Mint on iPhone, iPad finally lets you tweak your own budget

A just-released update for Mint’s iPhone and iPad app lets users take the information graphed out about their spending habits and set their own ranges and limits by sliding the indicator up or down.

In addition to being updated for the iPad’s new Retina display, the latest Mint lets users spin the pie chart that gives a quick view to categories of spending and drill down detail with a tap.

The change I’m most excited about, though, is the ability to personalize budgets.

When I got married, the merger of my and my husband’s financial lives on Mint was what truly cemented our union, even if much less romantic than the vows taken at the actual ceremony. Being able to explicitly see the spending and saving habits of a partner is powerful. But the one thing we found missing from the app was the ability to stray from the limits suggested by the app and create our own budgets to fit our desired lifestyle.

The way Mint added budget tweaking is easy to navigate and works in both portrait and landscape orientations. You can scrub the slider up or down to adjust the limit. Ken Sun, Mint’s group product manager for mobile, told The Times that high-speed scrubbing in the app was inspired by scrubbing in video editing.

You can also just input the number if you prefer typing to sliding.

Another new feature that allows you to get even more specific is being able to split transactions. So that bulk-shopping trip to Costco can be broken down by purchase category.

Honestly, with the previous version of Mint, because we couldn’t control enough of our shared financial life on the go, we didn’t open the app nearly as much as we should have. This update will change that.

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