That dreadful moment when you decide to check your bank account...

And now, ladies and gentlemen, I have for you my #1 most effective money-saving strategy in New York City. Drumroll please. That strategy is... Leave the city and go home for a week! (I'm only half kidding.) As I relish this week of home-cooked meals and in-house laundry machines, I have decided to take the time to do some research from afar. Today I'd like to review a website that I mentioned in my first post, Mint.com. 

How does it work? Mint.com is a website that helps you track your income and expenses (or your slow descent into poverty in my case). You can hook your Mint account up with your bank account login, and Mint will instantly sort through and categorize your expenses. I was hesitant to hand over my bank account password, but after reading through the security section and talking to others who had used the service I determined that I was safe.

The best part about Mint is that you can set up budgets for yourself, and decide how much you want to spend on things like restaurants, groceries, movies, and shopping per month. Since Mint categorizes your expenses, it is easy to track your progress and determine if you're working effectively with your budget. Another feature I've enjoyed is the "goals" section of the website. Here you can enter something that you'd like to save up for (in my case, it's a trip to visit a friend in Brazil), how much it will cost, and when you need to have the money by. Mint will then calculate how much you need to save a month, and subtract that from your monthly budget. 

What Mint does not do, naturally, is deal with cash. So it is up to you to enter in how much cash you earn and spend, and then what you spend it on. If you withdraw money from an ATM, then you also need to go back through and specify what all of that cash was spent on, lest it remain "uncategorized" on your Mint transactions list. This was the hardest part for me, because I hate holding onto receipts from your cash purchases (and was therefore having trouble remembering where my money had gone). Luckily Mint has an app that allows you to enter transactions on the go, which I've now been doing faithfully. It works like the apps for Chase or other banks, in that your information can only be accessed when you are logged in, rather than being stored on the phone itself. 

Overall it's a service that I highly recommend. It's a no-nonsense way of determining right away where you spend your money, and in what areas you need to find better ways to save. I learned that I spent almost all of my money eating out in the month of May, so I'm devoting June to cooking and groceries. More on saving money on groceries in upcoming posts...