Money Is for Living: Tie Daily Spending to Achieving Goals With Mint.com

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New Goals Feature Helps People Plan for What They Want in Life

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Mint.com (www.mint.com) users can now do even more with their money and better plan for their financial future. With the new Mint Goals feature, people can set their life goals, understand how much they need to save, develop a plan to achieve specific goals more quickly, and track their progress.

"Personal finance software - Mint.com included - has always been about looking back: tracking what you have spent and saved, or how well you stuck to a budget. We're fundamentally changing that with Goals, so people can look ahead," said Aaron Patzer, general manager and vice president of Intuit Personal Finance and founder of Mint.com.

"Ultimately, money is not about the numbers. It's about having enough to do what you want with the people you love. Money is for living, and Mint Goals will help consumers set and achieve their life goals more quickly and easily than ever before, whether buying a car or house, paying off debt, taking a vacation or saving for retirement."

Optimized for Life's Goals

People can plan and track their progress toward one or more specific goals from among eight categories, or customize their own. Goals can be long or short-term, and focus on: 

    --  Key financial goals: getting out of debt or saving for an emergency
        fund.
    --  Life stage goals: saving for college, buying or improving a home, or
        retiring by a certain age.
    --  Lifestyle goals: taking a trip or buying a car.
    --  Customizable goals: saving for anything from a special dinner date to
        buying a big-screen TV or planning a wedding.

Mint Goals helps simplify the often-daunting process of achieving a specific goal. It provides a step-by-step guide to help people easily determine a total goal dollar amount, an achievable first step to take toward reaching it, and an expectation for how long it will take.

For example, people planning for retirement can simply enter their planned retirement age and anticipated expenses and Mint.com does the rest. It will tie the goal to existing retirement accounts and show how much progress has already been made.

Achieving Life's Goals With Mint.com

A complete guide to setting and achieving goals is available at: http://www.mint.com/blog/goals/how-to-use-mints-goals-06302010. The guide helps people: 

    --  See how day-to-day spending affects the long-term. For example, cutting
        your restaurant budget by $50 each month could help pay for your child's
        college four months sooner, take a vacation three weeks earlier, or
        retire one-and-a-half years quicker.
    --  Track progress toward reaching each goal by associating one or more
        accounts with a goal. For example, people can link their retirement goal
        directly to their 401(k) and IRA accounts.
    --  Benefit from a step-by-step plan of action. This includes short,
        actionable advice, in addition to links to the best resources, partners
        and tools to help people reach their goals more quickly.
    --  Personalize accounts with motivating images, such as a dream house, car
        or vacation destination.

"More than 90 percent of our users change how they spend because of the insight they gain using Mint.com," said Patzer. "This takes our customers to the next level: tying day-to-day tasks and budgets to attaining life goals. We can help people achieve what they want in life, and hopefully even make them a little happier."

About Mint.com

Mint.com is a leading free online personal finance service from Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq: INTU), providing over 3.5 million users a fresh, easy and intelligent way to manage their money. And it's free. Launched in September 2007, Mint.com has quickly grown to track nearly $200 billion in transactions and $50 billion in assets and has identified more than $300 million in potential savings for its users. Mint.com's innovation is in applying advanced technology to deliver breakthrough ease-of-use. Using patent-pending technology and proprietary algorithms, Mint.com allows users to see all their financial accounts in one place, makes it easy to set and keep to budgets, and helps identify money saving ideas. Mint.com is so effective that more than 90 percent of users say they have changed their financial habits as a result of using the service. For more information on Mint.com's free online personal finance service, please visit http://www.mint.com and follow Mint.com on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mint.

About Intuit Inc.

Intuit Inc. is a leading provider of business and financial management solutions for small and mid-sized businesses; financial institutions, including banks and credit unions; consumers and accounting professionals. Its flagship products and services, including QuickBooks(R), Quicken(R) and TurboTax(R), simplify small business management and payroll processing, personal finance, and tax preparation and filing. ProSeries(R) and Lacerte(R) are Intuit's leading tax preparation offerings for professional accountants. The company's financial institutions division, anchored by Digital Insight, provides on-demand banking services to help banks and credit unions serve businesses and consumers with innovative solutions.

Founded in 1983, Intuit had annual revenue of $3.1 billion in its fiscal year 2009. The company has approximately 7,800 employees with major offices in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, India and other locations. More information can be found at www.intuit.com. 


    Source: Intuit Inc.

Released June 30, 2010