Credit Karma will not offer feature parity with Mint: Support: Intuit Mint and Credit Karma:
Credit Karma will not offer feature parity with Mint:
Credit Karma is thrilled to invite all Minters to continue their financial journey on Credit Karma, where they will have access to Credit Karma’s suite of features, products, tools and services, including some of Mint’s most popular features.
Will there be a budgeting tool in Credit Karma?
While the new experience in Credit Karma does not offer the ability to set monthly and category budgets, it offers a simplified way for you to build awareness of your spending, and track your savings so you can feel more confident you're on the right path towards financial progress.
For sure, the budgeting aspect is the most important part to me. It lets me pre-categorize my spending and re-allocate easily if something comes up and I either have to pull some fun money over or...
For sure, the budgeting aspect is the most important part to me. It lets me pre-categorize my spending and re-allocate easily if something comes up and I either have to pull some fun money over or have a bill come out cheaper than estimated. It lets me know at a glance that, yes or no, I can do that thing.
As an aside, is your username based on the YouTuber?
Ahhh, haha. That youtuber is a financial one, and given the conversation... Thought maybe you were a fan. He's interesting, though not someone I'd take too seriously!
Ahhh, haha. That youtuber is a financial one, and given the conversation... Thought maybe you were a fan. He's interesting, though not someone I'd take too seriously!
I've never used Mint at all, never really looked into it. From what I knew about it, I thought that the budgeting aspect was the primary draw of the service.
I've never used Mint at all, never really looked into it. From what I knew about it, I thought that the budgeting aspect was the primary draw of the service.
Yeah, the budgeting was what drew me in back in 20... 2012? Maybe. Either way, that's all I knew mint for. Granted, once I got the hard part down (tracking your spending) I didn't really need the...
Yeah, the budgeting was what drew me in back in 20... 2012? Maybe. Either way, that's all I knew mint for. Granted, once I got the hard part down (tracking your spending) I didn't really need the app anymore and stopped using it
That isn’t a surprise to me honestly. I remember using the bill pay tool that was rolled into mint. I think it was “mint bills”? I don’t remember. They said they would transfer the features over...
That isn’t a surprise to me honestly. I remember using the bill pay tool that was rolled into mint. I think it was “mint bills”? I don’t remember. They said they would transfer the features over to mint, but they never did. Or if they did, they removed them shortly after.
Honestly the only real value of Mint was the integrations to pull in data from your financial institutions. Everything else you could just as easily pull together yourself with a spreadsheet. If...
Honestly the only real value of Mint was the integrations to pull in data from your financial institutions. Everything else you could just as easily pull together yourself with a spreadsheet. If banks would get with the program and just provide a way to do that I wouldn't need the trash front-ends these applications burn cycles making.
I stopped trusting these apps once I started working in InfoSec and realized just how garbage their organizational cultures were around security.
Wasn't it Mint that required banking logins to pull data? Maybe I'm misattributing, but I remember looking into one of these finance applications and they needed full password access to your bank...
Wasn't it Mint that required banking logins to pull data?
Maybe I'm misattributing, but I remember looking into one of these finance applications and they needed full password access to your bank account and I couldn't believe my eyes as I noped out of there.
They have you log in to your bank account through a tunnel that then gives them a token through which they can draw transaction data. It doesn't give them any power over your account, nor do they...
They have you log in to your bank account through a tunnel that then gives them a token through which they can draw transaction data. It doesn't give them any power over your account, nor do they store your login. There's a lot to blame Intuit for, but they don't have a plaintext record of everyone's bank logins.
Are you sure about that? Their website seems to indicate they are storing bank logins in a decryptable format: https://mint.intuit.com/how-mint-works/security
Are you sure about that?
Their website seems to indicate they are storing bank logins in a decryptable format:
Wow, ok. I'm more familiar with their business products and was totally incorrect here. QBO may have better data handling, but you're right that Mint is trash.
Wow, ok. I'm more familiar with their business products and was totally incorrect here. QBO may have better data handling, but you're right that Mint is trash.
That really depended on the bank. Back when I used Mint for a bit in the 2010s, I definitely had to give them my account name and password for some of my financial institutions. I think they used...
That really depended on the bank. Back when I used Mint for a bit in the 2010s, I definitely had to give them my account name and password for some of my financial institutions. I think they used tokenization when possible—I had some of those “Authorize Mint to see your data” banks, too—but they'd fall back to a shared password when not.
One of the reasons I gave up on using Mint after a few months.
It heavily depends on what bank you use. Many banks now support oauth connections that don’t require giving Plaid or whoever your login details to scrape the bank website. Chase is a big bank that...
It heavily depends on what bank you use. Many banks now support oauth connections that don’t require giving Plaid or whoever your login details to scrape the bank website. Chase is a big bank that supports this and my local credit union even added support as of last month.
The r/mintuit subreddit has numerous submissions comparing the alternatives, basically none of which are free. Here's a good summary of the most recommended: Lunch Money YNAB Copilot Monarch...
Exemplary
The r/mintuit subreddit has numerous submissions comparing the alternatives, basically none of which are free. Here's a good summary of the most recommended:
We switched to YNAB 1.5 years ago. My husband struggled with Mint because it didn't play nice with USAA. I loved it and it worked well for me. YNAB was a challenge to get started with, but now...
We switched to YNAB 1.5 years ago. My husband struggled with Mint because it didn't play nice with USAA. I loved it and it worked well for me. YNAB was a challenge to get started with, but now we're doing pretty well with it. It helped us afford to add a fence to our house and now that we could afford a new car by moving around some funds.
I use empowered and it's the same app as it was as Personal Capital. I really like it and think it works well for budgeting. But I do sort of expect them to fuck it up over time.
I use empowered and it's the same app as it was as Personal Capital. I really like it and think it works well for budgeting. But I do sort of expect them to fuck it up over time.
Does it auto import like mint? I don’t care much about budgetinglike many but I’ve stuck with mint because I can just have it auto import and get an idea. Everyone else I tried required manual entry
Does it auto import like mint? I don’t care much about budgetinglike many but I’ve stuck with mint because I can just have it auto import and get an idea. Everyone else I tried required manual entry
Yeah it does, which is one of the reasons I like it. It imports through plaid and works relatively well. It can have some trouble with some services that require MFA every time.
Yeah it does, which is one of the reasons I like it. It imports through plaid and works relatively well. It can have some trouble with some services that require MFA every time.
I tried out/heavily looked into about 15 different platforms today. Almost all of them had some little dealbreaker for me because of the way I’ve used Mint. For all its annoying ads and bloat, it...
I tried out/heavily looked into about 15 different platforms today. Almost all of them had some little dealbreaker for me because of the way I’ve used Mint. For all its annoying ads and bloat, it was actually super customizable.
I tried out YNAB years ago, and decided with Mint keeping track of live transactions matching into a budget, I could do the main zero-budgeting part on a spreadsheet then just “paste” it over into Mint. I like my workflow on that, and wanted to keep it.
So, all that being said, the ONLY thing I’ve found so far that 1) lets me customize budgets the way I want, 2) lets me really mess with transaction data (I need to split and redate one split sometimes), and 3) doesn’t cost more than I’m willing to pay seems to be PocketGuard. If it works out well for the next month-ish, I’ll drop the $80 for lifetime access.
Still have to give up a couple things I like (future dating paychecks, seeing the budget page frozen in past months), but I think there are options that let me work around those. It seems to be following rules pretty well I set for transaction names and types. I’m definitely not using a lot of the features as intended, but the fact that I can get it do most of what I want is a win.
It looked very nice, and if I had to guess, it would likely have done everything I wanted and more. But it was more than I wanted to spend. $80 lifetime vs $99 for a year made me extra motivated...
It looked very nice, and if I had to guess, it would likely have done everything I wanted and more. But it was more than I wanted to spend. $80 lifetime vs $99 for a year made me extra motivated to make PocketGuard work. The good news was that I didn’t have to try that hard.
I’ve been using Wealthfront which can log into several banks and give you an overview. They also have a competitive interest rate on their Cash Account. For budgeting I’ve tried YNAB but I’ve run...
I’ve been using Wealthfront which can log into several banks and give you an overview. They also have a competitive interest rate on their Cash Account.
For budgeting I’ve tried YNAB but I’ve run into several difficulties and won’t be renewing once my subscription is over. Main issues are with syncing to banks and proper handling of credit cards.
I use Rocket Money but after reading many of the responses here and not seeing it listed or mentioned, I dunno. It seems like a legit replacement option to mint which I also used.
I use Rocket Money but after reading many of the responses here and not seeing it listed or mentioned, I dunno. It seems like a legit replacement option to mint which I also used.
I used Mint in its golden age many years ago, then moved on to Personal Capital for a while. At some point I started to feel wary about giving my various account details to a centralized third...
I used Mint in its golden age many years ago, then moved on to Personal Capital for a while. At some point I started to feel wary about giving my various account details to a centralized third party service, so I left them and didn't look back.
I think the best solution might be that we all get really good at maintaining our own financial dashboards in our spreadsheet application of choice. There are some great templates out there to get started with.
Sounds nice in theory, but at least in my case it’d be a job and a half keeping such a spreadsheet updated with all of my various accounts. I don’t think I’d have the patience to keep it up.
I think the best solution might be that we all get really good at maintaining our own financial dashboards in our spreadsheet application of choice. There are some great templates out there to get started with.
Sounds nice in theory, but at least in my case it’d be a job and a half keeping such a spreadsheet updated with all of my various accounts. I don’t think I’d have the patience to keep it up.
Can you point me at some good ones? This is my currently preferred method, and I'm planning to iterate on the format I use at the being of the new year. Googling for such a topic seems like a way...
maintaining our own financial dashboards in our spreadsheet application of choice. There are some great templates out there to get started with.
Can you point me at some good ones? This is my currently preferred method, and I'm planning to iterate on the format I use at the being of the new year. Googling for such a topic seems like a way to spend hours filtering bullshit though.
I’ve had the most luck with searching “Excel finance dashboard” (or Google Sheets, etc.) on YouTube, which has led me to a bunch of people sharing their own setups (and, usually, a link to the...
I’ve had the most luck with searching “Excel finance dashboard” (or Google Sheets, etc.) on YouTube, which has led me to a bunch of people sharing their own setups (and, usually, a link to the free or paid template). This let me see what systems resonated with me based on how someone actually sets them up and uses them, which is far better than trying to judge from screenshots.
Unfortunate, but it seemed to have been in decline for quite some time. Back in the early 2010s Mint offered a menubar app for Mac (screenshot) that was quite nice, and I probably got the most use...
Unfortunate, but it seemed to have been in decline for quite some time.
Back in the early 2010s Mint offered a menubar app for Mac (screenshot) that was quite nice, and I probably got the most use out of Mint back when that app still worked. Some time after they discontinued support and it stopped working and so I stopped using Mint.
Of course by then they had smartphone apps, but when I’m focusing on finances I’m probably sitting at a desktop and so I never made a habit of opening the mobile app.
This saddens me more than it should, for the past nine years I've had a weekly Friday ritual to log into Mint and categorize all my transactions. I should probably be glad not to be giving Intuit...
This saddens me more than it should, for the past nine years I've had a weekly Friday ritual to log into Mint and categorize all my transactions. I should probably be glad not to be giving Intuit all my data though.
I've always used Mint and YNAB in tandem. YNAB was forward facing and helped me allocate my money and stay within budget while Mint was always backward facing, categorizing transactions to a fine granularity to see where all my money went. The categories in the two weren't compatible since YNAB were these big buckets of money to draw from but Mint could show me things like how much money went to Fast Food/Restaruants/Delivery vs just a "Food" category.
I am etirely lost on what else is out there but just a cursury glance shows some other promising apps. Can anyone recommentd something that could either dovetail both my use cases for Mint and YNAB or, more likely, recommend a good Mint replacement for my use case?
Edit: I've discovered Monarch Money and this may be the direction I head in. It's subscription based, which hurt to think about at first, but I've been slowly divesting myself from advertising-driven internet and this probably more aligns with the new direction I'd like my interaction with the web to go. It's why I gave up on Reddit and started giving a small "donation" amount to Tildes monthly, why not actually pay for the service I'm looking for
Sounds like you need to add more granularity to YNAB. YNAB is both forward and backward-facing. You give your dollars a job and then can see spending through reports. If you want food broken into...
Sounds like you need to add more granularity to YNAB. YNAB is both forward and backward-facing. You give your dollars a job and then can see spending through reports. If you want food broken into fast food, restaurants, and delivery - make those categories! I differentiate between groceries and restaurants but personally don't care about whether it's fast food or a sit-down place. If you do you can make it how you want it.
Also, I'll comment here for some of the people who have complained about YNAB...YNAB is a tool to force you into the philosophy behind YNAB. That's the value of YNAB. If you used YNAB as a spreadsheet to track money after you've spent it, then you're throwing your money away. The tool forces you to look at debt a certain way, assign money into buckets, and then roll with the punches as you overspend in other areas.
That's exactly what I avoid in a budget though. For me I largely budget along three broad categories and then a few smaller specific ones. Wants, Needs, and Asperational. For the food example:...
Sounds like you need to add more granularity to YNAB
That's exactly what I avoid in a budget though. For me I largely budget along three broad categories and then a few smaller specific ones. Wants, Needs, and Asperational. For the food example: groceries is a need and gets its own line item but all other types of food (restaurant, fast food, bars, etc.) goes under a broad "Wants" category. If I eat out too much at restaurants this month then that's less money for other wants, i.e. movies, shopping, video games. I do not want to budget $x for restaurants, $x for bars, $x for video games, etc. etc. But when I go back retrospectively, I certainly do want to see how much have i spent on food n general, how much of that specifically was for Fast Food or Restaurants?
Unfortunately this use case is not really compatible with either the Mint or YNAB budgeting philosophy. Trust me, if I could avoid managing two budgeting apps this whole time I would have unless you have some groundbreaking idea I've managed to miss - i'd honestly love to hear it
I think this is possible with ynab. You can make a broad "wants" category and assign money to it and spend money from it. It's true it's probably not "true" to the philosophy but you can certainly...
I think this is possible with ynab. You can make a broad "wants" category and assign money to it and spend money from it. It's true it's probably not "true" to the philosophy but you can certainly do it.
I think you're misunderstanding, that's already how I budget in YNAB but this provides no granularity as to what I've spent money on - hence why I need to use Mint to categorize individual...
I think you're misunderstanding, that's already how I budget in YNAB but this provides no granularity as to what I've spent money on - hence why I need to use Mint to categorize individual transactions
That actually sounds like a great system for me. I've always found the micromanagement of the separate categories to be tedious and as you mention missing the bigger picture. I'm currently trying...
That actually sounds like a great system for me. I've always found the micromanagement of the separate categories to be tedious and as you mention missing the bigger picture. I'm currently trying out Monarch which I don't think supports that approach either but I know it has a tagging system so maybe something can be overlayed with that to get this info. Will look into it.
I've found that Monarch does work for this approach if you budget by Group and then you can nest granular categories underneath. What "broke" Monarch for me was that there is no system for me to...
I've found that Monarch does work for this approach if you budget by Group and then you can nest granular categories underneath. What "broke" Monarch for me was that there is no system for me to save for annual or bigger expenses in an automated fashion. In YNAB I can set an expense with date and it will tell me to contribute $x.xx per month, Monarch can't do this. If you want to implement my "Bucket Based" budget system, then Monarch can definitely do it
For anyone looking at Monarch Money, the r/MonarchMoney subreddit, which appears to be run by the company, has a referral link in the sidebar that gives an extended 30-day trial rather than the...
For anyone looking at Monarch Money, the r/MonarchMoney subreddit, which appears to be run by the company, has a referral link in the sidebar that gives an extended 30-day trial rather than the standard 7-day trial:
I currently use Lunch Money, which has a lot of flexibility with how you set up categories and lets you define custom rules for how transactions get categorized. The biggest drawback is that there...
I currently use Lunch Money, which has a lot of flexibility with how you set up categories and lets you define custom rules for how transactions get categorized. The biggest drawback is that there isn't a mobile app (though I think there's some third-party ones for iPhone), so if that's important to you it's probably not the best choice there.
Not surprising but still disappointing. Been using Mint since before Intuit owned it and loved the auto categorization, budgeting and recently the recurring expenses. I’m not moving to a...
Not surprising but still disappointing. Been using Mint since before Intuit owned it and loved the auto categorization, budgeting and recently the recurring expenses.
I’m not moving to a spreadsheet that’s fucking insane. The whole point of Mint was the automation and consolidation.
Will be looking at Simplifi annd Monarch and the others and if I find anything useful will update here or post as a reply.
I've used Monarch for a while and if you ask support, they can give you an extended trial. I really like it, and the support is quick to respond. Their web app is really feature-packed too, and...
I've used Monarch for a while and if you ask support, they can give you an extended trial.
I really like it, and the support is quick to respond. Their web app is really feature-packed too, and they have multiple connectors for different banks/accounts so I've been able to link all my accounts which wasn't possible with mint!
Check with your bank or credit union for alternatives. My credit union's online banking has some basic transaction categorizing and budgeting tools and allows me to attach other accounts the way...
Check with your bank or credit union for alternatives. My credit union's online banking has some basic transaction categorizing and budgeting tools and allows me to attach other accounts the way places like mint did. Probably won't have all the functionality but they may suit for some folks! (I don't use them because my ADHD does not vibe with maintaining that, but I know they exist!)
Funny, an ex-Intuit employee told me 5 years ago that Mint had been “put out to pasture”. He said they moved it to maintenance mode and gave responsibility to an Indian development team.
Funny, an ex-Intuit employee told me 5 years ago that Mint had been “put out to pasture”. He said they moved it to maintenance mode and gave responsibility to an Indian development team.
Not everyone thinks like me, and I get it. But at the same time I find it difficult to understand why people seem to go crazy about these finance applications. I get why someone would want to stay...
Not everyone thinks like me, and I get it. But at the same time I find it difficult to understand why people seem to go crazy about these finance applications. I get why someone would want to stay on top of their finances; I am regularly logging into my banks to check up on things myself. I can only assume that it's because people are dealing with corporations or legal institutions that won't let them have things any other way, or else it would be much more simple for people to structure their finances in a manner that is much easier to manage.
I also get the feeling that a lot of people who use these programs are trying to "min-max" their finances. I can understand that, but it's antithetical to my personal philosophy and way of life.
Personally speaking there are only three financial institutions I deal with; one bank that holds my money, another that has two credit cards, and one more because I signed up for the Apple Card when I bought my computer, which was effectively for a discount. For some reason my bank isn't offering a credit card - if they did they would probably be the only institution I deal with. All three of them offer a host of financial tools above and beyond what I need. I didn't ask for them, they just offered them. Even though my money is spread across different things, it's not difficult in the least to get any of the information because they all have apps that securely verify who I am just by me looking at my phone.
But even if things were drammatically more difficult and I couldn't simplify things to my liking, I would still never have signed up for Mint. Mint is owned by Intuit, and Intuit is the devil. More importantly they require access to your bank login information; that's something I would have difficulty justifying if I were dealing with a long respected and personally trusted company, so there's no way in hell I would give it to Intuit.
I'm very jealous of the banks in Germany, where, to my understanding, they are legally required to offer programmatic access to their account information so that customers can sync their data with personal locally-run finance applications like gnucash or (ugh) quickbooks. It would be nice to have a local backup of all my financial transactions I make, even if I don't necessarily need it. AFAIK my banks do not keep transaction records after n number of years - or at least they don't make it available to me. Having a personal copy would also not require me to trust them nearly as much as I do.
A lot of their users are trying to min-max their finances. But there are a lot of users who have financial stress that these tools help them manage. Some people feel guilty about spending money on...
A lot of their users are trying to min-max their finances. But there are a lot of users who have financial stress that these tools help them manage. Some people feel guilty about spending money on anything unnecessary so budgeting helps them feel allowed to spend without that anxiety. It may be possible to figure out budgets and track spending with the data from your financial institutions, but these tools make the process a lot more efficient and easier.
In my case there might be a little min-maxing going on (mainly various credit cards for different spend categories), but it’s also just nice to be able to see everything on one screen without...
In my case there might be a little min-maxing going on (mainly various credit cards for different spend categories), but it’s also just nice to be able to see everything on one screen without having to manually gather information myself. In the case of services a bit more sophisticated than Mint (like Personal Capital) they give a nice big picture view of net worth since they can include things like stocks, retirement accounts, real estate equity, etc.
If all you have is a checking account and a credit card, you may not need this. I personally have a credit card, checking account, savings account, and investment account. I also share a joint...
If all you have is a checking account and a credit card, you may not need this. I personally have a credit card, checking account, savings account, and investment account. I also share a joint checking account, savings account and credit card with my wife to address household finances. She has a credit card, checking account, savings account, and retirement account.
Keeping track of all that needs some software to aggregate that data, since there's 7 different financial institutions involved. This isn't min-maxing anything, just keeping track of stuff on a basic level.
There is a similar requirement in the UK which means that banking apps can request access to data from other banks. Eg I have my current account with Monzo, which also has my investment and...
There is a similar requirement in the UK which means that banking apps can request access to data from other banks.
Eg I have my current account with Monzo, which also has my investment and savings accounts, but it also pulls in data from another bank that I have a credit card with, and another bank for my mortgage, and displays it all with categorised spending and trends.
I basically have only used Mint for keeping track of transactions and having an overview of my total net worth. Does anyone know of a trusted 2FA alternative that can pull transaction and account...
I basically have only used Mint for keeping track of transactions and having an overview of my total net worth. Does anyone know of a trusted 2FA alternative that can pull transaction and account data from multiple accounts? I don't need the budgeting feature.
While the new experience in Credit Karma does not offer the ability to set monthly and category budgets, it offers a simplified way for you to build awareness of your spending, and track your savings so you can feel more confident you're on the right path towards financial progress.
Boom. Just like that, 14 years of data deleted and my account wiped away. It's been a year for deleting long standing accounts! Enjoying PocketGuard as my replacement. Went ahead and paid the $80...
Boom. Just like that, 14 years of data deleted and my account wiped away. It's been a year for deleting long standing accounts!
Enjoying PocketGuard as my replacement. Went ahead and paid the $80 for a lifetime account.
Credit Karma will not offer feature parity with Mint:
Support: Intuit Mint and Credit Karma:
So it doesn't offer the actual reason why people use Mint. Why even bother pretending they're moving? Just say you're deprecating the app.
For sure, the budgeting aspect is the most important part to me. It lets me pre-categorize my spending and re-allocate easily if something comes up and I either have to pull some fun money over or have a bill come out cheaper than estimated. It lets me know at a glance that, yes or no, I can do that thing.
As an aside, is your username based on the YouTuber?
Ahhh, haha. That youtuber is a financial one, and given the conversation... Thought maybe you were a fan. He's interesting, though not someone I'd take too seriously!
I've never used Mint at all, never really looked into it. From what I knew about it, I thought that the budgeting aspect was the primary draw of the service.
Yeah, the budgeting was what drew me in back in 20... 2012? Maybe. Either way, that's all I knew mint for. Granted, once I got the hard part down (tracking your spending) I didn't really need the app anymore and stopped using it
That isn’t a surprise to me honestly. I remember using the bill pay tool that was rolled into mint. I think it was “mint bills”? I don’t remember. They said they would transfer the features over to mint, but they never did. Or if they did, they removed them shortly after.
And so begins the 15 day wait to export my data so that I can delete my Mint account.
Well, what's everyone moving to?
Honestly the only real value of Mint was the integrations to pull in data from your financial institutions. Everything else you could just as easily pull together yourself with a spreadsheet. If banks would get with the program and just provide a way to do that I wouldn't need the trash front-ends these applications burn cycles making.
I stopped trusting these apps once I started working in InfoSec and realized just how garbage their organizational cultures were around security.
Wasn't it Mint that required banking logins to pull data?
Maybe I'm misattributing, but I remember looking into one of these finance applications and they needed full password access to your bank account and I couldn't believe my eyes as I noped out of there.
They have you log in to your bank account through a tunnel that then gives them a token through which they can draw transaction data. It doesn't give them any power over your account, nor do they store your login. There's a lot to blame Intuit for, but they don't have a plaintext record of everyone's bank logins.
Are you sure about that?
Their website seems to indicate they are storing bank logins in a decryptable format:
https://mint.intuit.com/how-mint-works/security
Wow, ok. I'm more familiar with their business products and was totally incorrect here. QBO may have better data handling, but you're right that Mint is trash.
That really depended on the bank. Back when I used Mint for a bit in the 2010s, I definitely had to give them my account name and password for some of my financial institutions. I think they used tokenization when possible—I had some of those “Authorize Mint to see your data” banks, too—but they'd fall back to a shared password when not.
One of the reasons I gave up on using Mint after a few months.
Yup. It was. And I had the same reaction as you.
It heavily depends on what bank you use. Many banks now support oauth connections that don’t require giving Plaid or whoever your login details to scrape the bank website. Chase is a big bank that supports this and my local credit union even added support as of last month.
The r/mintuit subreddit has numerous submissions comparing the alternatives, basically none of which are free. Here's a good summary of the most recommended:
If you're a Fidelity customer, they have a tool called Full View that seems to offer similar features to Mint.
We switched to YNAB 1.5 years ago. My husband struggled with Mint because it didn't play nice with USAA. I loved it and it worked well for me. YNAB was a challenge to get started with, but now we're doing pretty well with it. It helped us afford to add a fence to our house and now that we could afford a new car by moving around some funds.
I use empowered and it's the same app as it was as Personal Capital. I really like it and think it works well for budgeting. But I do sort of expect them to fuck it up over time.
Does it auto import like mint? I don’t care much about budgetinglike many but I’ve stuck with mint because I can just have it auto import and get an idea. Everyone else I tried required manual entry
Yeah it does, which is one of the reasons I like it. It imports through plaid and works relatively well. It can have some trouble with some services that require MFA every time.
I tried out/heavily looked into about 15 different platforms today. Almost all of them had some little dealbreaker for me because of the way I’ve used Mint. For all its annoying ads and bloat, it was actually super customizable.
I tried out YNAB years ago, and decided with Mint keeping track of live transactions matching into a budget, I could do the main zero-budgeting part on a spreadsheet then just “paste” it over into Mint. I like my workflow on that, and wanted to keep it.
So, all that being said, the ONLY thing I’ve found so far that 1) lets me customize budgets the way I want, 2) lets me really mess with transaction data (I need to split and redate one split sometimes), and 3) doesn’t cost more than I’m willing to pay seems to be PocketGuard. If it works out well for the next month-ish, I’ll drop the $80 for lifetime access.
Still have to give up a couple things I like (future dating paychecks, seeing the budget page frozen in past months), but I think there are options that let me work around those. It seems to be following rules pretty well I set for transaction names and types. I’m definitely not using a lot of the features as intended, but the fact that I can get it do most of what I want is a win.
What were your thoughts on Copilot? Assuming you’re using iOS.
It looked very nice, and if I had to guess, it would likely have done everything I wanted and more. But it was more than I wanted to spend. $80 lifetime vs $99 for a year made me extra motivated to make PocketGuard work. The good news was that I didn’t have to try that hard.
YNAB is very good. They offer a very generous free trial so you can see if it works for you.
I’ve been using Wealthfront which can log into several banks and give you an overview. They also have a competitive interest rate on their Cash Account.
For budgeting I’ve tried YNAB but I’ve run into several difficulties and won’t be renewing once my subscription is over. Main issues are with syncing to banks and proper handling of credit cards.
I use Rocket Money but after reading many of the responses here and not seeing it listed or mentioned, I dunno. It seems like a legit replacement option to mint which I also used.
I used Mint in its golden age many years ago, then moved on to Personal Capital for a while. At some point I started to feel wary about giving my various account details to a centralized third party service, so I left them and didn't look back.
I think the best solution might be that we all get really good at maintaining our own financial dashboards in our spreadsheet application of choice. There are some great templates out there to get started with.
Sounds nice in theory, but at least in my case it’d be a job and a half keeping such a spreadsheet updated with all of my various accounts. I don’t think I’d have the patience to keep it up.
Can you point me at some good ones? This is my currently preferred method, and I'm planning to iterate on the format I use at the being of the new year. Googling for such a topic seems like a way to spend hours filtering bullshit though.
I’ve had the most luck with searching “Excel finance dashboard” (or Google Sheets, etc.) on YouTube, which has led me to a bunch of people sharing their own setups (and, usually, a link to the free or paid template). This let me see what systems resonated with me based on how someone actually sets them up and uses them, which is far better than trying to judge from screenshots.
I really liked Aspire Budget. Just download the sheet, forget the add-on. I had success with it until I just built my own.
https://aspirebudget.com/
Unfortunate, but it seemed to have been in decline for quite some time.
Back in the early 2010s Mint offered a menubar app for Mac (screenshot) that was quite nice, and I probably got the most use out of Mint back when that app still worked. Some time after they discontinued support and it stopped working and so I stopped using Mint.
Of course by then they had smartphone apps, but when I’m focusing on finances I’m probably sitting at a desktop and so I never made a habit of opening the mobile app.
This saddens me more than it should, for the past nine years I've had a weekly Friday ritual to log into Mint and categorize all my transactions. I should probably be glad not to be giving Intuit all my data though.
I've always used Mint and YNAB in tandem. YNAB was forward facing and helped me allocate my money and stay within budget while Mint was always backward facing, categorizing transactions to a fine granularity to see where all my money went. The categories in the two weren't compatible since YNAB were these big buckets of money to draw from but Mint could show me things like how much money went to Fast Food/Restaruants/Delivery vs just a "Food" category.
I am etirely lost on what else is out there but just a cursury glance shows some other promising apps. Can anyone recommentd something that could either dovetail both my use cases for Mint and YNAB or, more likely, recommend a good Mint replacement for my use case?
Edit: I've discovered Monarch Money and this may be the direction I head in. It's subscription based, which hurt to think about at first, but I've been slowly divesting myself from advertising-driven internet and this probably more aligns with the new direction I'd like my interaction with the web to go. It's why I gave up on Reddit and started giving a small "donation" amount to Tildes monthly, why not actually pay for the service I'm looking for
Sounds like you need to add more granularity to YNAB. YNAB is both forward and backward-facing. You give your dollars a job and then can see spending through reports. If you want food broken into fast food, restaurants, and delivery - make those categories! I differentiate between groceries and restaurants but personally don't care about whether it's fast food or a sit-down place. If you do you can make it how you want it.
Also, I'll comment here for some of the people who have complained about YNAB...YNAB is a tool to force you into the philosophy behind YNAB. That's the value of YNAB. If you used YNAB as a spreadsheet to track money after you've spent it, then you're throwing your money away. The tool forces you to look at debt a certain way, assign money into buckets, and then roll with the punches as you overspend in other areas.
That's exactly what I avoid in a budget though. For me I largely budget along three broad categories and then a few smaller specific ones. Wants, Needs, and Asperational. For the food example: groceries is a need and gets its own line item but all other types of food (restaurant, fast food, bars, etc.) goes under a broad "Wants" category. If I eat out too much at restaurants this month then that's less money for other wants, i.e. movies, shopping, video games. I do not want to budget $x for restaurants, $x for bars, $x for video games, etc. etc. But when I go back retrospectively, I certainly do want to see how much have i spent on food n general, how much of that specifically was for Fast Food or Restaurants?
Unfortunately this use case is not really compatible with either the Mint or YNAB budgeting philosophy. Trust me, if I could avoid managing two budgeting apps this whole time I would have unless you have some groundbreaking idea I've managed to miss - i'd honestly love to hear it
I think this is possible with ynab. You can make a broad "wants" category and assign money to it and spend money from it. It's true it's probably not "true" to the philosophy but you can certainly do it.
I think you're misunderstanding, that's already how I budget in YNAB but this provides no granularity as to what I've spent money on - hence why I need to use Mint to categorize individual transactions
That actually sounds like a great system for me. I've always found the micromanagement of the separate categories to be tedious and as you mention missing the bigger picture. I'm currently trying out Monarch which I don't think supports that approach either but I know it has a tagging system so maybe something can be overlayed with that to get this info. Will look into it.
I've found that Monarch does work for this approach if you budget by Group and then you can nest granular categories underneath. What "broke" Monarch for me was that there is no system for me to save for annual or bigger expenses in an automated fashion. In YNAB I can set an expense with date and it will tell me to contribute $x.xx per month, Monarch can't do this. If you want to implement my "Bucket Based" budget system, then Monarch can definitely do it
For anyone looking at Monarch Money, the r/MonarchMoney subreddit, which appears to be run by the company, has a referral link in the sidebar that gives an extended 30-day trial rather than the standard 7-day trial:
I currently use Lunch Money, which has a lot of flexibility with how you set up categories and lets you define custom rules for how transactions get categorized. The biggest drawback is that there isn't a mobile app (though I think there's some third-party ones for iPhone), so if that's important to you it's probably not the best choice there.
Not surprising but still disappointing. Been using Mint since before Intuit owned it and loved the auto categorization, budgeting and recently the recurring expenses.
I’m not moving to a spreadsheet that’s fucking insane. The whole point of Mint was the automation and consolidation.
Will be looking at Simplifi annd Monarch and the others and if I find anything useful will update here or post as a reply.
I've used Monarch for a while and if you ask support, they can give you an extended trial.
I really like it, and the support is quick to respond. Their web app is really feature-packed too, and they have multiple connectors for different banks/accounts so I've been able to link all my accounts which wasn't possible with mint!
Check with your bank or credit union for alternatives. My credit union's online banking has some basic transaction categorizing and budgeting tools and allows me to attach other accounts the way places like mint did. Probably won't have all the functionality but they may suit for some folks! (I don't use them because my ADHD does not vibe with maintaining that, but I know they exist!)
Funny, an ex-Intuit employee told me 5 years ago that Mint had been “put out to pasture”. He said they moved it to maintenance mode and gave responsibility to an Indian development team.
Not everyone thinks like me, and I get it. But at the same time I find it difficult to understand why people seem to go crazy about these finance applications. I get why someone would want to stay on top of their finances; I am regularly logging into my banks to check up on things myself. I can only assume that it's because people are dealing with corporations or legal institutions that won't let them have things any other way, or else it would be much more simple for people to structure their finances in a manner that is much easier to manage.
I also get the feeling that a lot of people who use these programs are trying to "min-max" their finances. I can understand that, but it's antithetical to my personal philosophy and way of life.
Personally speaking there are only three financial institutions I deal with; one bank that holds my money, another that has two credit cards, and one more because I signed up for the Apple Card when I bought my computer, which was effectively for a discount. For some reason my bank isn't offering a credit card - if they did they would probably be the only institution I deal with. All three of them offer a host of financial tools above and beyond what I need. I didn't ask for them, they just offered them. Even though my money is spread across different things, it's not difficult in the least to get any of the information because they all have apps that securely verify who I am just by me looking at my phone.
But even if things were drammatically more difficult and I couldn't simplify things to my liking, I would still never have signed up for Mint. Mint is owned by Intuit, and Intuit is the devil. More importantly they require access to your bank login information; that's something I would have difficulty justifying if I were dealing with a long respected and personally trusted company, so there's no way in hell I would give it to Intuit.
I'm very jealous of the banks in Germany, where, to my understanding, they are legally required to offer programmatic access to their account information so that customers can sync their data with personal locally-run finance applications like gnucash or (ugh) quickbooks. It would be nice to have a local backup of all my financial transactions I make, even if I don't necessarily need it. AFAIK my banks do not keep transaction records after n number of years - or at least they don't make it available to me. Having a personal copy would also not require me to trust them nearly as much as I do.
A lot of their users are trying to min-max their finances. But there are a lot of users who have financial stress that these tools help them manage. Some people feel guilty about spending money on anything unnecessary so budgeting helps them feel allowed to spend without that anxiety. It may be possible to figure out budgets and track spending with the data from your financial institutions, but these tools make the process a lot more efficient and easier.
In my case there might be a little min-maxing going on (mainly various credit cards for different spend categories), but it’s also just nice to be able to see everything on one screen without having to manually gather information myself. In the case of services a bit more sophisticated than Mint (like Personal Capital) they give a nice big picture view of net worth since they can include things like stocks, retirement accounts, real estate equity, etc.
If all you have is a checking account and a credit card, you may not need this. I personally have a credit card, checking account, savings account, and investment account. I also share a joint checking account, savings account and credit card with my wife to address household finances. She has a credit card, checking account, savings account, and retirement account.
Keeping track of all that needs some software to aggregate that data, since there's 7 different financial institutions involved. This isn't min-maxing anything, just keeping track of stuff on a basic level.
There is a similar requirement in the UK which means that banking apps can request access to data from other banks.
Eg I have my current account with Monzo, which also has my investment and savings accounts, but it also pulls in data from another bank that I have a credit card with, and another bank for my mortgage, and displays it all with categorised spending and trends.
I basically have only used Mint for keeping track of transactions and having an overview of my total net worth. Does anyone know of a trusted 2FA alternative that can pull transaction and account data from multiple accounts? I don't need the budgeting feature.
It sounds like you might be fine sticking with Intuit as it transitions Mint into Credit Karma?
Oh awesome! Thanks!
Boom. Just like that, 14 years of data deleted and my account wiped away. It's been a year for deleting long standing accounts!
Enjoying PocketGuard as my replacement. Went ahead and paid the $80 for a lifetime account.