Tracking debt repayment in Mint.

[TheRealMFC]

I have imported all of my accounts into Mint, and I categorized everything. I also set up budgets that cover all categories. We are making great progress on spending a LOT less than January of last year (before I knew of MMM).

The first priority for the extra money we save is to pay off our car loan. I know that this is nit-picking, but how do I track that "extra" money in Mint?

At the end of the month, it will appear that we spent 100% of our earnings and that we spend an inordinate amount of money on vehicles (since we will be tripling our car payment for half of this year until it is paid off). When really, we are saving a ton of money and redirecting it toward being debt free as soon as possible.

I'm just wondering if anyone had any clever ways of tracking something like this. The only other debt we have is our mortgage. Once the car is paid off, we plan on putting the extra $ toward the mortgage. So for the next 8 years or so, it will appear that we are spending all of our take home money. I suppose we are, but we'll be doing it in a much better way than we used to.

[rocksinmyhead]

I just set up my student loan (over)payments as a regular budget item. I guess in the months when I go over my usual overpayment (which are awesome months!) it does look like I'm "overspending" on student loans (oh gosh darn!) but it doesn't bug me.

the only other problem (and maybe this is what you're worried about) is when you go to look at a graph of your overall spending month-to-month, there's no easy way to take out those loan payments, if the amount varies. I wish they had a "show all categories EXCEPT this one" option, rather than just letting you choose categories you WANT to see.

[jfer_rose]

Mint is certainly not perfect and there are lots of things I would change if I were designing it. Have you tried setting up a goal for paying off the car loan in Mint? That way you get a virtual pat on the back for putting extra money toward the loan. Only downside is that you I'm not sure if you can access the goals from a mobile device.

[ingrownstudentloans]

I just set up my student loan (over)payments as a regular budget item. I guess in the months when I go over my usual overpayment (which are awesome months!) it does look like I'm "overspending" on student loans (oh gosh darn!) but it doesn't bug me.

This - I look to the other categories to make sure that I don't go into the red with things like groceries or gas expenses, but I look forward to seeing red in the student loan payment category.  Overall spending be darned, you know what the "spending" actually is.

[Cheddar Stacker]

I recently discovered the "Tag" function and use it for this purpose. I've set the name of one of the tags to debt principal. Anything that is 100% principal (0% interest or an extra payment) will get tagged in the "edit details" function under the transactions tab. Anything that's P&I is split into 2 amounts, and the principal portion is called "debt principal" or something I made up in the financial section, plus it gets tagged.

This sets the table for getting the reports you are asking about, but there's still one more step. When you're in the "trends" section on the left side there's a section called preferences. The default setting is No Hidden Tag. Click Edit, scroll to the bottom, and click the button to hide your designated tag from budgets and trends. Viola, the debt principal disappears until you "un-hide" your tag.

I know this is not a simple process, but it's important enough to me to take the couple of minutes to set up and track moving forward. I want to see expenses, not cash outflow. I realize the purchase of the house, car, education, or whatever is an expense and Mints' tracking process really captures your true cost, but I don't like it. I'm using Mint to track my current spending, not prior purchases.

If anyone has a better way let me know.

[rocksinmyhead]

I recently discovered the "Tag" function and use it for this purpose. I've set the name of one of the tags to debt principal. Anything that is 100% principal (0% interest or an extra payment) will get tagged in the "edit details" function under the transactions tab. Anything that's P&I is split into 2 amounts, and the principal portion is called "debt principal" or something I made up in the financial section, plus it gets tagged.

This sets the table for getting the reports you are asking about, but there's still one more step. When you're in the "trends" section on the left side there's a section called preferences. The default setting is No Hidden Tag. Click Edit, scroll to the bottom, and click the button to hide your designated tag from budgets and trends. Viola, the debt principal disappears until you "un-hide" your tag.

I know this is not a simple process, but it's important enough to me to take the couple of minutes to set up and track moving forward. I want to see expenses, not cash outflow. I realize the purchase of the house, car, education, or whatever is an expense and Mints' tracking process really captures your true cost, but I don't like it. I'm using Mint to track my current spending, not prior purchases.

If anyone has a better way let me know.

ooh thanks for the tip about hidden tags!

[TheRealMFC]

Mint is certainly not perfect and there are lots of things I would change if I were designing it. Have you tried setting up a goal for paying off the car loan in Mint? That way you get a virtual pat on the back for putting extra money toward the loan. Only downside is that you I'm not sure if you can access the goals from a mobile device.

I haven't set any goals in Mint yet. I will set up a car payment goal and see how it works, then I'll report back. I'm endlessly tweaking things in Mint in an effort to find the system that works best for me. Thanks!

[TheRealMFC]

I just set up my student loan (over)payments as a regular budget item. I guess in the months when I go over my usual overpayment (which are awesome months!) it does look like I'm "overspending" on student loans (oh gosh darn!) but it doesn't bug me.

Thanks for the tip. I went into mint and created a new category called "Early Retirement" and I set that up as a budget item as well. Any money above and beyond the regular car payment will be split into this category. This way, I can see how much $ I end up "spending" each month / year on early retirement.

[TheRealMFC]

I recently discovered the "Tag" function and use it for this purpose. I've set the name of one of the tags to debt principal. Anything that is 100% principal (0% interest or an extra payment) will get tagged in the "edit details" function under the transactions tab. Anything that's P&I is split into 2 amounts, and the principal portion is called "debt principal" or something I made up in the financial section, plus it gets tagged.

I haven't used tags yet. I think you may be onto something though. I'm going to keep tweaking my system using tags (and some of the other suggestions in this thread) until I come up with something that I feel good about. Thanks!

[JohnGalt]

I had a similar issue with my house payments.  For a time, I just had the equity I owned in my house as the value.  As I payed down my loan (assuming the valuation stayed the same), I increased the value listed in mint.  You could do the same thing with the car.  Add it as a property category, put your current equity in the car as the value, and increase that value as you pay off the loan.  Then your car payments can get set either with a special tag as others have mentioned or as transfers so that they don't show up in your summaries.

Ultimately - I ended up deciding that mint wasn't the place to tract everything.  It's great for tracking helping me keep track of my expenses since I do all of my spending on credit cards - but to get the tracking to look how I wanted it, I ended up with a separate spreadsheet that I update once a month that let's me handle those one off items that don't fit anywhere in mint and do projections for the future. 

[Tempe]

I do the same thing as what mint does when I transfer money from my bank account to my credit card. It creates a -200 transaction because the 200 is coming out of my bank account, but then it adds 200+ as a transaction when it stops pending and the transaction completes. They cancel each other out.