Give Mint.com all of the logins and passwords to your bank accounts across the Internet.

It sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

Maybe not as crazy as you think. Mint.com says:

Over 1 million people already use our online money management and budgeting software today, and we’re adding over 3,000 users every day. Mint.com is tracking $175 billion in transactions, $47 billion in assets and has identified more than $300 million in potential savings for its users.

But seriously?  If someone else jumped off a bridge- would you too?  Are over a million people jumping?  The answer is no.  Let me give you the low down on Mint’s security.

Security

There are 3 BIG Reasons why Mint checks out on the security front:

1. You’re Anonymous. “Mint works for you without requiring any personally identifiable information from you. Your Mint account is anonymous; set up requires only an email, password and zip code. Mint doesn’t know your name, address, social security number, account numbers, or PINs.”
2. Bank Level Security. “Mint uses the same levels of physical and encryption security that banks do to protect the data we do store. Our practices are monitored and verified by TRUSTe, VeriSign and Hackersafe, and supported by RSA Security.”
3. Money Can’t Move. “Mint is a “read-only” service. You can organize and analyze your finances, but you can’t move funds between — or out of — your accounts using Mint. And neither can anyone else.”

All of the security listed above and a healthy sense of curiosity led me to become one of the “over 1 million people.”

Here are the strengths and main reasons I use it:

• FREE. Yeah, it’s free.
• BIG PICTURE. It gives an excellent all encompassing look at your entire financial situation from credit cards to bank loans, savings and investments.
• NEWLYWEDS. Joining accounts with someone?  It usually takes a little bit of a transition period to get all of the incomes, bills paid, and budgeting done with one account.  Mint allows you to see where everything is, and what’s being used so you can transition strategically.
• BUDGETING. One strong feature of Mint is it’s budgeting capability.  Based on your past expenses, it can automatically generate your monthly budget.  You can then go in and adjust spend levels to where you’d like them.  It keeps track of your progress, and warns you if you are encroaching on going over budget. It learns too! If you pay $1,208 a month in rent by check, you can tell Mint to automatically label any check for that amount as Rent and it will assign it into the proper places for budgeting!