that she’s kept in her wallet for the entire month to match it up to her bank statements when it came in the mail. It was a great learning lesson on being accountable for money, but I also found it to be very tedious.

I have to confess, while some may find it a chore to look through bank statements to make sure no discrepancies exist, I actually enjoy checking up on my finances and seeing how much money I am making and where that money is going. The catch is, I don’t look at my bank statements.

One of my favorite tools that I use to check my different accounts is a personal finance service called Mint. What Mint does is it keeps track of all my financial accounts in one place. It lets me check all my debit cards, credit cards, and student loans in one place.

Now, Mint is not the only service that offers personal finance management. I’ve also heard raving reviews of Personal Capital and other services both offered in browser and in apps.

Personally, I’ve only tried Mint so I can’t make a comparison. I have considered diving into other alternatives before but never made the plunge because I couldn’t think of anything more I wanted that Mint didn’t offer. Clearly, I’m a huge fan of the saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

How Mint Works

Ironically, my roommate from college who introduced me to Mint was actually one of the people that had continuously said to me, “just put it on your credit,” when I was still an undergrad. So, you’ll understand that I was quite skeptical when she first told me about this service.

Once I made the jump, my life was completely changed. No exaggeration. 8 years later, I still use Mint to check up on my finances on at least a weekly basis.

I always had all my credit cards in my wallet and my choice of which credit card to choose when paying literally came down to which credit card I pulled first. There was no rhyme or rhythm to my choice.

So when it comes down to looking at each month’s bill, I had to look through all my credit cards every month.

With Mint, by pulling open one app I’m able to look through all my transactions from my debit and credit cards all in one place. And yes, Mint is very app-friendly. In fact, I think I’ve only used my browser a handful of times.

It is just so much more convenient to check on my phone and makes checking on a regular basis more feasible so that I don’t leave myself the daunting task of “balancing the checkbook” as they used to say, at the end of every month.

The truth is, 8 years after I’ve started using Mint, I’ve really only hit the tip of the iceberg with this app. You are obviously welcome to try all the functions that Mint offer, but for me, I really only use Mint for 2 things.

1. To view all my financial transactions in one app.
2. To view my budget and how I am doing every month.

Mint does these 2 things very well and makes it very easy to view everything in a simple way. The hardest and most time-consuming part is the set-up stage when you have to add and verify all your accounts into Mint. For a while, I wasn’t setting my budget because this girl right here believed she was too busy to make a budget during her undergrad years.

So I used the app only to view my transactions and to make sure I had enough money to completely pay off my credit cards at the end of each month.

This is the first thing I see when I open my Mint app. As you can see, it displays my most recent transactions as well as the money I own and the money I owe.

After some time, I started using the budget function to set and track my spending throughout the month. When I first started using the budget function-which was a couple of years into using Mint- I realized that based on my spending record, Mint had estimated my budget each month for different categories like Entertainment, Gas, Groceries, Restaurants, etc.

I personalize mine so I don’t put everything on my budget list. I like to focus on things that I can control like eating out and shopping. I mainly use the budgeting tool to help manage my “wants” so I don’t put necessities like rent, groceries, car insurance, etc on my list.

Even in my shopping category, I only count my “wants” into this category, excluding shopping for necessities so the numbers on my budget overview can look a bit skewed. But budgeting is so personal, there’s no right or wrong way to do it, so just do you.

Now, don’t worry,  you can tweak these numbers to best match your spending and add extra categories as needed.  As you can see, anytime I went on the app, it showed how much money I had left to spend to stay within budget and also showed me if I went over budget.

In addition to budgeting, Mint offers other services as well. Some of the options I see are setting up goals, managing your bills, viewing your spending trends, and managing your investments.

I’ve tried all these with the exception of managing my investments because I have none and they work well, but like I said before, I really only use it for the two functions I’m most interested in.

Now, while I can’t promise that I can make this process as enjoyable for you as it has been for me, I can say that using Mint has made managing my finances far easier and much more bearable.

Even if you don’t want to use Mint, I would absolutely recommend using any other personal finance app to manage your accounts. It has literally been life-changing for me!