Can i customize categories in mint

But what do you do when you go over? The perennial college student in me wishes Mint gave you the ability to transfer from one budget to another, like I was able to easily do when I used the envelope system.

It made achieving a 0 sum budget easier. With Mint the objective is more to monitor your spending so that you can see the categories you overspend in. The only way to know if your budget is effective is to see your spending patterns over time, which Mint does beautifully with its Trends reports.

That said, you can hack it to mimic a transfer. I resolved that by transferring money from my savings account and then documenting that in Mint. This was my maiden voyage into juicing. What I want to do is take the credit and apply it to my Furnishings budget. I may get more sophisticated with it over time. One thing that can chip away at your budget is cash withdrawals. Once you pull that money from your account it might as well grow wings and take flight.

But Mint gives the ability to put that spending on a leash several ways. If you know how you plan to spend the cash, you can assign it in the ATM transaction.

This is called splitting. Very handy much unlike ATM fees. It automatically created the third item. This is what you need to fill out. Then you need to deduct that amount from the top line item. Side Note: Speaking of splits, you can also split transactions to assign a purchase to multiple categories. This is especially convenient when shopping on sites like Amazon, where you might buy a new book, cute pair of shoes, and a toilet plunger in the same transactions.

When you spend money you deducted, create a transaction, but this keep automatically deduct this from my last ATM withdrawal selected. This will cause this expense to count against your last ATM withdrawal. Instead, you can track cash withdrawals under Transfer for Cash Spending, which is under the Transfer category. This post has more details on how to rock this approach. But I had to work through how to record those payments and then credit them to the right account.

At first I recorded them under Income in a custom Kid Payments category and then credited the Mobile Phone budget item. But eventually I found a workflow that was more efficient. But I was surprised that transfers from them were also recorded as transfers. Note: In this case a negative number is a good thing. Positive numbers in the Budget line items indicate spending boo ; negative numbers indicate credits or carryover from the month before yay.

By default, Mint classifies them as transfers. Sometimes they even show up in the Credit Card Payment category, which falls under Transfers. Again, any transactions classified as a transfer will not count against your budget. After much head scratching and reflection, I found this to be good in some scenarios but suboptimal in others. I will describe three scenarios, illustrated by the screenshot below, and explain how I manage them in Mint and why.

Okay, first of all, keep in mind that all transactions from all of your accounts — both debits and credits — show up in your Transactions report. Anything that shows up as a positive I classify as Credit Card Payment , which is under the Transfer category.

This is a default category Mint provides. Sometimes they show up under Transfer, but I want to be as specific as possible with my budgets so I move them to the Credit Card Payment subcategory. This also aids in being able to select multiple transactions at once, as I demonstrated earlier in the post. This is a payment I made to pay down one of my credit cards I currently have a balance on. Since this is above and beyond the purchases I made on this credit card which were tracked in Mint , I classified this transaction with a custom category I created under my Financial category.

The actual deposit that shows up as a positive number transaction in my savings account in Mint I keep as in the Transfer category.

Your custom categories will then show up in the Your Categories section of the Manage Your Categories menu. In the screenshot below you can see my custom categories in my Financial category.

You can use your savings account, for example, to set up a goal. Or pay off a credit card in a year. But, though I touch on goals later, they are for the most part outside the scope of this post. I complained to Southwest on Twitter a couple weeks ago because their wifi on the flight I was on was abysmally slow.

This was that reimbursement. Payments designed to pay down your balance should be categorized wherever you create this category. But you can request that Mint add your credit card account.

Mint allows you to track your saving for big expenses, like buying a house or saving for a vacation. I wanted to take advantage of this to save for a family cruise. Mint offers goals to meet these objectives.

One little gotcha for me was I wanted to save for two trips: the cruise and also a trip to Hungary I hope to go on with my dragon boat team next year, if we qualify for the world championships. It will be fun watching these accounts grow as these dates get closer. When deciding if you should hide a transaction, set it up as a transfer, apply it to a category, or apply it to an income, I find it easiest to actually picture my account like a cash register or the ledger of my checking account not that I actually use paper ledgers anymore.

That helps me follow these guidelines my own personal guidelines that work for me … YMMV :. Realize that budgeting is like any other new skill: It takes time to develop the skills and discipline!

Sometimes unexpected expenses come up. I think one of the reasons people by people I mean ME get frustrated and overwhelmed with budgeting is we expect mastery out of the starting gate. But even if you budget imperfectly, over time it will get easier. I still want to eat total crap like pizza, cheddar fries, and chocolate covered pretzels. But I want to be healthy and strong more most days.

In like manner, I still want to spend a ridiculous amount of money on eating out and buying funky shoes, but now I want to be able to be able to take my kids on a cruise more and get out of debt faster. This is awesome! I just double checked the images, and none of them are broken.

So you might want to try refreshing the page. Great post Annie, I have been using mint for years now and found it to be the best way for budgeting and staying on track.

Quick question about your cc payments. Do you set up goals for paying these off, in addition to categorizing them in your budget? Or do you just not even bother with that part? But then I wonder if the goal is even worth having at that point. This is amazing Annie! I am just starting out with Mint. I am very picky about how I want things done and like a lot of flexibility. Thank you for sharing your in depth research!

Hi, do you know if there is a way to change when the month starts? It sounds weird but my credit card bill is due the 13th of every month. Thanks for all the other helpful info though!! Great article Annie. I categorize my transactions and review my budgets the first Monday of the month, but I am looking at the previous month. Do you know of a way to get the Mint website not to jump to the current month every time I go in and out of a budget? Thank you for any insight!

Well written I love your style , and informative. This made me want to look around your site to see what else you have to say! Now Mint says I have the asset value of my home, and no corresponding debt.

Is there any way to add the load amount manually? They made it a little trickier to use. Together with Mint, it makes a very user-friendly reporting engine for your Mint transactions. For more info or to download a free trial version, please visit MintToReport. I apprciate your sharing this. I have been frustrated trying to use mint to budget for bout a year, running into some of the same issues. Thank you Annie for this useful piece of information. Indeed Mint can be a bit tricky if not properly utilized as you rightly stated.

I need help with regards to the 2 legs of a transaction that Mint always displays. The only problem is that one of the legs is always incorrect. For example, I have my Line of Credit interest payment being debited from my chequing account automatically on a monthly basis. On the chequing account, it appears as a debit and is classified as a loan interest payment.

I have no problem with that. However, the opposite leg is classified as an interest income on my line of credit. This amount is then included as part of my income for the month which is incorrect. They buried it, but I included instructions on how to find it. Hidden categories will never modify existing transactions.

If a transaction is set to a category that is hidden, the transaction will not change or hide itself. Also, the search box will still autocomplete all categories, and any other page on Mint will still show all categories. This addon is merely a client-side change; if you disable the addon, all categories will return to their default state. Your preferences are saved on Mint's servers, so you only have to set up your choices once.

When you install the addon on another computer, your preferences will be automatically loaded. If you choose to change your settings later on, the changes will also be updated on your other devices. Your hidden categories will persist across all sessions and computers, and they will remain hidden as long as you are using a computer with this addon installed. They are saved in the Uncategorized category, and they begin with!

When the addon is installed, they should not be visible. If you do see the fields on a computer without the addon enabled , please do not delete or modify the fields. Doing so will completely mess up your preferences on which categories you want hidden. If you have those addons installed already, simply open the script and follow the prompts to install it.

There are no differences between the userscript and the native browser addon. The extension is merely a wrapper of the script. For more detailed steps, follow these instructions for your particular browser. Skip to content. Star A browser addon that lets you hide built-in categories in mint. Branches Tags. Could not load branches. Could not load tags. Latest commit. Git stats 94 commits. Failed to load latest commit information. View code. Screenshots Addon enabled - custom categories Addon disabled - all categories Editing Hidden Categories Visible Categories After Saving How to Use After the addon is installed and enabled, you are able to set your preferences.

The categories should now be hidden from the categories dropdown list. Preferences Saved on Mint's Server Your preferences are saved on Mint's servers, so you only have to set up your choices once. Known Issues Firefox 56 and higher doesn't prompt to install the script when using GreaseMonkey Solution: For now, manually copy and paste the script source into a new script.

In GreaseMonkey, click New user script Delete the default contents of the new file. Then open up the mint script , select the entire text, and copy and paste it into the new script file.

It should automatically save, so you can close the tab after pasting. Solution 2: Install TamperMonkey for Firefox. There's an issue with GreaseMonkey that currently prevents GitHub userscripts from showing an installation window, but TamperMonkey doesn't appear affected.