Word: mintings
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There are many personal-finance software packages that help people track their money, including the industry mastodon, Intuit's Quicken, which dwarfs Mint with 15 million users. But consumers have taken a liking to online money management, mostly because it's free. Microsoft stopped developing its Money program in June, and Intuit started offering Quicken Online for free in October 2008. Banks, too, have started to offer a similar service to their customers, but somehow, having an outside party monitor your bank seems like a better idea. Mint makes some money - it's unclear how much - by recommending credit cards...
...Mint, which was launched two years to the day before the announcement of its sale, works like a personal financial manager. You sign up and give it the online passwords to all your bank accounts, credit cards, retirement accounts, mother's maiden name, everything. It requires that you show the Full Monty. In return, Mint shows you, with minimal effort on your part, a complete picture of where the heck all your money is going. Many potential investors in Patzer's idea thought people would simply never be bold enough to hand over all that information - Patzer himself admits...
...Mint's big appeal is its access to your financial soul. Because it gets information directly from your bank, it can draw and redraw colorful pie charts and bar graphs that give you a clear picture of the many ways in which your money is seeping away - without you having to do much at all. If you want to know how you managed to spend $2,000 on food last month, click on "Food." Bingo! A new graph, breaking down the details - including the drinks, the fast food and the mid-afternoon coffee runs - suddenly appears. Mint also sends perky...
Intuit, which had an annual revenue of $3.2 billion in the fiscal year 2009, says it bought Mint "to enhance Intuit's position as a leading provider of consumer-software-as-a-service offerings." It's going to leave Mint as a stand-alone service and incorporate some of the young company's ideas into Intuit's products, including "Ways to Save." But clearly Mint's rapid growth was something Quicken had to either kill or get in on. Buying the site means it can do either...
...good job. To tout a contest for the best food photography, it showcased a fried-egg-and-bacon burger on a bun made of two doughnuts (above). A recurring segment called "WTFood??!" featured a British supermarket that was selling a Wimbledon special--sausage, strawberries, crème fraîche and mint--that sounded bad even for British food...