mint and the greater good

First off, if you haven’t seen it, mint is an excellent application to keep track of your budget and spending; plug in all your accounts and mint pulls in the info and tracks your spending by category or tag. It seems a little creepy ’sharing’ your financial info, but once you see mint in action you’ll notice the utility and convenience right away! You can set up budgets and get txt or email updates if you overspend. You can also see national trends in monthly spending. Its well designed and really slick.

There are several directions to point our current economic blame; investment banks, predatory lending, greed, etc. But regardless we’re ALL in a pretty big mess. And it seems like the stimulus, bailouts and all that comes with those could very well be another way of pumping our economy full of ‘fake’ dollars. And at the root of it all will inevitably be the individual and how they spend / or don’t spend their money.

So, the economy and financial responsibility are on a lot of people’s minds. These thoughts along with comments regarding ‘social communities for the greater good‘ made me think about how we could really do something better with a site like mint.

Mint currently has offers - usually credit card or refinance options. Mint has national trend reports of monthly spending and budgets (no personal information is shared). Something mint could do better with is becoming a financial education tool and a platform for financial responsibility. Using social aspects (this could be tips, comments, sharable savings) or simple integrated functions. People could see where they could save, where they shouldn’t spend (Can I buy that new tv?), and how much they can actually afford for housing.

Just think about how a tool like mint could increase financial responsibility at a personal level. The stability on a personal level would pave way for economic stability and open up opportunity to support causes. There are so many great ways a platform like this could work, some examples:

What if you consistently spend too much on food, and could pose a question to the group of people under budget in your area, ‘Where do you shop, how do you do it’?

What if a button calculates your monthly allowance for housing based on a 6 month spending/savings analysis. OR in reverse, calculates how much you’ll have to trim and where to afford that bigger home.

What if a form allows you to plug in an amount for a material goal (ie a plasma tv.) and it returns the amount of time you’ll need to save to make the purchase.

What if, this is my favorite, the site had a helpful tip that saved you money each month and then donated that savings to a charitable cause.

Does it all sound too idealistic? Are people too afraid to share their financial info? Maybe we should just blame the government and banks, its easier that way… What are your thoughts and ideas?