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I’m
hopeful.
Ability to group sub-categories into budgets.
I would I could organize different sub-categories into one budget. i.e. A budget for "Groceries" but also lump "Restaurants & Fast Food" into a separate budget
Promoted
Responses
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I’m
Disappointed
3I agree with the others, being able to group multiple categories and/or sub-categories into a budget is a necessary feature!
From what I've read in the other comments, our requests can be summed up in two actions:
1. Allow budgets to contain multiple categories & sub-categories OR allow budgeting by tags
2. Allow tagging "rules" to avoid having to tag every individual transaction
And for crying out loud, could someone -- ANYONE -- from Mint take a second to give us all an update?! As many others have said, this is one of the most requested features, yet it has been over a year with no traction. How are we supposed to "Get Satisfaction" with that? -
3Not being able to group categories together to build a budget is why I've had to stop using Mint.
I don't think my budgeting needs are all that complicated or that I'm a fringe case. Mint quickly becomes too simple budget-wise to be of any use.
It does a GREAT job of capturing and letting me categorize transactions, but then I just can't do much with that information. Disappointing.
I'm sure someone else will come along and fill this niche. -
3Mint people-in-charge! Please let us combine sub-categories into single budgets! Without the ability to do so, Mint.com becomes virtually useless to me, because I have to manually combine so many budgets just to get a "big picture" understanding of what I am spending.
Also a huge (but similar) problem: The Everything Else category contains many items that I need to combine into my existing budgets. Otherwise, my budget totals for the month are highly inaccurate, because they do not reflect the amounts from the isolated Everything Else category. It is very confusing to think that I have $100 dollars left in my grocery budget, just to find that a purchase at a lesser-known store is hidden in "Everything Else." -
I’m
Hopeful
3This is my number one wish for Mint!
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I’m
impatient
3Any update on this? This would make things so much easier
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I’m
getting impatient
5This seems like it should be relatively easy to implement, and somewhat fundamental. Why is it not out yet?
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3...during my rant i forgot to provide my own possible solution:
basically, just copy the way that quicken 2010 does it. it's perfect (in fact, the only reason I'm not using it anymore is because I bought a mac and they are too slow to realize ppl with macs budget too, and don't want the half-breed version that I think was designed for children). Anyways, they do allow you to specify category groups and budget by them; so I've separated my budget into "Discretionary Expenses", "Mandatory Expenses", and "Income". I give say $700 to Discretionary, and I could care less if its 'Coffee Shop' or 'Restaurant' or 'Movies' as long as I don't exceed 700 dollars. Budgeting for 'Coffee shop' and 'Dining Out' and 'Dining In' and 'Eating Pizza' is obviously retarded. Why ever be that specific? I mean seriously...
For the mandatory group, I can actually specify the amounts I want to spend on Insurance, Utilities, and Rent. Insurance and Utilties each have subcategories, but it doesn't matter, I just allocate to each and it's represented by the larger category group. All budget lines are expandable so that I can see where money is actually going if necessary (did I go over on my water bill or gas bill?).
the way I've laid out may not be how someone else wants to do it, but the point is that it's flexible. If you don't copy quicken, budgeting by larger category groups would be an easy start, and I'd like to later somehow visually separate mandatory expenses (bills) from just fun spending. I just like being able to "see" my spending at a glance... -
4I'm behind this idea. My budget model consists of just 5 general categories, each of which has several sub-categories. For example: Housing (which includes rent, utilities, etc.), Transportation (car payment, fuel, etc.), Other (groceries, medical expenses, fun money, etc.). This makes for a simple-to-read pie chart of my spending and spending plan. If I need to drill down, I can by looking at spending for the subcategories that are part of the top-level category. -
I’m
happy
3This would be good for me, too. I would like to add another category to Food and Dining and call it something like "Eating Out." Then I'd make Restaurants, Fast Food, and Coffee Shops all subcategories of this so that I can see how much I'm spending on each, and I can still keep it separate from groceries without having to budget for each individual category. I am concerned with how much I spend on fast food, but I don't think it should be placed in a separate budget from restaurants and coffee shops. -
I’m
hopeful
7We really need to allow budgets to include multiple categories/subcategories.
I'm having problems getting your categories to fit in to my budget model. I'm sure everyone has their own ideas on how things should be divided out and budgeted, so rather than make suggestions on how categories should be arranged, I suggest that you allow one budget item to include several categories or sub categories.
For instance, I would like to include restaurants, fast food, and coffee shops in one budget. But groceries is a completely separate category, so there is no way to do that currently. If I could great a budget, name it Dining Out, and put all three of those categories in it, that would solve my issue.
Food & dining out is a perfect example of where this is needed, I have one budget for groceries, and one for "entertainment" which encompasses restaurants, movies, theater, fast food, coffee shops, etc. -
4This is my main gripe about Mint. I want to bundle certain budget categories under one budget/pool of money.
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31This would be a fantastic addition. Although we have the ability to create a number of specific budgets, it would be great if we could stick these under categories. Thus, instead of having 30 different budgets to scroll through, we could have, say, ten general categories that can be expanded/collapsed to show smaller, more specific budgets. Example below from another budgeting program I use:
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3Yes, perfect. I want to able to group sub-items together too. For instance, right now "Alcohol and Bars" is under "Food and Dining". Under the super-group "Food and Dining" I would like to have the sub-groups: "Alcohol and Bars", "Restaurants/Take-out/Fast-food", and "Groceries". Or more simply "Food I prepared", "Food someone else prepared", and "Food that I can drink".
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4I need the ability to group multiple categories into a single shared budget, so I can see all "discretionary spending" or all "restaurants and entertainment" at once.
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EMPLOYEE
3Hi Marcus,
Thanks for sharing your idea! I'll share with the team so they can take it under consideration.
Best,
jami
Mint Community Manager -
5How funny. I just came to Mint's FB page to see if there was a way to do that, and this was at the top of their wall. :)
YES. I want this. I have all my expenditures that aren't bills just lumped under "Spending money" and I'd much rather break it down even more to see what I'm spending on food/entertainment/etc. yet stay in the one single budget limit I'm giving myself for Spending Money.
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5How funny. I just came to Mint's FB page to see if there was a way to do that, and this was at the top of their wall. :)
YES. I want this. I have all my expenditures that aren't bills just lumped under "Spending money" and I'd much rather break it down even more to see what I'm spending on food/entertainment/etc. yet stay in the one single budget limit I'm giving myself for Spending Money.-
staybalanced January 02, 2012 13:07It doesn't get to be as perfect, but you can add custom categories. In my case, what I ended up doing was adding a "discretionary" under "Entertainment"... and everything (movies, restaurants, fast food, coffee, etc.) gets assigned there. Only groceries actually make it to the Grocery category.EditDeleteRemove
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EMPLOYEE
3Hi Marcus,
Thanks for sharing your idea! I'll share with the team so they can take it under consideration.
Best,
jami
Mint Community Manager- view 4 more comments
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I wouldn't be so hard on them. You could also think of it as them wanting more money, to hire more people, to deal with more user requests. Thank you Mint!
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I just discovered Mint, and I canot beleive all the features it has, AND IT"S FREE!!! I challenge the complainer above to find a better solution for what mint does.
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4I need the ability to group multiple categories into a single shared budget, so I can see all "discretionary spending" or all "restaurants and entertainment" at once.
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It doesn't get to be as perfect, but you can add custom categories. In my case, what I ended up doing was adding a "discretionary" under "Entertainment"... and everything (movies, restaurants, fast food, coffee, etc.) gets assigned there. Only groceries actually make it to the Grocery category.
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3Yes, perfect. I want to able to group sub-items together too. For instance, right now "Alcohol and Bars" is under "Food and Dining". Under the super-group "Food and Dining" I would like to have the sub-groups: "Alcohol and Bars", "Restaurants/Take-out/Fast-food", and "Groceries". Or more simply "Food I prepared", "Food someone else prepared", and "Food that I can drink".
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2+1
I would much rather have a budget for Restaurants + Coffee, and a separate one for Groceries, rather than having to maintain a single one for just "Food" -
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31This would be a fantastic addition. Although we have the ability to create a number of specific budgets, it would be great if we could stick these under categories. Thus, instead of having 30 different budgets to scroll through, we could have, say, ten general categories that can be expanded/collapsed to show smaller, more specific budgets. Example below from another budgeting program I use:
- view 5 more comments
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Yes Seth- would love to know what the program is!! Please share! :)
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This is what I was looking for in Mint... It comes from Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace website (once you have taken his class {which is amazing})... I would absolutely love if mint did this as well.
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4This is my main gripe about Mint. I want to bundle certain budget categories under one budget/pool of money.
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I’m
happy
I combined Restaurants and Fast Food into the same budget by setting up a Transaction Rule. i.e., I made a rule for McDonalds to be charged to Restaurants instead of FFood. Worked well for me.
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yes, that works, but it's not what we're talking about here.
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I’m
excited
1This feature would be the key feature for me. I could create my own super budget that could automatically include all categories I set.
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Are you aware that you can budget at the parent category level. For example I budget all of my parent categories. The draw back is I cannot budget at the child level then it is one or the other. In my case this is really not a problem.
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I think most are aware of the ability to budget at the top-level but the drawback comes when you want to create budgets for Starbucks, Groceries and Fast Food & Restaurants. The request is for the ability to group lower-level categories into budgets without having the "all or individual" as it is now.
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This is exactly what I could use! Even if I could assign multiple categories to one budget I think I could make it work.
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A yr ago. O. M. G. Bad customer service. Bad app?
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Hi !
Could someone do me favour? I'd need a list of mint's categories and subcategories.
I'm not form US and I can not log in Mint.com without adding an account (I dont have any american cards or accounts).
If it would be possible write me those things to [personal information redacted] PLEASE :-)
Thanks. I hope that someone will find a few minutes. -
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CHAMP
I’m
amused
@Thomas1985 ok... I've got a stupid question... why? Why, if you're not in the US and don't have any US Accts and can't use mint.... why are you on a mint forum wanting a list of categories? -
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Thanks for quick answer. Ive already found it. I read in magazine big report about PFMs and I started to look at all of them. I wanted to see every asects of every service.
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well thats great except you arent getting all the custom categories that people are adding, so i dont see how your list of mint categories can be of any value.
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I’m
Excited that this works!
1I just tried something on Mint.com with my budgets, and it worked! Here's what I did: I set a category for Auto & Transport ($650), and then set individual categories for car payment ($300), gas & fuel ($225), and insurance ($125). Checking to make sure they add up to the same amount, and looking to the left to see my overall budgeted expenses, there was no change from the previous month! So, if anyone still wants to set up subcategories in their budgets, here's how:
1: Set a budget for the main category (Auto & Transport, Bills & Utilities, etc.) and set an amount
2: Set subcategories individually within the main category, and set an amount.
3: Check to see that the amounts add up, or leave a little wiggle room in the overall category if you think you'll incur expenses in that category you haven't budgeted for.
4: Rinse & repeat for all categories you want to sub-categorize. If your spending is the same as last month's you should not see any difference in the expected savings (to the right) or the overall amount of your budgeted spending (to the left).
Good luck! -
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I’m
hopeful
7We really need to allow budgets to include multiple categories/subcategories.
I'm having problems getting your categories to fit in to my budget model. I'm sure everyone has their own ideas on how things should be divided out and budgeted, so rather than make suggestions on how categories should be arranged, I suggest that you allow one budget item to include several categories or sub categories.
For instance, I would like to include restaurants, fast food, and coffee shops in one budget. But groceries is a completely separate category, so there is no way to do that currently. If I could great a budget, name it Dining Out, and put all three of those categories in it, that would solve my issue.
Food & dining out is a perfect example of where this is needed, I have one budget for groceries, and one for "entertainment" which encompasses restaurants, movies, theater, fast food, coffee shops, etc.- view 3 more comments
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Create a custom sub category for yourself. If you don't care if it's "Food & Dining" or "Entertainment", then pick one and add a category for "Discretionary" and just start creating rules for the charges to go against it.
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This works. I've created several new sub-categories to correspond more closely to my reality (and/or Canadian vocabulary!). I, too, would really like to clump sub-categories into "category-level" budget items.
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I’m
happy
3This would be good for me, too. I would like to add another category to Food and Dining and call it something like "Eating Out." Then I'd make Restaurants, Fast Food, and Coffee Shops all subcategories of this so that I can see how much I'm spending on each, and I can still keep it separate from groceries without having to budget for each individual category. I am concerned with how much I spend on fast food, but I don't think it should be placed in a separate budget from restaurants and coffee shops.
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This is EXACTLY what I wanted to do!
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1The ability to lump categories together would be great. However, if you simply added the down tab feature already present in the Everything Else Category on the Planning Page (which allows you to see your spending among disparate categories) to all the parent categories, that'd do the trick for me. Thanks!
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Another possible way of achieving this feature would be to add a "Budget Tag". These tags would be similar to the current tag system, only you would only be able to choose one, preventing overlap where an expense would charge to 2 budgets at the same time. This however would add a requirement that you tag each expense with the appropriate budget tag, but it would allow people to separate out different expenses that have the same category (ie. fast food or shopping) and charge them to different budgets ("My budget" or "My wife's budget"). Something like you can view by clicking here. This solution while addressing both needs would also allow you to view "Trends" based on the tag.
Mint could also create the ability to automatically tag an expense with a certain "Budget Tag" using their 'rules' feature, so that this tagging process isn't as tedious. Ultimately I think this type of separation is what the tags fields were meant for but because of the overlapping due to multiple tags being able to be assigned to one expense, budgeting, using tags, doesn't make as much sense.-
I didn't think that rules applied to tags - only name and category ... unless this changed recently.....
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My bad, I mis-read. PKTRaul said Mint could create this feature, but it's not active right now.
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4I'm behind this idea. My budget model consists of just 5 general categories, each of which has several sub-categories. For example: Housing (which includes rent, utilities, etc.), Transportation (car payment, fuel, etc.), Other (groceries, medical expenses, fun money, etc.). This makes for a simple-to-read pie chart of my spending and spending plan. If I need to drill down, I can by looking at spending for the subcategories that are part of the top-level category.
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I’m
sad
MINT has there been given any further thought to this idea? It sounds like there is a great desire on the side of the customer for this kind of feature
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This is a great idea. Budgets around Tags would be perfect for this as mentioned here
http://satisfaction.mint.com/mint/top... and here http://satisfaction.mint.com/mint/top.... -
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1same here... Find it a bit annoying that you can't auto group Dining out categories and Mortgage/Utilities in the budget and trends.
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I’m
disappointed
So, Mint.com has some great categories, and automagically puts my transactions into them. Great. Excellent technology.
Now, I want to simply have a "Food I make myself" and "Food people make for me" budget, separated. But because the Mint.com team hasn't thought this through very clearly, I need to either have a separate restaurant and separate fast food budget, or I need to re-categorize transactions? Isn't automatic categorization one of the entire points of the system?
Come on guys, this is really silly. You've done the hard back-end work. Now let us use this information effectively. -
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Yeah, I would like to group "fast-food" and "Restaurants" into 1 custom category "Dining Out"
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This is easy to do by creating your own sub-categories -- I've done exactly what you've suggested you want to do. Then, by manually assigning your preferred sub-category to several transactions, you can tell Mint to assign categories according to YOUR rules instead of theirs.
For example, I reassigned these transactions & categories and put a check beside the resulting rules that Mint wanted to create:
(1) Tim Horton's
- auto-assigned "Coffee Shops"
- I re-assigned to my self-created "Eating Out" category.
(2) McDonald's
- auto-assigned "Fast Food"
- I re-assigned to "Eating Out"
(3) My favourite Italian restaurant
- auto-assigned "Restaurants"
- I re-assigned to "Eating Out"
Hope this helps ... -
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P.S. I should have added that I only
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I don't see why this shouldn't be implemented. I have myself budgeted "Spending" as So much per month. Spending pretty much includes my "everything else" that isn't specified into a category.
Another perfect example that I haven't seen on this list. For my spending budget I can buy extra clothes at a store that auto-files under "Shopping" and buy songs or apps under iTunes and it auto-files under "Entertainment".
Else now I have to keep coming back to mint and overlook my transactions and make sure they all hit at least 1 category. It takes away from the sit-and-watch-work feature that makes mint so great.
Would LOVE this feature and use it ASAP if/when implemented -
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please fix this mint.... how this does not already exist blows my mind. unbelievably simple feature to provide, and judging by all the other unnecessary functionality of this site, I'm guessing the staff is more than capable. Stop adding things that I never use and focus on actually useful features.... it's like the ppl who designed this site don't actually use it.
not trying to be so negative, its just im a web developer myself and dont understand why in 2010 some designers sleep on the biggest/best features. this one is so obvious its absurd. -
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3...during my rant i forgot to provide my own possible solution:
basically, just copy the way that quicken 2010 does it. it's perfect (in fact, the only reason I'm not using it anymore is because I bought a mac and they are too slow to realize ppl with macs budget too, and don't want the half-breed version that I think was designed for children). Anyways, they do allow you to specify category groups and budget by them; so I've separated my budget into "Discretionary Expenses", "Mandatory Expenses", and "Income". I give say $700 to Discretionary, and I could care less if its 'Coffee Shop' or 'Restaurant' or 'Movies' as long as I don't exceed 700 dollars. Budgeting for 'Coffee shop' and 'Dining Out' and 'Dining In' and 'Eating Pizza' is obviously retarded. Why ever be that specific? I mean seriously...
For the mandatory group, I can actually specify the amounts I want to spend on Insurance, Utilities, and Rent. Insurance and Utilties each have subcategories, but it doesn't matter, I just allocate to each and it's represented by the larger category group. All budget lines are expandable so that I can see where money is actually going if necessary (did I go over on my water bill or gas bill?).
the way I've laid out may not be how someone else wants to do it, but the point is that it's flexible. If you don't copy quicken, budgeting by larger category groups would be an easy start, and I'd like to later somehow visually separate mandatory expenses (bills) from just fun spending. I just like being able to "see" my spending at a glance... -
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Mint...where are we on this...it has been a year!!!!
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I’m
insightful.
I would like to see a feature to add a budget with multiple categories. When I'm traveling, visiting relatives, or in between housing and have to go out a little more, I'd like to make a combined budget of dining and groceries to encompass everything I eat.
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
I would like to see a feature to add a budget with multiple categories.. -
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I’m
unsure
1Hi,
I've been tring to group more than one subcategory into a budget and I don't know if I can do it. Basically, what I want is to be able to have one budget for restaurants and fast food combined, but that they still appear separately in my trends (so I can see how much money I spend on both kind of restaurant). I don't want to put fast food into the restaurant category just so it adds up to my Restaurants budget. Is there a way to do this I'm not aware of?
Thank you
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Can I group multiple categories into one budget?. -
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I’m
disapointed
I would prefer the option of combining several small categories into one larger budget. For example, I'd like to combine Coffee Shop, Fast Food, Restaurants, Personal Car, Entertainment, Shopping and Toys into one large "Misc. Spending" budget. I could track the "Misc. Spending" budget, and I have the option of drilling down into greater detail if the total "Misc. Spending" was over the budget.
Thanks
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Budgets: Combining categories into one large budget. -
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1I would like to have one budget for a group of categories. ie. combine fast food and restaurants into one budget.
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
combined categories for budgets. -
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I’m
frustrated
2Is there a way to group categories/sub-categories when budgeting? I would like to have one budget item for "Housing" that includes: Mortgage, Insurance, Taxes, Electricity, Telephone,.. (items that cross categories). Does anyone know if this is possible?
Thanks in advance
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Budget using a group of sub-categories. -
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I’m
getting impatient
5This seems like it should be relatively easy to implement, and somewhat fundamental. Why is it not out yet?
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I don't think this will ever be addressed, judging by the amount of time it's been with no change. It's things like this that keep me from recommending Mint to other people.
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I’m
impatient
3Any update on this? This would make things so much easier
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I’m
grrrrrr
ridiculous that this wasn't part of the original design. dear mint, please use the apple / google model, of letting your employees use your software and recommend fundamental improvements. you would avoid (non paying) customer dissatisfaction. thank you.
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I’m
disappointed
2How has this gone unanswered for over a year?
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1i'd think this would be a pretty important update to have..any word on this?
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I’m
Hopeful
3This is my number one wish for Mint!
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I sure wish we had sub catagories also. I have had such a hard time doing my tax since Microsoft Money went out. I have a catagory of Job expense, education expense, rental expense and also income also we have a couple of farms. Life has not been the same.
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HERE IS A STOP GAP SOLUTION
Maybe Mint will eventually let us reorganize our Categories, in the meantime I created a simple excel spreadsheet that computes a budget from the transactions file that MINT will export for your transactions.
This spreadsheet creates a two or three level hierarchy over the mint categories.
You can easily edit any hierarchy you want, and it provides some ways do drill back down to the original transactions (just as mint does).
I find it much more useful than the Mint budgeting.
If you are interested in giving it a whirl, shoot me an email at mintbudget@oblinger.us and I will send it to you.
if there is enough interest, I will find a place to put it online.
Cheers,
Dan
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I need this too. I do a lot of different types of travel and I want to categorize them into different categories and sub categories. For instance, I want to collect all of my RV costs, gas, registration, camping fees, maintenance and other costs, but I want to show them separately from my general travel costs for my personal vehicles such as my car and motorcycle.
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I’m
frustrated
How can I get help through mint? This is unbeivable.
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I would like to be able to have sub categories too! For example, I like to know how much I am spending in different categories at the grocery store: fruit vs. meat, cleaning products vs. food items, etc. Right now I just have this huge lump sum or end up having to make each item its own category.
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2This enhancement is in my opinion an absolute must. There just simply needs to be at least a little more control over how categories and sub-categories are handled. The Food and Dining example is the one that is problematic and is not set up for how many of the folks responding to this thread need it to work. The only solution for now is to reclassify every single "Fast Food", "Coffee Shop" transaction into "Restaurants" etc, to get a good separation between groceries and dining out (of all kinds). Who really cares to differentiate and budget for restaurants vs fast food etc - this is not real world.
I think Mint does a great job in classifying transaction automatically and I hate to work against that in manually changing each and every fast food store to permanently be Restaurants and not Fast Food, and have to keep that up when I go to a new fast food place. We really need to just let Mint do the classifications they are so good at, and then let us group them into other categories so have the control over budgeting we really need.
Mint - Please make this change to provide more control over grouping sub-categories ASAP! Seems this is a bit overdue now seeing how long this topic has been out here. Thanks in advance, and thanks for how useful your service is here! -
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1I've left and returned to mint three times now. This is my last time using the service. It seems that the service was a good idea with little support. I do not know why I still see people recommending this service. It gets slower and slower everytime I've tried it, simple budgeting tools like the one suggested in this thread aren't even remotely implemented. I'm frustrated that nothing has happened with this, I've allowed them to data-mine me enough, without improving the "free" service.
Goodbye Mint.com.-
I keep leaving and re-visiting as well! My 2 biggest complaints are the one on this thread - the inability to make larger budgets like "misc spending" and the 2nd is the inability to look forward a month. It's absolutely insane that they don't let you see October in the last week of September!
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1I would like this too!!! -
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Yes. PLEASE. I end up categorizing all my going out into "Amusement" instead of Bars, Movies, Restaurants, etc being accounted for separately because that is how I set up my budget. I don't particularly like it. I wish they could be grouped together.
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2When setting up the budget group it would be great if we could set up a budget for sub-categories and have it dynamically set the main budget.
>Home Budget = sum of sub-category budgets
->Home: Insurance $50
->Home: Rent $800
->Home: Other $100
For visual affect on the screen having the budget group be collapsible and expandable would be great. Could have a setting on the settings page to determine default view. Classic (the current style of view), Grouping collapsed, Grouping expanded.
It would be nice to have the ability to hard set the main budget group budget or have it dynamically calculated. And to be able to set a max on the dynamic budget amount. This would be very useful if I have a sub-category budget set to roll over. Then the sub-category budget could increase until it hit the max limit for the budget group. -
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3Mint people-in-charge! Please let us combine sub-categories into single budgets! Without the ability to do so, Mint.com becomes virtually useless to me, because I have to manually combine so many budgets just to get a "big picture" understanding of what I am spending.
Also a huge (but similar) problem: The Everything Else category contains many items that I need to combine into my existing budgets. Otherwise, my budget totals for the month are highly inaccurate, because they do not reflect the amounts from the isolated Everything Else category. It is very confusing to think that I have $100 dollars left in my grocery budget, just to find that a purchase at a lesser-known store is hidden in "Everything Else." -
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1As I've gotten up to speed, I realize the forum post I made a few days ago was almost exactly this same situation as in this thread. With current functionality, I can't use Mint, I'd be better off just building my own spreadsheets and download directly from my bank, then I could control the tagging with drop down lists, etc. Otherwise switch back to Money on an old Windows machine.
Can someone provide an ETA if this is under consideration?
I'll hold out if its in the pipeline. -
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1Right on, great idea! Mint budget categories usually make sense for the way I think about my spending, but not always. Flexibility would be nice!
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1Another vote to be able to combine categories into one budget line item.
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1YES, another vote here! Seriously, please add this feature. Clearly, I am not the only one with this "novel" idea/need.
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1This is also critical for anyone who uses the 60% Budget Solution, or who uses traditional Mandatory/Discretionary spending categories and wants to budget against them.
Read on Mint Product Manager - I've even got a proposed solution for you.
If it's too much trouble to muck about with your Categories, due to your need to aggregate across users for trends and offers, why not leverage Tags?
You could accomplish this with 2 simple features:
1. Enable users to create a Budget for a given Tag (e.g. "Mandatory" or "Committed"). Users can already view spending by Category or Tag, why not Budgets too?
2. Enable users to make Tags "sticky" in the same way Categories are. For example, allow a user to specify that the mortgage payment always be tagged with "Mandatory", so we don't have to tag every single transaction. -
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I’m
uncertain whether this will help
1Mint's Budgeting tool is the most important for me. It seems to be a little half-hearted when in comes to the interface and control of the budget tools. The expandable and collapsible budget and sub-category is an absolute must. Please add this simple improvement and Mint would be much much much improved.
Thanks -
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I’m
frustrated but hopeful
1I would really like to see this as well, it would go a long way toward allowing me to utilize Mint.com to manage my money more effectively. -
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I’m
frustrated
1This seems like a relatively simple feature and would make the budget tool quite a bit more useful. There haven't been any recent updates from Mint on the status of this feature. Is there any chance we might see it soon?
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Wow, over a year, all these comments, & no reply from Mint.
Anyone know of a better service. Even if I have to pay. -
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3Not being able to group categories together to build a budget is why I've had to stop using Mint.
I don't think my budgeting needs are all that complicated or that I'm a fringe case. Mint quickly becomes too simple budget-wise to be of any use.
It does a GREAT job of capturing and letting me categorize transactions, but then I just can't do much with that information. Disappointing.
I'm sure someone else will come along and fill this niche.-
This is THE feature that has frustrated me since day one. I personally cannot make use of being forced to budget at the Uber Top level. I guess I gave up on Mint about 6 months after starting, with hope in my heart, to use it.
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1I can't believe this thread is a year old and this feature has not been implemented. Budgets are a great idea in theory but the way they are implemented in Mint they are borderline useless. Really makes me wonder about the future of this application and makes me want to look for an alternative.
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2Add me to this gripe list. This should be easy to implement.
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1This feature is core to effectively managing a budget. Users should be able to mix and match to group at the highest level to ensure everything rolls up effectively.
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I’m
frustrated, disappointed and considering leaving
1The way I budget requires me to have this feature! How do others use Mint and properly budget?
Mint has to understand that automatic categorization of transactions, analytics/trending and budgeting will always be linked but not used in the same manner.
We don't budget based on how we categorize transactions but, instead, based on how we live our lives!
I really hope this feature is top of your list. -
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2+1 for this feature. This would be the easiest thing for the Mint team to implement and it would GREATLY increase customer satisfaction. A complete overhaul of the software is obviously not needed... I'm no professional programmer, but I'm pretty certain I could write this piece of code in less than a week. How could this request be over a year old and still no progress from Mint? I really like Mint, but seriously?? This is not difficult... Listen to the voice of the customer... I think there's a business case here to spend a few days implementing this simple feature...
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1I second this recommendation... and its been over a year? should this kind of change really take this much time to figure out?
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I fully support this recommendation. I love using Mint, but my biggest frustration is that I cannot group various subcategories into a single budget line.
At this point, given our budgeting needs, I may have to turn to other products, or revert to notebooks/spreadsheets, unless this feature can be implemented. I'm sure there are considerations about resource allocation for the Mint developers, but the functionality itself should not be hard to implement. -
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I just signed onto Mint to see what current capabilities it has. I have used Quicken to many years. I would like to use Mint because of the IPad. But, not having this feature is a deal breaker.
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1This is a critical feature for a budgeting program and should be implemented as soon as possible
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I have a budget set for a quarterly bill ("Sewer/Trash" subcategory under "Bills and Utilities") that helpfully sets aside $$ in my monthly budget. However on the month that bill is due, it completely blows up the budget I have set for "Bills and Utilities". Would the idea submitted in this topic fix this, or is there a better way for me to set up these budgets?
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The idea for this topic is not the solution to your issue. I had the same problem. You are better served by setting your quarterly bill budget monthly, divide the average bill by three, then set the budget to rollover. I had to to this for water and alarm service. I have the water bill to $35 monthly and every two months I get an average $70 water bill. Same on the alarm, I told Mint I pay $20 monthly and every quarter, I get a $57 bill. Each month I do not pay these bills, the availabe budget increases by $35 and $20 because I selected the rollover feature. On the month the bills are duie, I have enough budget saved to cover the bill.
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This is frustrating to me as well - I'd love to use Mint as its strong points are very strong, but ther are a number of very awful dealbreakers, including this.
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I agree that the 'budget' feature needs to be reassessed; I only use Mint for keeping track of current balances, but would like to use some of these other features if we had the ability to customize them more. In the meantime, I just use an external budgeting program.
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2It's been over a year since this discussion appears to have started... what's the status? It would be extremely helpful to be able to clump categories into one budget. From a programming perspective, it seems like a simple thing to do. What's the hold up?
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Over a year of sharing this simple request. I really quit using mint. Typical Intuit response to customers. Until that changes I no longer spend money on TurboTax etc
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Once again, this is a very good idea for an enhancement to Mint. However, once again, this thread has been taken over by "deal breaker", "I'm leaving Mint" and other Intuit bashing comments comments. All you all are doing is devaluing this thread.
If you want to leave Mint, leave Mint. There are plenty of alternatives.
If you like the idea and support, please show your support, share your ideas too! But stop intimidating others from an otherwise intelligent convesation. Thanks.-
I disagree. This enhancement has been marked "Under Consideration" for over a year. If people really do feel the absence of this feature is a deal breaker, they have every right to say it. And if Mint/Intuit is worth anything as far as customer service is concerned they should be very interested in comments like these.
I just started using Mint a few days ago and already very impressed with it for the most part. But even in the short time I've been using it I've already noticed the need for such a feature enhancement. I came to the forums searching for an ability to do this or to request the feature myself. When I found out it's been suggested and under consideration, with NO UPDATES, for OVER A YEAR... well you can imagine how disappointed I feel. -
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i agree, j3utton. Yes, this may be a free site, but Mint.com makes a lot of money from our usage through ads and offers, so the fact that I'm helping them generate revenue (and putting up with some additional clutter from their ads/promotions) means that they do owe me a level of service. We need to be constructive when providing our feedback, but this sort of service gives credence to those who come across as frustrated.
CLsanchez, venting in a forum like this isn't hijacking the thread. The Mint.com staff need to understand how high the frustration is...clearly there's not a fire lit under their feet, and that is symptomatic of an inept support organization. -
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1Mint needs the ability to create our own custom Budgets with whatever set of categories and sub categories that we want. Is there any update for this feature request?
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This continues to be an issue...a budget should be simple. Track all incoming money (no matter the source) and track all outgoing money (no matter the category). I actually run Product Development at the company i work for and while i know the complexity involved in making changes when you have customers screaming for something (figuratively, not literally) then you fix it. New features are nice, but the features you have should work properly and the way people expect.
This is a great site, but at this point if you can't simply balance your monthly budget then its missing out on the whole point of this website. -
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1Its not that hard. Just make your own categories and sub-categories. Then use those categories for your budget.
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One seemingly easy way to deal with this issue would be to allow for a "global category rule".
For example, I ran into this issue because the mint "eating out" categories are too detailed for me. I don't care if it was fast food, coffee shop, hot dog stand, or gas station; I just want one category of "Eating Out" or "Dining Out" or the existing "Restaurant".
If I could set a global rule that essentially set transactions (whose payees) match the "fast food" or "coffee shop" categories to the "Restaurant" category, I can accomplish 90% of what grouping categories allows.
Maybe something like that is more doable, since there is already a framework for setting rules? -
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1Definitely agree, more available customization would be great - especially with the budgeting. Everyone's needs are different so to be able to use the Mint stock settings OR be able to totally build a custom budget from the ground up would be great! Thanks!
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2Why hasn't this been responded to?
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I’m
frustrated
2Totally agree with this.
I started setuping a Mint Account for 2012 just to found out this was not possible. Pretty painful to go through 20-30 (and even more) budget categories...
I see Mint's customer service is pretty fast, perhaps they should get some technical service to, this request as been active for more then a year and is in the top 5 most popular requests. -
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I’m
frustrated and very dissapointed
2I sat down to set up Mint this morning and was very excited about the whole prospect of organizing, simplifying and automating my budgets. All was going fabulously until I discovered that I could not organize by budgets the way I wan to. I want to just have one budget for food, one for home, one for health, and a couple other more specific ones outside these categories. I set this all up then at the end there is this "everything else" area, and it in are things (extrapolated somehow from my imported accounts) that I want to be a part of the higher-level category budgets, but there is no way to remove them from this list! I am so frustrated by this I was ready to throw in the towel and delete my account until I found this thread. If this problem can be resolved by the end of the month I will continue to use this service, because otherwise its great. If not, I'm out, since this is the most basic thing I need it for, and this will all hve been an enormous waste of time.
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I’m
disappointed
I'd like to see this implemented, as well. I'm a little sad that this was put "under consideration" over a year ago, and no apparent traction on it. I'd like to use a set amount of dollars for "operational expenses" -- those expenses that may fluctuate a little bit each month (e.g. food, gas, cash withdrawn), but it could vary how those expenses are composed.
My one idea to do this would be to have a checking account dedicated solely to those expenses, but if I could simply have mint track everything for me, that would be even better!
What might be nice (when grouping categories together) is to see it thusly:
* "Progress Bar" as normal for your grouped expenses
* When you click on the bar area (not the link that takes you to transaction list), it expands and shows either amounts from the sub-categories, or a pie graph or something showing how spending is balancing out among the groups (this would be a nice-to-have). -
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I’m
Disappointed
3I agree with the others, being able to group multiple categories and/or sub-categories into a budget is a necessary feature!
From what I've read in the other comments, our requests can be summed up in two actions:
1. Allow budgets to contain multiple categories & sub-categories OR allow budgeting by tags
2. Allow tagging "rules" to avoid having to tag every individual transaction
And for crying out loud, could someone -- ANYONE -- from Mint take a second to give us all an update?! As many others have said, this is one of the most requested features, yet it has been over a year with no traction. How are we supposed to "Get Satisfaction" with that? -
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I’m
frustrated but hopeful
Please make this happen soon. It would increase mint's usefulness to me (and at least 560 other people) by 100%.
1. Allow budgets to contain multiple categories & sub-categories OR allow budgeting by tags
2. Allow tagging "rules" to avoid having to tag every individual transaction -
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I’m
confused
I believe it was Clark Griswold who once said, "Roll 'em up!".
I love having the detailed categories but rolling up the sub-categories to their parent category is imperative...it's how people think about their spending.
Thanks for considering this! -
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I’m
frustrated
I can see I am not alone in this. I was just revising my budget (a little bi-yearly check-in) to make sure I was adhering to the 50-30-20 rule, and was struggling to somehow make the groupings happen on the budget page. To no avail. I currently use Quicken, but Mint is such an easy interface and updates in real time.
Please make this happen! -
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I’m
cranky
Yeah, its kind of ridiculous that Mint doesn't have this feature. For that matter, is Mint developing any new features at all these days?
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I’m
hopeful
A way to get around it is by making a budget on something totally new (you can add a new category), and list all your transactions under it, so it shows up in the budget. Of course it throws off the specifics (Coffee count is super important, I know), but until Mint implements the suggestion, this is one way of not giving up. -
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I’m
frustrated
This would be soooo nice! I searched this topic in the forum hoping there was a solution but sadly mint does not offer this option. This feature would really help me stay on track because I would be able to see the big picture. For example, a category for Food and then subcategory for Restaurants, Fast food, etc.
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I’m
frustrated
Would be very nice to be able to combine sub-categories from different categories under a single budget. i.e. combine auto-insurance and house-insurance under a single "insurance" budget item. But leave the sub-categories where they are, so auto insurance can still be tracked under auto spending, house under house, etc.
nbhms -
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I’m
frustrated
This is a must have feature IMO...for me, it comes from the basic household utilities. I want them to stay seperated as cell phone, gas, electricity, etc...but as a budget, I want them all in the same budget line. I even went through and tagged months of them with a "services" tag...only to be disappointed to find that was wasted energy as I couldn't budget by tag.
Please do this NOW. -
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I’m
not surprised
12 years and counting... well, must be an Intuit team in charge now.... Sigh. I can just hear the discussion now: "well, if we let people BUDGET, then we might cannabilize the Quicken user base... better to keep Mint.com simple." And wait for another copycat to build a better mousetrap & sell to the bank.
HEY INTUIT - I'd PAY for Mint if it did a little more -- this is what Quicken should've been doing anyway. Offer me the #@$% solution by subscription. But let me group budget categories & report more flexibly or I'm outta Mint, too, and onto the next solution. -
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I’m
frustrated
How can a topic have 131 replies and Mint still doesn't seem to realize how important this is? -
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I’m
frustrated
This feature would really make mint a better product
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I’m
frustrated
I like many of the other features of mint but without the capability to add multiple categories to a budget, the usefulness of mint to me is very low.
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I’m
frustrated
This has been a problem over a year and no one has fixed it? That's some lame technical support Mint, why would you do that to us?
I agree, this is one of the most useful features this app is missing. The fact I can't create an "Entertainment" budget to include all the subcategories I have, or that Mint has, created is ridiculous. Isn't that like, basic budgeting? I don't need an entire budget for "Movies", but if I go to the Movies one month and the following month I play mini golf, the Mint app should be able to reconcile my request to understand both of those expenses apply towards my monthly "Entertainment" budget.
I even tried "tagging" my transactions and then adding that tag to my budget category, but oh no, that's not an option either.
Really? Why did I even download this if I can't budget out where my money is going. My bank already divides my spending into reports for me to review... most banks do, I thought this would be a lot more customizable. -
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This feature is very important - it is the missing link to really help us acheive our goals of building
wealth through spending control. We can live with the unchangeable catagories; however, we merely need to
be able to answer the all-important question about our spending performance at a high-level, not at a 20-
40 detailed items level.
For example, consider these questions:
- How much total money should I be spending and am I spending on non-essential, individual purchases
(video games, clothes, alcohol, gifts, etc) *combined*? - How much total money should I be spending and am I spending on contracts and memberships I can go
without or can reduce in useage (Satellite TV, Netflix, gym, xbox live, ID protection, lawn care
service)? - How much total money did I spend on essential recurring items that vary with usage (electricity,
water, auto fuel, cell phone, even food could be considered here)?
The grouping of items in ways that help answer these questions for spending behavior that we can change
(alcohol, fast food) and that separates this spending from items we do not easily change (rent/mortgage,
auto insurance), helps us to focus our attention on the important items and allows us more easily to make
a decision as to the overall spending and see how much money is left in the budget. If I have 1300 left in
my budget, but my mortgate hasn't yet been accounted for, it's hard to know if I can afford a new coffee
maker this month.
I hope you can understand how important this feature is to all of us.
Users, would you please vote for this feature to let mint know how important this is?
Jami, Would you please work with your product team to get this implemented, and keep us updated with
the following?
- When will a decision be made to implement this feature?
- When will the feature be available to us?
Thanks, and thanks for continuing to provide an otherwise wonderful product to us!
~ Clay
- How much total money should I be spending and am I spending on non-essential, individual purchases
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