I've not ever really taken the time to explore their website, except for their rewards page! You can shop through Discover and earn pretty great rewards, and the other day I cashed out $40 in rewards for a $45 CVS gift card. I absolutely can't wait to get that one. It'll be fun to see how long I can make it last--considering tonight I spent 68 cents and got over $25 worth of stuff! So fun. But I'm totally sidetracked.
A particular feature of the Discover website was pointed out to me last week, and I'd say I found the concept interesting, but I didn't. I really thought, "Whatever. Who cares about that!" And then I spent about 30 minutes playing with it online, and I actually love it.
It's called the Spend Analyzer. It takes your spending and tracks it for you--so you can see how much money you're spending in each category. We have this feature in our Quicken, which we use for our checking/savings accounts. My hubs, the over analyzing engineer, LOVES graphs and charts! He totally lives by them. Me? Not so much usually. I'd prefer a spreadsheet. Our problem comes when we're using a credit card. We tend to not track our spending so carefully with that, except to say that we try to pay what we spend on it. But to put the spending into categories and track it with our regular budget doesn't really happen.
The Spend Analyzer gives you a pie chart, which you can see for different time periods such as the last month or year to date or the last twelve months, and automatically categorizes your spending for you! So like home improvement, warehouse clubs, restaurants, grocery stores, gas, travel, etc. I actually like this! We've been working on our credit card usage over the past year and it's fascinating to me to see how it's improved for us. And even more amazing that I'm seeing it in the charts--Steven will be so proud!
I should note that under the charts, it lists every transaction it's counting, and by that, it places the category the specific transaction is put in. Good clarification, because obviously it can't quite get everything right. It put my paypal transactions from ebay under service, when really I bought actual items that aren't service. Other than that, I don't see any other mistakes! It's actually very accurate.
In taking the time to check this out, I stumbled upon other parts of the discover website, which I absolutely love. They have a tool that will actually help you work out a plan to get out of debt, and one to help you plan for a large purchase, so that you know ahead of time what it will take to pay it off. And there's tons and tons of advice articles--too many for me to even go into.
Which totally breaks my opinion that all credit card companies are just bad. This one actually puts amazing information easily in reach and I really appreciate that.
Which makes me even more of a loyal customer.
*Links to check out for this:
Blogher Review Roundup
Discover Spend Analyzer Demo
**This is a paid review from BlogHer and Discover.**
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1 comments:
I <3 Discover card too. The rewards are the best. You can trade $20 cashback bonus for $40 at ftd.com, which is invaluable for mother's day, birthdays, etc.
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