Writing Tips for the Grammar Nerd

Here’s hoping some of you laugh out loud at this like I did. #GrammarNerd

Money Management

Hi friends in the blogosphere. I’ve had a bit of a long absence from posting, but I’m back with what I hope will be an interesting and somewhat humorous post, about my lack of money management skills. I’m thinking many of you out there can relate (or hoping that you can?).

This year I started using Mint.com, a money management website, to keep better track of my spending and saving, etc. The best part is that it is free, because, really, why would I want to spend money to learn how to manage what little money I have?

So the website lets you do all these cool, adult things, like manage your retirement account, keep track of your student loans, and set spending budgets.  The best part is that it is all in one place, under one login.  (Am I the only person that has to try several different username and password combos every time I log in to my student loan account?)  They also send you these really useful reminder emails when you have bills coming up. See Exhibit A:

Exhibit A

Geez, I sound like a commercial for Mint.com. Suffice to say I really like the site and how it helps me organize my finances. I’ve only hit one snag so far.

Remember those spending budgets I mentioned? Ideally, you set a spending budget and you stick to it. Those little red bar graphs telling me that I’ve exceeded my budget for clothing for this month should convince me to stop shopping and start saving, right?

No need to see the amounts on here, just the sad red line under Clothing.

Not quite. Every time I go over my shopping budget, I just increase the monthly amount, so that pesky little red graph turns back to green. It is the perfectionist in me. I can’t handle seeing the red on there, like I am some kind of money management failure. So instead I just up my budget.

I’m quite certain that is not what the people who created Mint.com had in mind.