JES makes BusinessWeek!

In a Business Week article that discussed a number of online financial websites, one of the sites discussed is my personal favorite, Mint.com. I was called up a few weeks ago by David Bogoslaw, who wrote the Business Week piece, and we spoke for about 10 minutes about Mint and what's great about it (and what its drawbacks can be). I think he took the most important point well, in addition to a small shout-out for the Jewish Economics Survey!: 

Ezzie Goldish, a young New York accountant, began using Mint just before the birth of his first child in June 2008. A month later, he lost his job while his wife was still working part-time so she could care for their baby. With Mint's help over the next year, the couple organized their finances and managed to pay off 40 percent of credit-card debt despite a 40 percent cut in income.

"As much as we thought we knew what we were doing, until you see [how you're spending] in front of you, it's a lot harder," he says. Goldish, who had already been getting calls for financial advice because of his profession, posted an economics survey on his blog for people in his Orthodox Jewish community. He has received hundreds of comments expressing interest in Mint from around the world.

 Awareness is absolutely the key to managing finances, and this is possibly more true for those who think they have a good handle on their finances. There's simply a huge difference between keeping track normally and actually seeing it all in front of you in a big chart that shows where all your money has been going.

What's great about Mint is how it just shows it all in front of you so clearly. A few friends have said since starting on Mint that it just makes tracking everything so much easier (and as someone noted, it also stops fights over spending like "you spend $XX on A" vs. "no I don't, it's not even close!", for those interested in the shalom bayis aspect - hard to argue with the numbers right in front of you), and that makes it a lot easier to cut back.

I commented to him that the biggest 'drawback' was that Mint only helped you for the past and present, but wasn't great for the future - though to be fair, neither were most any other sites. It's hard to adjust your spending to save for the future well. What was especially cool at the Intuit meeting I went to was that they're actually unveiling a tool to do exactly this soon: It will not only let you set goals and suggest goals, but will factor in as many details as it can to help you save, including acknowledging that you will need to save different amounts at different times to meet your goals, and that helps make goals feel reachable. Saying "you need to put away $85,000" is a lot harder to do than "put away $40 this month toward your son's college fund". It will even factor in things like presumed inflation and various changes in your spending habits, including changes that happen over time. It's a brilliant tool that will really round it out well.

Now, if only they had a Blackberry app...! :)

Whirlwind Month (,Trip,) & Who Wants Lunch!?

It's been a bit of a crazy month, and it's about to get a lot crazier. Life has included rushing to get out my company's annual financial statements* - for not just one but two years, one and a half of which I wasn't there for; the Intuit Town Hall meeting on personal finance where I was asked to join as a panelist (full replay here); Chana and her chassid got engaged, DGEsq's wife had twin girls, FrumDoc & FFW had a baby boy; GS got engaged; Moshe helped our Lander Alumni pull off an amazing dinner, and as of last Thursday, we decided that I will in fact head to Israel for my best friend Shragi's wedding, scrambled to get tickets and passports that day... and I'm leaving tomorrow... and I'm bringing 23-month old Kayla with me for the week-long trip. Oh - and I have to put out the next quarter's financial statements by May 17th.

Anyway, who wants to meet up in Israel (Jerusalem area, most probably) for lunch or dinner this week? {Bonus! It might be with Jameel, too!} :) While I still don't know my full itinerary, I'll have a bit of flexibility in between visiting all my cousins and aunt and family friends and of course, the aufruf and wedding of my dear friend Shragi [the author of the "Well Waddaya Know..." trivia series on SerandEz based primarily on his forensic psychology studies].

So - who's in? E-mail me at serandez at gmail.com!

* - more on that later.

JES: Panelist at Intuit's Town Hall Meeting

Tomorrow, April 28th, I have been invited to be a panelist at the Mint.com/Intuit Town Hall meeting at the NASDAQ Marketplace in Times Square. As some of you may recall, I originally wrote a letter to Mint.com regarding the Jewish Economics Survey, asking for their assistance in taking it to a new level in order to help the greater community. I was thrilled when someone representing Mint.com contacted me in response shortly thereafter, expressing some interest in the concept. We're still in contact as we try and determine if there is a way for them to easily help me with the project in some way, even as their primary focus is on their recent acquisition by Intuit (which owns Quicken, Quickbooks, TurboTax, etc.).

Meanwhile, the representative contacted me recently and asked,

We are going to be hosting a Town Hall event on April 28th in Manhattan. The topic is Personal Finance, and it will be hosted by Aaron Patzer [Ez: the founder of Mint.com] and Beth Kobliner (www.bethkobliner.com). We’re hoping to gather a group of 15-18 participants together to talk about the current concerns  in the Recession. Given your details on the specific budget/finance issues of the Orthodox Jewish community, I’d love to invite you to participate.

I happily agreed to take part, and am really looking forward to both contributing to and learning from the panel. As it says above, I'm going to be a part of the Personal Finance panel, which is from 3:45-5:00pm, and moderated by Beth Kobliner. There is a streaming link that you can sign up for in advance here; in Aaron Patzer's post about the panel he notes you can ask questions via Twitter or straight to Intuit.

The panel is being billed as "Personal Finance: A discussion with NY folks on how they’ve changed their financial habits, what they’ve learned, and how they’re coping with the changes in the economy. Personal finance expert Beth Kobliner will moderate." I'm certain that the panel will be really interesting and perhaps a bit eye-opening for many, and that there will be much to learn from it. Please take part online and feel free to post your questions! In addition, there are two other sessions earlier in the day which are probably very interesting to many SerandEz readers: 9:30-10:45am on Small Business, and from 12:45-2:00pm on Kids & Money: A Discussion on Financial Literacy.

Enjoy, and thanks so much to Mint.com and Intuit for this opportunity.