Ok DCUM personal finance geniuses, help me figure this out....

[Anonymous]

Is the credit card in mint? If so, all the expenses would be listed as debits and the transfer for payment makes sense. If the cc isn’t linked to mint, then the cc payment should be listed as a debit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whatever the issue is with Mint, the proof is in the pudding. You spend more than you make. When you figure out why Mint isn't tracking correctly, the correction will reflect why you're in the red - it doesn't change the fact that you are in the red.

Op again. Yeah, right. So we need to pay off the credit card debt and reduce spending to free up $1600. But I'm still totally baffled about Mint! It is accurate each month in terms of red or black - and we swing wildly from one to the other due to the unpredictability of my DH's income. Makes budgeting and cash flow hard. Maybe it's something off with the trends feature. I just don't get it. And their customer service is completely useless. Maybe we should switch to another system.

[Anonymous]

do cash withdrawals show up on Mint?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:do cash withdrawals show up on Mint?

Yep

[Anonymous]

Where do you get your $1300 number? From Mint estimates?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whatever the issue is with Mint, the proof is in the pudding. You spend more than you make. When you figure out why Mint isn't tracking correctly, the correction will reflect why you're in the red - it doesn't change the fact that you are in the red.

Op again. Yeah, right. So we need to pay off the credit card debt and reduce spending to free up $1600. But I'm still totally baffled about Mint! It is accurate each month in terms of red or black - and we swing wildly from one to the other due to the unpredictability of my DH's income. Makes budgeting and cash flow hard. Maybe it's something off with the trends feature. I just don't get it. And their customer service is completely useless. Maybe we should switch to another system.

...yeah, that's not correct. You're $15k in debt, not necessarily -$1600 average a month. In other words, if you're looking to reduce spending by $1600, that doesn't mean you can afford more house or even bring you to breaking even.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whatever the issue is with Mint, the proof is in the pudding. You spend more than you make. When you figure out why Mint isn't tracking correctly, the correction will reflect why you're in the red - it doesn't change the fact that you are in the red.

Op again. Yeah, right. So we need to pay off the credit card debt and reduce spending to free up $1600. But I'm still totally baffled about Mint! It is accurate each month in terms of red or black - and we swing wildly from one to the other due to the unpredictability of my DH's income. Makes budgeting and cash flow hard. Maybe it's something off with the trends feature. I just don't get it. And their customer service is completely useless. Maybe we should switch to another system.

...yeah, that's not correct. You're $15k in debt, not necessarily -$1600 average a month. In other words, if you're looking to reduce spending by $1600, that doesn't mean you can afford more house or even bring you to breaking even.

Never mind, read your post wrong. Thought you said reduce spending by $1600.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whatever the issue is with Mint, the proof is in the pudding. You spend more than you make. When you figure out why Mint isn't tracking correctly, the correction will reflect why you're in the red - it doesn't change the fact that you are in the red.

Op again. Yeah, right. So we need to pay off the credit card debt and reduce spending to free up $1600. But I'm still totally baffled about Mint! It is accurate each month in terms of red or black - and we swing wildly from one to the other due to the unpredictability of my DH's income. Makes budgeting and cash flow hard. Maybe it's something off with the trends feature. I just don't get it. And their customer service is completely useless. Maybe we should switch to another system.

If you decide to switch, I really like YNAB. Takes a couple of months to get used to, but have been using it for 9 months now and it’s been great. I think it would help you with the uneven income too.

[Anonymous]

I have a similar problem with Bank of America. It doesn’t correctly reflect my rent payments (made electronically) or certain types of credit card payments. I spent several hours on the phone with their tech support before they told me that they couldn’t fix this. Instead of DCUm, could you call them or do more google digging about known Mint tracking problems? Best of luck to you—I know how maddening this can be!

[Anonymous]

How the f do you have 18K in credit card debt?

That's several months of spending for my household...

You aren't $1500 in the black you are -15K and it's only February.

You can't buy more, but maybe you can sell and rent for a few years.

[Anonymous]

Are all your expenses coded as expenses? The transfer thing for credit card payments shouldn’t matter because that’s paying down the balance and the individual line items in the linked account are showing as expense. Look for another line item - like a therapy bill or something - that mint thinks is a transfer of some sort rather than an expense.

[Anonymous]

I would have thought this would be trivial to reconcile: just take one month and add up all outgoings from the bank statements vs what mint shows for expenditures. There will be some missing category/categories.

But I agree, the bigger issue is if you want to spend more on mortgage, you need to spend less on something else. Don’t forget with a bigger house other expenses will also increase...

[Anonymous]

Anything else being listed as a "transfer"? Retirement savings? Taxes?

[Anonymous]

How on earth are people with absolutely no knowledge of your financial picture supposed to track down what's missing from your Mint picture? FFS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are all your expenses coded as expenses? The transfer thing for credit card payments shouldn’t matter because that’s paying down the balance and the individual line items in the linked account are showing as expense. Look for another line item - like a therapy bill or something - that mint thinks is a transfer of some sort rather than an expense.

This.

And there is no way you should move when you can’t even save enough now to not use credit cards. What are you going to do in the event of a market downturn if your husbsnd’s income goes down 20%?