How to Organize Your Personal Finances Like A Real Business with Mint.com (Master of Coin #1)

David Eisner
Nov 3 · 10 min read

Hello and welcome to my brand new article series on finances: “Master of Coin”! Let’s hope I don’t get sued by Game of Thrones.

This series is all about helping you do better… a lot better… with your finances. It’s broken down it these obvious categories:
1. Organizing, setting goals, and tracking progress
2. Keeping more of your money and finding free money i.e. “Money Hacks”
3. Increasing your income

I felt compelled to write these articles because over the past couple of years I’ve taken MANY steps to save us money on practically everything while organizing our finances and it has been incredibly helpful for growing our net worth. I matured and graduated to the next level of my own personal financial lifecycle and now I have a mega list of around 50 items I want to share with the world. That list will undoubtedly grow. For now, it’s time to share what I think I know.

Some of these items have bigger impact than others. Some save $20/year, while others $2,000/year or more. So I’m really excited to share this stuff because they’re mostly incredibly easy to implement and quite plainly, it all adds up. At the end of the year do you want to look at your bank account and have $5,000 more in it… and you did no extra work to get yourself there? I know that’s me.

There was definitely a time in my life when I didn’t track much and spent wildly. That was called my 20s! LOL. This is typical. If you’re in your 20s, you probably are horrible with money, especially controlling expenses and making wise investments. That’s OK! Even if you’re making a lot of money, if you’re like many of us, you think you’re making more than you are and you’re blowing it indiscriminately on stuff you don’t need AT ALL. That is part of the financial lifecycle. I don’t knock anybody for this — but let’s do something simple to fix it, OK? That’s what this article is about.


First things first… if you want to be better with money, you must change your mindset. The most important thing you can do is to start thinking of your personal finances as a business. And you know, a successful one. One that is actually making money and becoming more valuable over time. It’s a very powerful move to start doing this — because people tend to treat their business with higher standards. For example, in order for a business to succeed, most people know that you must have positive cash flow. You must also have your books in order. And you have to control expenses. Basic stuff, right? Yet most people do none of this for their personal finances. That needs to change. Start treating them like the “Business Of You.”

Take it one step further and run your finances like a business an investor could be interested in acquiring. Why? Because this sets an even higher standard and more importantly, a higher likelihood of growth and success. Investors buy businesses either for their strong cash flow AND/OR because they think they can grow them. In other words, they have a high likelihood of success in the future. So this is a great model to follow!

There are a lot of elements that make a businesses attractive to investors… but there are only a few necessary components. Things that MUST be in place for someone to consider taking it on. Think about it, would you want to invest in a very disorganized business? Or one where you didn’t know whether or not your would even get a return on your investment, simply because it was unclear what was even happening with the finances? Of course you wouldn’t. It’s time to elevate your Business Of You to those standards.

Here are some characteristics that MUST be in place (that also relate to your personal finances):

  1. Everything is recorded on a ledger (ya know, bookkeeping). You know all the money that’s flowing in and all the money that’s flowing out and you have it well-categorized. An investor will never buy a business where the Profit and Loss statements/Income Statements are not showing all of the capital flows, as well as assets and liabilities, in an organized fashion.
  2. You must generate positive cash flow beyond just covering expenses (which is what most people are doing). This requires you to either increase your income or decrease your expenses. There is always a way to do either.
  3. Resources are being allocated efficiently. If they’re not, an investor might step in and still buy it… but it’s not going to be worth as much. You have to be investing in the right places and reducing bad expenses.
  4. All of your taxes are filed, up to date, (hopefully paid for), and you have the records ready to show — as well as they are easy to file in the future. What investor would buy a business without that basic thing being in place? Nobody likes taxes but what other choice do we have?

OK, OK David… let’s say this makes sense to me and I buy into this mindset to run my Business Of Me like a real business… “What do I need to DO?”


You must make goals and know where you’re going. But that in my mind is really step #2. You can’t know how to get somewhere without knowing where you’re standing first.

Step #1: YOU MUST GET ORGANIZED.

You must spend the time and effort (not money, thankfully) to bring everything into a central place, organize it, and categorize it.

Because once you have all the data in one place, you can see what is actually going on. Then your eyes POP OPEN. Then you know where you’re standing. Once you know where you’re standing, you can chart a path to get to where you’re going.

Here are the questions you need to be able to answer. Do you know…

  1. …how much you have in cash, retirement accounts, and other assets?
  2. …how much debt you have, what those debt payments are, how long they last for, and what interest rates they hold?
  3. …your net worth?
  4. …how much you’re paying in recurring subscriptions every month/year?
  5. …what your average monthly cost is for variable expenses like travel, food?
  6. …what your approximate monthly cash flow surplus or deficit is?
  7. …how much you are saving/investing every month?

If you answered no to all or some of these questions… well, that’s why we’re doing this. Even if you won’t like what you see, it’s time to dig in and figure out what the Business Of You has been doing.


My very best, baseline piece of advice for the average American out there is… make Mint.com your best friend. I mean, you’d think this article is an ad for it, but it’s not. I’m just a huge believer in it because of what it’s helped us do. (I promise you, I get absolutely nothing from that company/website for writing this.)

Mint quickly and easily allows you to bring in all of your accounts and give you a view of your overall financial situation. Once you’ve done that, it will automatically track all your transactions, budgets, investment accounts, and more. You can set budgets for various expenses and see if you meet them. It will calculate total monthly cash flow for you. It will even monitor your credit score for free.

Screenshot for the top of Mint.com

AND THE WEBSITE IS TOTALLY FREE. Give me a break! It couldn’t be easier or more of a no-brainer.

BUT, there is still a bit of work involved. Getting the accounts connected is the easy part. To actually know exactly what’s happening in the Business Of You, you must put in a bit of extra effort to categorize the transactions correctly. Sure, Mint will get most of them correct, but certainly not all of them. So while Mint makes it easy for your to organize your situation, you still need to drive the bus and bring the kids home.

Here are my tips for getting the most out of Mint:

  1. This is probably obvious but… don’t use cash too much. You can use some cash here and there but ultimately if you want the benefits of knowing where your money is going, use cards, bank accounts, etc. It’s almost 2020 and lord knows we’re headed to cashless anyway. Embrace it.
  2. Use it often and spend time every month categorizing each and every transaction. We have a lot of transactions in all of our accounts so it does take me some time but probably not more than 10–20 minutes/month. Again, I’m mostly just checking to see if they are correct. You can make your own categories and also make rules so that certain charges get categorized correctly, automatically. Have fun with it!
  3. Use the more granular categories for each transaction, not the main ones. At the end of the day it just gives you more clarity on the category without having to click and look at each individual transaction. However, if something looks off, click on the category when you’re on the “Budgets” screen and it will show you all of the transactions that are responsible for that number — then, you can easily see if there are any mistakes that need to be fixed.
  4. Sometimes accounts give you issues connecting. Persevere through that because eventually I’ve gotten every account to connect. Sometimes they won’t connect for a few weeks and then decide to come back on later. We use big banks but also smaller ones and they all connect sooner or later.
  5. For bank transfers and simple money movement, categorize them as “Hide from budgets and trends”, else it will throw off your monthly budgets and not give you accurate data.
  6. If you think something could be a tax deduction at the end of the year, check the box inside the transaction! That way, at the end of the year you can simply sort by “tax deductions” and tell those to your accountant to ask which ones might be deductible. Much better than having to skim through thousands of transactions at year end!
  7. Some of your accounts, debts, or property will be “offline”. I encourage you to add those in under “Add a Property.” There will be an option for cash, debt, etc. Again, this helps you get a complete picture of your net worth.
  8. Find the information that’s important for your situation. One thing I really wanted to get a handle on at the beginning was how much we were spending on food. I honestly still can’t believe we spend $1,400/month for 2 people! But all I can say is, I’ve addressed it as well as I want it and “it is what it is”. It’s manageable for us and it doesn’t seem to fluctuate more than $100 each month now that I’m tracking what we spend at restaurants, the grocery store, fast food, snacks, etc.

OK Mint is beyond awesome (especially given that’s it’s free!)… BUT, it is missing one thing. It does not show you recurring expenses as a category. (Mint, if you’re listening, you need to do something about this!)

Why is that important? Well, that’s the category that sucks more money out of people’s pockets than any other! Believe me, I’m on the other end of it. I can guarantee you that 95% of the people who read this article have at least one monthly subscription they should eliminate or reduce. For my wife it was Classpass. Every month, $69 was coming out of her account like clockwork. She forgot to use it but they never forgot to charge her! For me, it was software for my business. Oh my, how much software I signed up for and didn’t use to actually make me money! I don’t do that anymore and neither should you!

So after you’ve loaded all your accounts and categorized everything, find out what you’ve been charged and go make a Google Sheet of every charge that happens MONTHLY or on any recurring basis. That will be rent, car payments, etc. Some of them you absolutely cannot avoid or reduce at the moment and that’s OK. What you’re looking for is unnecessary leaks in your bucket. If you identify items that can be eliminated or lowered, go do it now. It could take you 5 minutes to cancel a subscription that’s going to waste 100s of dollars over the next year… what’s that worth to you on an hourly basis? I’d say it’s a pretty good return. And if you’re uncertain about whether you’re getting value from something… Marie Kondo it! Ask yourself, “Is this subscription sparking joy?” No? Then thank it and say goodbye.

Then, in the future, be extremely discerning about any subscriptions you sign up for. MAKE SURE that you use them. If you don’t, eliminate them immediately. I just saved you thousands of your hard-earned dollars.

OK so go now and do that stuff…


Congratulations! You are now armed with the truth!

From here, you have power. You can now…

  1. Cut useless or glutinous expenses. We did that above with the recurring expenses exercises.
  2. Calculate monthly cash flow. In the “Trends” tab, you can click on “Net Income” and sort it. If you’re categorizing things correctly, you should be able to see whether you are making more than you’re spending every month — which is obviously the goal!
  3. Easily calculate your net worth and track it. You can also see that under the Trends tab. We have 21 active accounts and plenty more inactive. I can tell you what our net worth is at a glance (I’m not going to)!
  4. See if any charges show up that shouldn’t be there. Wow, this was happening way more than we thought before we implemented Mint. For some of you out there, I guarantee this is happening, maybe even on a monthly basis. If you’re looking at your transactions at least once a month and categorizing them, you won’t get charged for stupid shit you didn’t authorize.
  5. Calculate whether you’re on track for your goals… whether that’s paying off debt, saving for retirement, saving for a house, or whatever! You won’t know unless you track it. Period end of story!!
  6. Make doing your taxes WAY easier. You’re also more likely to find deductions if you mark them as such! Your accountant is going to love you for being his most organized client.

Last word… Start running the “Business Of You” like a real business. That means getting seriously organized and informed about what’s happening. Most of it can happen fast, like now. But honestly, getting it really tight probably won’t happen overnight. It may not save you money or make you money immediately but if you put some effort, you’ll find some places you can slash expenses or allocate funds more efficiently, which will eventually mean more money in your pocket. Either way, you’ll be able to identify your current position and track your progress… and that’s half the battle!

Til next time… thanks for reading.

David Eisner

Written by

On a quest to become the ultimate renaissance man… or something like that. Sharing along the way what I think I know. IG: backpackbusinessman

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade