Mint.com, my favorite personal finance tool, just added a new feature in private beta that gives you a monthly “financial fitness score.” After playing around with it for a few weeks, I thought I would give you a rundown on the fun new feature.
I will start by saying that is does not add any tracking abilities to your financial accounts. If you ignore the tool all together, Mint will work just as it did before. This tool is an add on that can give you an idea of what you are doing right and what you can do better.
When you load up Mint with the new tool, you will see a “Financial Fitness” box on the homepage. Mint will automatically mark off tasks as complete for you, so when you login many will already show as complete. When you click on “show all tasks,” you will be brought to a list of completed, pending, and incomplete tasks.
The tasks are broken down into a several categories: Know Your Money, Spend Less Than You Earn, Use Debt Wisely, Invest Your Savings, and Prepare for the Unexpected. Each category contains one to five tasks that you need to copmlete weekly, monthly, or yearly. Each task has a point value that contributes to a total score of 7,550 points.
I suggest this tool as a fun way to play the financial game. It provides little real value beyond that. For those of you who have trouble keeping on top of things without other incentive, it can be a fun motivator to try to get 100% every month. For those of you already doing the right thing, this tool will just help you confirm you are on the right path.
If you notice anything that I missed, please leave a note in the comments. Right now about 25% of Mint users have access to the beta. They are adding new users every week, so keep checking in if you do not have it yet.
