Back in October I started using a site called mint.com to start tracking my spending.  Having crossed the country into the land of “higher cost of living.” I wanted to see just how Stacy and I’s budgeting would do in this environment.  Groceries seem to be more expensive, and gas definitely is.  But what would that come to on a monthly basis?  Well Mint is perfect for this.  Mint takes transactions from your debit/credit cards, and categorizes them for you.  If it gets something wrong, you can re-classify it easily, and even make a rule to permanently classify it how you like.  

I thought it was pretty cool off the bat, but now that I have more than 6 months of data into their system, the service really shines.  I can see my trends over time in spending, and work on reducing them.  Does shopping at costco save us money versus shopping at safeway?  It would be hard to measure larger purchases less frequently compared to weekly grocery runs.  But with Mint, I can look at the monthly spending trends and see if its working.

Mint can even give you weekly statements, and warn you when you are spending larger amounts in certain categories than what you usually spend.  Here is a look at a monthly pie chart of my spending:

You can  even compare your spending to other parts of the country:

If you have an interest in tracking your spending, check it out.  Very useful if you have multiple online accounts such as bank accounts and credit cards, etc