Can someone help out with Mint??

[Sebastian]

So I was dubed the finance dude in my relationship as my fiance would rather we start keep all our finances together to track it better.

I logged onto her mint account (keep in mind she hasn't been on for months). The whole is a mess. No wonder why I'm taking over huh? :)

So I'm going back to previous months to try and make new budgets move stuff around, etc. etc. so it shows a more accurate picture. I thought I could do this because I'm pretty sure I've gone back to previous months to do this as I'm in sales and my income fluctuates every month.

It will not let me change or create any new budgets for previous months, wtf!!! >:(

Anyone know a solution to this? It's really pissing me off and I'm about ready to be done with Mint. How the hell can I accurately keep track if it won't even let me edit?

[arebelspy]

Edit the individual transactions into categories, and use the "trends" tab to see what happened.

It doesn't make sense to make a budget for the past - you already know what you spent.  You use the trends tab to see that spending.

[rocksinmyhead]

Edit the individual transactions into categories, and use the "trends" tab to see what happened.

It doesn't make sense to make a budget for the past - you already know what you spent.  You use the trends tab to see that spending.

+1

I believe the "trends" tab is what you're looking for

[schimt]

Why do you want to create a budget for past months? The point of a budget is to produce a goal for the future and track your budget to keep you on track through out the month or year. What’s done is done, fix the categories for past transactions and study your spending history (or her spending history in this case) and create budget goals for the future based on where you want to hold steady or make improvements.

You can log on to mint at any point in time to see how you are doing verse the budget you set for yourself, and it will email you notices when you are coming close or exceeding a limit you set for a particular category. You can then adjust the budget (not recommended) or curb your spending in that category if possible to meet your original goals.

One little note about a combine Mint account, I had to create a rule on my girlfriends email address to forward all mint emails to me, so we both receive the information from mint.

Best of luck to you both!

[Sebastian]

Thanks! I understand what budgets are, but my fiances Mint was never really set up. She has expenses all over the place and I'm just trying to actually add those in so the allocation of money looks more accurate. I will take a look at this trends tab and see if I can change anything.

[schimt]

It's tedious but you actually want to work on the transactions tab to recategorise everything. If you do it from the trend tab, you will have to reallocate transactions from each category then move to the next, and as things start moving around you will see the same thing twice when you get to the category that you moved it too. If you do it from the all transactions page, you can go through he transactions chronologically and they won't move because they are arranged by date only.

Also, If you see reoccurring expenses, you can search for that expense and apply your change to all of the transactions at once, really cuts down on the time to organize

[arebelspy]

Yes, use the transactions tab to first categorize everything, then trends to analyze it.

[Sebastian]

Sounds like a plan. Thanks gentlemen!