View and tag your transactions

You can see how you’re doing in any number of customizable categories. Most of your transactions will immediately go into the right category when you add the bank account.

You can also tag transactions… for example, you might have tons of expenses for a vacation. All of those expenses fall under a variety of categories (food, lodging, gas). If you tag each individual expense with “vacation” you can analyze your spending for that particular tag.

What gives mint its soul?

The vision of the Mint.com crew is not only to create a super-easy and super-helpful finance tool, but it is to shed light on the financial industry in a way that’s never been done before.

The average consumer is getting hosed by financial institutions. Mint provides consumers with information that lets them compare their interest rates on banking and debt. The software shows you which of your bank accounts may be charging you too much in fees, high interest rates on debt and provides options that help you know where you could get a better deal.

Aaron assured me that they evaluate each provider on Mint.com based on the value they provide to the customer. For example, in my screenshot example, they wouldn’t have recommended me the HSBC account if it involved fees that would screw me over. They really do make all their decisions on what is best for the consumer, not what’s best for their own pockets.

Mint vs Quicken

If you haven’t tried Mint for your personal finances yet, you should. Check out the website hit comparison of Mint.com and Quicken (courtesy of compete.com). Mint outshines Quicken with it’s sleek interface and ever-so-easy interface. No user manuals necessary!

** One caveat… if you are Canadian, you might not find your account in their yet, but they promise you will soon!

These two tools have let me stay accountable to where my time really goes.

Tool 1: David Seah’s Printable CEO Series (old school)

I say “old school” only because it uses pencil and paper, but it is definitely modern and a gorgeous way to plan out your day.  These printable CEO and day planners make it so easy to work on a project especially when you are jumping back and forth between tasks.  They are a joy to work on cause they look so hot.  David has definitely thought through usability and what it’s like to have  ton of work to do and to focus on what’s important.  You will need to have a colour printer to get the full effects these awesome planning sheets.

Tool 2: RescueTime (new school)

When perhaps I let my pen and paper tracking slide, RescueTime always has my back. It’s a neat little app that constantly runs and records which programs you have open.  You can then review the time you spent in each and “tag” each application or URL.  Tagging what you do is the real brains behind the operation, because you can also assign a tag a “level” of productivity from -2 to +2.

For example, when I see my own blog URL in the list, I tag it with “blogging” and I give blogging a productivity level of +1.  Then, you can easily see how productive you are over time  (for example, on my list, youtube.com gets a -2 on productivity).

I’ve been thoroughly impressed with the program’s intelligence and its ease of use.  It’s saved my butt more than a few times, when I tried to remember what I was working on the day before.

Usability-wise,  I feel the app could use a little more ajax in their app to aid with multi-tagging items, but overall the information it gives me is invaluable.

Today we had a digital yard sale and sold off about 10 items (still 12 to go)!

A few likes

• Automatically recognizes where you are geographically (via your IP) so you can search local listings.  When I navigate to kijiji.ca it auto-magically takes me to london.kijiji.ca
• Interface is much more appealing than Craigslist.
• Easy to view the stats on your ads (views).
• Love that you remain anonymous, but you can communicate via real email addresses – this makes it really easy to keep in touch with buyers.

A few dislikes

• Very difficult to re-list and move your ad to the first page of results… unless you wait until it gets buried on page 20 to have that option.
• You have to pay to insert a web link.

My biggest suggestion for Kijiji

• They should add a link (like eBay) where it lets the buyers view this seller’s other items.  SO many people came to pick up their item and were asking what else we had for sale.  It would be nice to be able to offer more in one trip.

They asked me which of their new redesigns I’d prefer.  Kind of makes me feel important. :)

It’s between Design 1 and Design 2. I went for #1.

Anyways, a great example of how to keep your users in the loop while you re-design your site.