Back to Mint.com
Posted on July 21st, 2008 – 5:15 PMBy Kara McGuire
I’m aware of rising food and energy prices. Who isn’t? But lately I’ve begun to notice that fueling up the car and the family is causing us to exceed our budget month after month.
I tried to track my spending about a month ago, but if you haven’t heard, that’s hard to keep up, and I fell off the wagon weeks ago.
So I went back to Mint.com, a free, secure site that aggregates and categorizes all of your credit card and account data for you. It also recently added a feature to allow you to aggregate your investment account data as well.
It took about an hour to properly categorize some misidentified purchases (since when is Green Mill a church?). And I’m still having trouble getting one of my financial institutions to regularly update when I log on.
But when finished, I had a pretty accurate, albeit startling assessment of our food and fuel costs in the form of a handy dandy pie chart.
I clicked on the “trends” tab and found that so far in July, we’ve spent $352 on food and eating out. Sounds like a respectable amount for a family of four, until I tell you that we’ve spent an equal amount of money using Cub Foods gift cards a la the stimulus rebate and hit the farmer’s market a couple of times!
As for gas, we’ve spent $162, although some of that will be reimbursed mileage for work.
Just a few months ago $500 would pay for food for our family with room to spare. That included a pizza and a night out at a casual restaurant.
Gas used to cost $125 a month– including a trip from St. Paul to the Minnesota Zoo. Not any more.
So that leaves my husband and I with a budget we’ve yet to balance. We don’t want to save less, and we don’t want to make changes to our spending habits. But something has got to give, and we’re both mulling that over in the days to come.
One thing I’ve been considering lately is a chest freezer to facilitate smarter shopping and batch cooking. That would eliminate going out to eat or getting take-out about once per week.
Dining out is a crapshoot with small kids anyway. Last time we went out for a “relaxing meal,” I made three trips to a smelly bathroom, had to peel a kid off the floor, confiscated crayons after they became airborne and didn’t even enjoy the food. We paid $38 for that mistake — with a coupon.
13 Responses to "Back to Mint.com"
We switched to the envelope cash approach 2 months ago and I’m so glad we did. I pay so much more attention to how things cost now. We let our zoo membership expire and try to find fun things to do within biking distance. I drove the bike through the drive through at the bank last week. This week, we might need to get gas about 10 days after we last did (which used to be longer than usual) but is pretty quick compared to the past month or two, going 2 weeks between 9 gallon fillups (in the Civic). I’m buying meat directly from farmers in bulk, our fruit and vegetables come mostly from a CSA, I got dried fruits, nuts, and grains through a buying club. I’m trying to reduce weekly grocery buying by getting food through more long-term, predictable means. The A/C has only been on once, for 12 hours on a humid day last week. It’s depressing to see that despite lots of changes we’re spending the same amount as we did this winter, but I know it would have been much higher without the changes.
I wasn’t real keen on the “big freezer” concept before (seems like my in-laws just let the thing fill up to the point where there’s things on the bottom that look like frozen cavemen), but then we inherited one in our new house, and now I really like having it. The freezer in the fridge is too small anyway, and it’s really handy for bulk purchases. We haven’t done the CSA thing yet, but we bought part of a cow from a farmer/butcher relative. So much beef…but WAY cheaper than the grocery store! It would have been a total pain without the big freezer.
I LOVE our chest freezer. Like Mike D. I couldn’t imagine not having it. We purchase a portion of a cow with relatives and while I haven’t run the numbers I am sure it is cheaper AND the meat is so much better that the stuff from the grocery store. I can also take advantage of sale items — frozen pizzas, Ice cream, (we do eat healthy foods too).
Get the chest freezer! I have always found it to be a fantastic tool. It allows you to buy in bulk when prices are best. It facilitates cooking in bulk and having meals ready. I loved my chest freezer so much that I got it in the divorce even though I am in an apartment and can’t use it for some time. Meanwhile I do have a small freezer in my kitchen in addition to the small one that came with my refrigerator. If you get a used one, make sure it was manufactured in the last decade — the efficiency is remarkably higher, and the chemical footprint much lower.
Not to hijack and slightly off topic, but I’m pretty annoyed that the cub promotion for grocery cards is ending in two weeks. My stimulus has been put on hold for some reason — likely because I had to file an amendment due to some short term disability when I had a baby. I’m obviously not the only person in this situation since when I call in for more info they tell me the call volume is too much and I need to hang up and call back. I did my amended return pre-deadline, so I’m annoyed that I will be missing the special simply because I am the main filer and my ss# is so late.
As I mentioned in previous posts, I don’t really budget so I’ll give you my $.02 on a couple other items you mentioned. Chest freezer, great idea except don’t get a chest get a mid-size upright freezer as it’s much easier to get at everything, you don’t “forget” the items on the bottom and I just wheel it out of the garage and into the driveway every couple years in the summer, open the door and let it defrost as you don’t want a non-frost freezer for long term storage. As for dining out I was always surprised at how much a couple beers and wines added to our tab when our family of 4 went to a casual dining location. Of course it didn’t bother me enough to skip the couple beers as when the kids younger I probably needed them.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again about mint.com. No thanks, I don’t want to give a third party my username and password for my banking sites.
I honestly don’t see why anyone would trust them with that information.
“I don’t want to give a third party my username and password for my banking sites… I honestly don’t see why anyone would trust them with that information.”
This curmudgeon agrees. I like the chest freezer idea though. Sadly we gave ours away.
I totally agree with the chest freezer - and the idea of having an upright sounds even better. (Do you lose more cold air when you open an upright? I’d be interested in an energy analysis on that one… if anyone has a spare hour or two on their hands, ha ha.)
Check out this cookbook if you are into the idea of bulk cooking “Don’t Panic: Dinner’s in the Freezer”. I did it last winter and it was fun and saved us a boatload of money. It has great tips for shopping and menu planning as well as really good recipes.
They partner with Yodlee: http://corporate.yodlee.com/, used by many financial institutions for secure online banking.
I am much more concerned with people taking sensitive mail out of my mailbox when it comes to ID theft than I am the security of this site. I never gave them my SSN. But everyone is different.
I don’t see the chest freezer as the cure-all…keep us update on the choices. Seems like $700+ in food is a lot…my two cents.
Kara is pretty hot for a midwest writer chick….
get the freezer! But I agree, don’t buy grocery store meat and fill it, find a local butcher or farmer you can buy meat in bulk. Check out outer ring suburbs, Elk River, Big Lake, Monticello, etc., where there is still farmland…those meat places can either give you a recommendation for a farmer, or else they usually have a great price on variety packs, may be worth the 45 minute drive. We get our beef for $2 a pound, that’s lean hamburger, roasts, and steaks, and the quality is far superior to anything in the grocery store. That is where the money is saved, moreso than stocking up on grocery store sales, I think.
