What happened to Mint?(fastcompany.com)
fastcompany.com
What happened to Mint?
https://www.fastcompany.com/90453586/what-the-hell-happened-to-mint
455 comments
Does anyone have a suggestion for a finance/budgeting app that's easy to use for splitting costs? My girlfriend and I don't have joined finances, but we do generally split everything down the middle. So most things are "I pay with my card, tally it up, then you Venmo me your half at the end of the month." I'm currently using YNAB and then split each relevant transaction, but it's very very tedious.
Splitwise might work for you. I've used it for parties that multiple people contribute to. Everyone just adds what they've spent and at the end you click a button to "settle up".
It's not really a budgeting app, though.
It's not really a budgeting app, though.
Maybe have one shared credit card with two copies that you both use for all that stuff? Saves you from having to tally it up at least if it's all on there.
That's what my girlfriend and I have done for the last seven years. You have to agree on what's a "joint" expense, but provided you work that out, it's a very simple way of handling shared finances.
Splitwise!
Splitwise would work, but another way would be to tag everything that needs to be split, and then to compare the sums at the end of the month. Basically make the "tally it up" part automatic.
The nice thing about manual entry, and using Splitwise, would be that you could pull out your phone and say "your turn to pay" and treat it like a balancing act instead of transferring money. Whoever is behind, pays today.
The nice thing about manual entry, and using Splitwise, would be that you could pull out your phone and say "your turn to pay" and treat it like a balancing act instead of transferring money. Whoever is behind, pays today.
I searched for something similar a while back and found: https://grouptabs.net/
Used it on a couple of trips and thought it was fantastic. No sign up required, free to use, and open source. Worked well for my use cases (trips, not month to month reconcilliation) so YMMV
Used it on a couple of trips and thought it was fantastic. No sign up required, free to use, and open source. Worked well for my use cases (trips, not month to month reconcilliation) so YMMV
If your bank supports it, Quickpay with Zelle is 10x easier than Venmo in my experience. And you don't have to leave your banking app
It may not be much easier than your setup, but my fiancée and I have a shared Simple account that we both deposit $x to each month and then withdraw shared transactions. They make moving between shared and individual Simple accounts pretty easy and allow bucketing money into categories, which we use for various budgets (travel, restaurants, groceries).
For us, we like that the budget is tangible. There is only so much money we can withdraw from it, which helps us avoid blowing through our budgets. It also works well with the way we split costs. I make more money, so I put more into the pool every month, but other than that we don't need to think about it.
For us, we like that the budget is tangible. There is only so much money we can withdraw from it, which helps us avoid blowing through our budgets. It also works well with the way we split costs. I make more money, so I put more into the pool every month, but other than that we don't need to think about it.
Mint is still useful even though the core features have been basically unchanged for the last decade, but that said I've been de-linking accounts from my Mint because they don't synchronize right or fail a bunch. I've mostly degraded it to just being for spending tracking and it seems reliable at connecting to Chase.
Same here. The frequent "you need to reconnect your account" notices were annoying, and often times just ignoring them fixed the issue.
I went from tracking just one credit card, to tracking all my accounts, and now back to just one credit card.
I went from tracking just one credit card, to tracking all my accounts, and now back to just one credit card.
I switched to http://plaintextaccounting.org/ and couldn't be happier.
Any other suggestions out there?
It seems that this side is a faq of plaintext accounting tools. What do you personally use?
Not OP but I use hledger and I love it. It has a learning curve (especially if you're new to double entry accounting) but it's rewarding.
I use ledger. I wrote my own journal makefile, and reporting system using ruby. I may switch to hledger next year.
It sounds like the answer is pretty straightforward — Mint was acquired and then semi-abandoned for want of providing sufficient revenue/having a sufficiently profitable business model.
The question in my mind is: What is the matter with global banking institutions such that this has to be a third party service instead of a service that a well-organized banking consortium could provide to its clients? I would totally switch my checking account if it came with a good Mint clone.
Is it asking so much for an interface from my bank that can classify transactions, include basic budgeting features, and pull in some data from other accounts?
(I know, I know, it's one of those things that sounds like a pretty simple CRUD app until you look into any of the industry-specific technical details.)
The question in my mind is: What is the matter with global banking institutions such that this has to be a third party service instead of a service that a well-organized banking consortium could provide to its clients? I would totally switch my checking account if it came with a good Mint clone.
Is it asking so much for an interface from my bank that can classify transactions, include basic budgeting features, and pull in some data from other accounts?
(I know, I know, it's one of those things that sounds like a pretty simple CRUD app until you look into any of the industry-specific technical details.)
Simple (and perhaps others) offer the features you asked for in the US, except for syncing other accounts.
For budgeting and transaction classification, I know PNC has this. I assume (maybe wrongly) that most major banks have something similar.
Speculating for account syncing, but there is a zillion different provider integrations they would have to maintain for something like a mortgage, and such an account would change hands many times to companies with different APIs.
Speculating for account syncing, but there is a zillion different provider integrations they would have to maintain for something like a mortgage, and such an account would change hands many times to companies with different APIs.
USAA's checking/savings accounts have most of those features. You can connect external bank and investment accounts. Track home value. Categorize transactions. There's more features, those are just the ones I know about. That said, I still use Personal Capital to track my finances.
Out of curiosity, why do you prefer Personal Capital to USAA?
I think @Richicoder is right. USAA's tools haven't been updated in a while and are a pain to use. Their tech is still really good for a US bank. Personal Capital has been pretty painless (besides the occasional bank/investment syncing issues). Personal Capital's investment and retirement tools are quite nice. The only downside to Personal Capital is their advisors calling to try and sell their service. I eventually blocked their numbers and haven't heard anything from them in years.
A long time ago I used Mint. If I remember correctly, I had tons of syncing issues and problems navigating their UI. I tried USAA for a while, but eventually stumbled upon Personal Capital. I passionately dislike Intuit due to their pricing practices of Quickbooks Online, so I'd never use Mint again ;)
A long time ago I used Mint. If I remember correctly, I had tons of syncing issues and problems navigating their UI. I tried USAA for a while, but eventually stumbled upon Personal Capital. I passionately dislike Intuit due to their pricing practices of Quickbooks Online, so I'd never use Mint again ;)
That makes sense and I hope we do see USAA’s tools get a refresh in the future. From a security and privacy perspective, I feel much more comfortable giving USAA access to my accounts/transactions compared to the assortment of budgeting/expense FinTech companies.
It has them, but I have to say it is a _slog_ to use them compared to early-days Mint. If USAA could give them a coat of polish and a speed boost then I'd drop Mint wholesale.
Most major banks support this using Yodlee as the underlying provider for scraping. The reason it isn't more common is because API access to accounts isn't mandated by law except in Europe (PSD2). Banks do not want to appear to be a commodity (even though they are), therefore they fear and revolt at the thought of aggregators on top of their services.
Simple, like the other commenter mentioned, is by far the best bank-provided budgeting software, and it's not even close with the others. However, their entire philosophy is based around only using their debit card. I love them, but if you'd prefer to use a credit card, Wealthfront and SoFi offer similar less-powerful tools to track different accounts, predict savings, break up savings, and categorize transactions.
Simple blew it when they removed check mailing and then lied about the reason.
What was the reason they actually removed it? The official answer seemed to be a vague hand-wavy "not many of you were using it and it's better if you use our other budgeting tool and write out a physical check anyway."
The writing out a physical check being better is a clear absurdity as opposed to having checks go out automatically for things like rent.
The real reason is that they charge for the paper checks, whereas the automated service was free, and so was a cost center for them.
If they had admitted that instead of trying to gaslight their customers I’d have respected them more.
The real reason is that they charge for the paper checks, whereas the automated service was free, and so was a cost center for them.
If they had admitted that instead of trying to gaslight their customers I’d have respected them more.
Ah, that makes sense. While I suppose I'd have appreciated the honesty if they'd just said that, I'd still have moved back to Bank of America anyway. (I never shut down my BoA account even when Simple was my main checking account, in large part because Simple never added the ability to receive electronic bills and so I was having BoA pay a couple bills automatically out of the Simple account!)
It took the industry a decade or more to agree that some Oath + OFX was the way to go. I can’t blame them though. Originally Intuit and Microsoft were pitching “their own blackbox server” in Bank network to get this done. Nobody, not even the software companies think about the consumer or his/her safety and security from an open standard. So there is plenty of blame to go around - it is not just the bank with their cobol system and overpaid software consultants.
Mint began as a web-scraping service on top of Yodlee, who literally had tech support “visually debug” your session when your connection doesn’t work. So that spinning wheel is not network slowness - it is like someone putting their sandwich down so they can debug. Ok I am exaggerating a bit - but u get the idea
Mint began as a web-scraping service on top of Yodlee, who literally had tech support “visually debug” your session when your connection doesn’t work. So that spinning wheel is not network slowness - it is like someone putting their sandwich down so they can debug. Ok I am exaggerating a bit - but u get the idea
> Is it asking so much for an interface from my bank that can classify transactions, include basic budgeting features, and pull in some data from other accounts?
Up until a rewrite of their online banking site to have a more modern, responsiveUI, my credit union used to have a pretty good implementation of the first of those. (After the rewrite, those features still exist, but hamburger buttons and poor information density have made it impossible to use them efficiently.) I honestly thought it did a better job than Mint for a time when I was young and did everything, even my credit card, with that one financial institution.
Which brings us to that last one, "pull in some data from other accounts". My guess is that that would be hard to get past senior decision makers, precisely because it would make it easy for customers to keep most their money elsewhere.
Up until a rewrite of their online banking site to have a more modern, responsiveUI, my credit union used to have a pretty good implementation of the first of those. (After the rewrite, those features still exist, but hamburger buttons and poor information density have made it impossible to use them efficiently.) I honestly thought it did a better job than Mint for a time when I was young and did everything, even my credit card, with that one financial institution.
Which brings us to that last one, "pull in some data from other accounts". My guess is that that would be hard to get past senior decision makers, precisely because it would make it easy for customers to keep most their money elsewhere.
> Up until a rewrite of their online banking site to have a more modern, responsiveUI, my credit union used to have a pretty good implementation of the first of those. (After the rewrite, those features still exist, but hamburger buttons and poor information density have made it impossible to use them efficiently.)
I feel like something is not right when the utility of my banks' websites is pretty much inversely proportional to the recentness of their last redesign.
I feel like something is not right when the utility of my banks' websites is pretty much inversely proportional to the recentness of their last redesign.
Why should banks be any different from major email providers in that respect?
Mint became a loss leader to sell tax preparation software.
Now Quicken and Intuit are different companies. I am assuming Mint went with Quicken. I use Quicken and was hoping that would result in a better product, still on the fence. However, they are definitely focused on Quicken and not Mint.
Mint is still an Intuit property and nothing changed with the Quicken split.
It still exists, I just refreshed my account a few months ago and now it sends me 6 notifications every month whenever my student loan payments are due because I entered all 6 sub-loans which are part of my main loan.
The Flash requirement in 2020 kills me. Account synch gets stuck and never finishes. Correctly categorizing transactions usually involves pulling up my bank website to see how the charge was really originally described. Mint pulls some info on this but it's often truncated, so you can try to set up rules but there are often collisions because of that bad incoming data.
Somehow in an era where personal data on spending habits is supposed to be extremely valuable, they can't afford to fix the product, and this is the best we can get.
Somehow in an era where personal data on spending habits is supposed to be extremely valuable, they can't afford to fix the product, and this is the best we can get.
I feel like they aren't even trying with the categorization.
Every payday, I get an email notification from Mint asking if I recently made a large purchase, in the amount of my paycheck.
Why even bother having a transaction categorization system, if it can't tell the difference between a deposit and a withdrawal?
Every payday, I get an email notification from Mint asking if I recently made a large purchase, in the amount of my paycheck.
Why even bother having a transaction categorization system, if it can't tell the difference between a deposit and a withdrawal?
This! The account synchronization regularly breaks and will tell me that my "Credentials are Out of Date" at which point I then go, and sign in again only to be dumped at the loading page of my financial institution with nothing happening. An hour later Mint will be fine. I don't understand how they can regularly such a large integration broken.
When I first heard of Mint and realized they wanted all my financial passwords, I was uneasy. Seeing where they are now — using Flash in 2020 — I'm glad they don't have my info.
An (non-free) alternative is https://copilot.money/
I did the trial and looks pretty solid and modern.
I did the trial and looks pretty solid and modern.
No Android app. :(
More crucially, no web site! App-only services like this infuriate me. For something as crucial as the state of my money I absolutely want to use my laptop from time to time.
Start with a (responsive) web site, then add apps as necessary. This service does nothing that requires an app.
Start with a (responsive) web site, then add apps as necessary. This service does nothing that requires an app.
Also, not to pile on, but it doesn’t work in every country Mint is supported in. I can’t speak to other countries, but they’re missing Canadian banks and aren’t even available for download on the Canadian App Store.
The entire product is built by two people. I certainly see your point about wanting a web-version, but if their initial expertise was in native iOS development, then making the experience great on mobile is a fine place to start. I haven't had any issues using it on my phone in the past 6 months or so
Their subscription-based model that says "no hidden fees, gated features, or ads" seems like the right model for an app like this. Will check it out.
I switched to https://ynab.com a while back. It's not exactly the same concept as what Mint was intended to be, but I couldn't be happier with the move.
If you're using it for budget management, YNAB is much, much better than Mint.
I couldn't handle the forced system in ynab - it's clunky and I want a budget program not a whole new budget system. To me less useful than an excel budget because it tries to force you to do things it's way.
I'd rather use Excel than be forced to use their stupid system.
I'd rather use Excel than be forced to use their stupid system.
You might like Tiller Money. It's basically the bank integration that Mint and YNAB have, but instead of being forced to use their interface it backs out the data into an Excel/Google spreadsheet that you can build your own system on top of. (It costs money, but after what happened to Mint I consider "sustainable business model that doesn't involve selling your data" a feature for this sort of service.)
Only allowing logins via google is highly disappointing, and makes tiller unusable for me.
The last thing I want to associate with my google account is my financial data.
The last thing I want to associate with my google account is my financial data.
While I can understand not wanting to create a Google account (even just to use as a login), my understanding is that if you use Tiller via Excel, Google will not have access to any of your financial data.
Check out Tiller; I tried both it and ynab, and went with ynab because I'm the opposite of you, at least in this regard :)
Why is it a new budget system? You just categorize the money you have right now, there you go, that’s your budget.
I've been using it for about two months now, and while it takes a little getting used to, it is so much more powerful for actually getting a handle on your finances. Highly recommend.
I finally feel like I have a solid handle on my budget, Mint never gave that to me.
I finally feel like I have a solid handle on my budget, Mint never gave that to me.
I'm on month two of ynab, and I'm a total convert. It's been extremely valuable to me so far. We'll see if I can stick with it.
I have been using YNAB for over 2 years since my 50 year old mother somehow found out about it. It is a different way to think about budgeting and the tool only excels if you work within the "YNAB principles". I would recommend reading the companion book You Need a Budget before starting with the app. It was important for me to digest and understand the philosophy before I started using the tool. Otherwise I believe I would have been turned off by the rigidity.
I seem to respond well to defined, rigid systems. I handle all my task management via the systems outlined in Getting Things Done. I'd be curious what other books are out there for handling aspects of life with a systemic, opinionated approach (professional life, social life, dating, etc.)?
I seem to respond well to defined, rigid systems. I handle all my task management via the systems outlined in Getting Things Done. I'd be curious what other books are out there for handling aspects of life with a systemic, opinionated approach (professional life, social life, dating, etc.)?
I tried really hard to like ynab, but I just couldn't get the hang of it. I think the hangup is that I'm not really looking for a budgeting tool, I just want to categorize and see where my money is going - less so planning. Its easy to do that with Mint as budgeting in Mint feels more like an addon then a core concept.
I don't really use YNAB to strictly budget either, but more for tracking as well. Essentially, I budget the fixed categories (mortgage, property taxes, insurance, etc.), move some fixed amount to a savings category, and then leave the rest as "To Be Budgeted".
Then, as the month goes on and some of the categories that didn't have a fixed budget are "over budget", I just move the required money to the individual category to zero it out. Anything that caries over to the next month goes to the savings category.
Then, as the month goes on and some of the categories that didn't have a fixed budget are "over budget", I just move the required money to the individual category to zero it out. Anything that caries over to the next month goes to the savings category.
Founder of Lunch Money (https://lunchmoney.app) here– I encourage you to check us out! I'd like to think we're a more non-opinionated and simple alternative to YNAB.
I'll just throw in an extra 1up here. I am a very happy customer of Lunch Money. It's the only app I have ever stuck with for any amount of time.
It is still early days for the product, bur it is rapidly improving and the creator is very good and communicate. The couple of times I have requested support (mostly for feature suggestions), she has gotten back to me very quickly.
It is still early days for the product, bur it is rapidly improving and the creator is very good and communicate. The couple of times I have requested support (mostly for feature suggestions), she has gotten back to me very quickly.
Out of all the services listed here, yours looks the best. I’ll try it out once I start my new gig in a month.
Been using YNAB for over 5 years now, since back when it was a pay-once desktop application. Can't live without it at this point.
The best part for me is how it handles where money you earn goes, it always goes to next month, not the current month (granted, after I graduated college it took me a bit to actually get back into this because of living with effectively 0 income for 4 years), so you know that you're already budgeted for the month when you get into it. That feeling is super comforting for me.
The best part for me is how it handles where money you earn goes, it always goes to next month, not the current month (granted, after I graduated college it took me a bit to actually get back into this because of living with effectively 0 income for 4 years), so you know that you're already budgeted for the month when you get into it. That feeling is super comforting for me.
I really like ynab, but they stopped importing my discover card months ago and they have basically declared that there is nothing they can do since their partner can't do anything about it. There is a contingent of their users who claim that it's better that way, but if I'm manually adding transactions and categorizing everything my self, then why not use an excel sheet instead of paying 90 dollars a year.
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The investment view of Mint is close to useless for many reasons (Adobe being one of the smallest). It is incapable to readjusting the cost basis when you buy more of an asset at a different time. It also doesn't seem to understand when you add money to account. You end up with bizarre numbers saying you made 50% in a year because you added money later, or saying you are down 50% because you moved money out of the account. Mint is good at a few things, in particular Net Worth tracking and getting a 360 degree view of your financial assets. I've used it for nearly 10 years and I can see my net worth over the entire time period with very good accuracy, which is invaluable to me.
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I have been using Mint for a while but recently have been looking into alternatives (including paid ones).
But the biggest issue I am seeing is while a lot of services claim to try to be smarter, they often miss a lot of the smaller features (like actually categorizing my Amazon purchases properly...) that Mint has.
I am evaluating Albert (and going to look at some of the others here), but curious if anyone has any recommendations?
But the biggest issue I am seeing is while a lot of services claim to try to be smarter, they often miss a lot of the smaller features (like actually categorizing my Amazon purchases properly...) that Mint has.
I am evaluating Albert (and going to look at some of the others here), but curious if anyone has any recommendations?
Realized I can download my transaction info into csv format and build my own financial analysis in python without handing over my data. It’s pretty easy to do 90% of what you want, e.g. breakdown expenses by type.
I would like this, but in Excel or Google Sheets. Realized my CSV exports don't go as far back as Mint does though :-(
Co-founder of a (yet to be launched) Mint competitor here [1]. One pattern I think we all see over and over again is when products get bought by a large company, they often lose their "soul" (and the original team). Both those things happened with Mint.
Another important pattern I've seen is that products, in the long-term, morph to take the form of their revenue model. Many personal finance products are free, but make money by selling data or trying to upsell you on something else that you don't need (like, say, a credit card you don't need or a tax product that is overpriced [2]). This is what happened with Mint. It became a "top-of-the-funnel" lead generation tool for other products.
This also explains a lot of the problems with the internet at large today—misaligned business models. I'd definitely encourage anyone joining (or starting) a company to think about what the revenue model they are choosing means for the product and company long-term. Every company will say they are different, and that they actually care about their users and about building a good product... and maybe in the early days, the original team can stay true to that, but eventually time and money take their toll.
Companies that really want to build lovable, user-aligned products, set up a revenue model that encourages them to stick to that long term.
[1] https://www.monarchmoney.com [2] https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...
Another important pattern I've seen is that products, in the long-term, morph to take the form of their revenue model. Many personal finance products are free, but make money by selling data or trying to upsell you on something else that you don't need (like, say, a credit card you don't need or a tax product that is overpriced [2]). This is what happened with Mint. It became a "top-of-the-funnel" lead generation tool for other products.
This also explains a lot of the problems with the internet at large today—misaligned business models. I'd definitely encourage anyone joining (or starting) a company to think about what the revenue model they are choosing means for the product and company long-term. Every company will say they are different, and that they actually care about their users and about building a good product... and maybe in the early days, the original team can stay true to that, but eventually time and money take their toll.
Companies that really want to build lovable, user-aligned products, set up a revenue model that encourages them to stick to that long term.
[1] https://www.monarchmoney.com [2] https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...
> It became a "top-of-the-funnel" lead generation tool for other products
If I recall correctly, the original pitch deck for Mint stated that this was the plan. Weird to say it morphed into something that was just the original vision.
Edit: found the deck https://www.slideshare.net/hnshah/mintcom-prelaunch-pitch-de...
If I recall correctly, the original pitch deck for Mint stated that this was the plan. Weird to say it morphed into something that was just the original vision.
Edit: found the deck https://www.slideshare.net/hnshah/mintcom-prelaunch-pitch-de...
Totally. But, and I'm speaking more generically than Mint here, in the early days of a company, a team (esp the founder) can more easily navigate the tension between revenue generation and building a great product. That's a lot harder to do as part of a larger (and especially publicly-traded) company.
That's not their pitch deck. That's a class or competition project.
Source: was attending Berkeley with the people listed on the first slide when this was published.
Source: was attending Berkeley with the people listed on the first slide when this was published.
Mint never really lost its soul. It always seemed like it was going to try and upsell me on stuff, but that was fine by me because I'm not in the market for new credit cards or whatever. But I guess that's part of the problem, and they're just not making much money off referrals and therefore can't be bothered to improve the product?
The problem for me with Mint is that it just... stopped getting any updates, and the visualizations are not configurable at all, so if you want something that looks a bit different, or doesn't use a pie chart, or shows more things at once, you just can't do it. And it's all in Flash! I ended up building a crappy set of graphs in Excel and using Mint's csv output to try and get a more useful view of the data.
The problem for me with Mint is that it just... stopped getting any updates, and the visualizations are not configurable at all, so if you want something that looks a bit different, or doesn't use a pie chart, or shows more things at once, you just can't do it. And it's all in Flash! I ended up building a crappy set of graphs in Excel and using Mint's csv output to try and get a more useful view of the data.
> And it's all in Flash!
I think they moved away from Flash, I see svg now for charts
I think they moved away from Flash, I see svg now for charts
They moved the "Trending" section charts to something SVG based. The "Investment" section charts throws up a "You need Flash error" and now blocks you from navigating to other "Investment" section information even if you just wanted to look at the tables rather than graphs, making the entire "Investment" section a broken window.
Transaction tagging is also super bad.
I used to use it pretty regularly, but I'd spend so much time categorizing transactions, one pulldown menu at a time. I got sick of it and haven't logged in in a long time.
This is the main reason I stopped using it. I don't know if they pushed an update to transaction tagging, but it got really bad all of a sudden making the product much less useful to me.
Agreed. I don't know what they did but having to consistently re-categorize rent payments from whatever nonsense they were auto-categorized as killed it. Automation is great when it doesn't get things comically wrong.
I always assume that once I categorize a recurring bill as something, it will always be categorized that way. If feels like it takes recategorizing it many times before the category sticks. Which is really annoying.
If you use the web version of Mint there's an option to explicitly tell Mint to categorize it that way in the future. It works for me.
If you use the web interface you can set rules to automatically categorize recurring transaction the same way in the future by hitting the details button as you categorize transactions. It works for me. Oddly I don't think the app has that feature.
Same here. Tracking where my money was going was the only reason I signed up for it - having to put all that time and energy into making it actually do that killed its entire value proposition for me.
To me, the lack of updates is Mint losing its soul.
What was refreshing and different about Mint for me is that they said, "Hey, what if we really look at how people deal with their money and design accordingly?" It was a huge, innovative leap forward. It was far from perfect, but if they just kept iterating with the same spirit, I knew it would get to be something I loved. Alas, alas.
What was refreshing and different about Mint for me is that they said, "Hey, what if we really look at how people deal with their money and design accordingly?" It was a huge, innovative leap forward. It was far from perfect, but if they just kept iterating with the same spirit, I knew it would get to be something I loved. Alas, alas.
Exactly. Mint gave you a modern way to look at your finances instead of using your bank's terrible website.
But if it's not a modern way to look at finances....
But if it's not a modern way to look at finances....
Founder of Lunch Money (https://lunchmoney.app) here! I encourage you to check us out– we aim to be that personal finance app that was built for the modern-day spender.
I'm super interested in this solution, can you expand a bit on your motivations and help me better understand the problem?
I see a lot of times, people export to Excel to do their own analysis. I think there is something about doing it "my way" that helps me connect with the data, whether it's budgeting or (my current project) fantasy sports.
Specifically, what value do you get from exporting and creating your own graphs? How much time do you spend / how frustrating is it to have to export and build the graphs?
I see a lot of times, people export to Excel to do their own analysis. I think there is something about doing it "my way" that helps me connect with the data, whether it's budgeting or (my current project) fantasy sports.
Specifically, what value do you get from exporting and creating your own graphs? How much time do you spend / how frustrating is it to have to export and build the graphs?
Specifically I wanted a stacked bar chart so I could see spending over time broken out by category. So if I had a spike, I could see "oh, I bought a plane ticket that week" and I could toggle categories on and off, and just have a graph with, say, groceries and fast food over time. Excel makes this reasonably easy to do, but you can't do it at all in Mint.
One day I will throw it into an instance of http://redash.io and have more fluent access to the data, since I write SQL-backed graphs in my actual job I'm much better with it than Excel.
One day I will throw it into an instance of http://redash.io and have more fluent access to the data, since I write SQL-backed graphs in my actual job I'm much better with it than Excel.
You and I sound very familiar! I also have plans for personal dashboards using redash for everything from weather to a shared calendar. Also plan on putting it in a display in a Magic Mirror for aesthetics... but who has the time!
Couple questions, if you don't mind taking the time:
1) What makes you want to use Redash, instead of a spreadsheet?
2) If you had a service that (securely) sync'd data into your spreadsheet, would that provide all of the value of Redashing it?
Couple questions, if you don't mind taking the time:
1) What makes you want to use Redash, instead of a spreadsheet?
2) If you had a service that (securely) sync'd data into your spreadsheet, would that provide all of the value of Redashing it?
Credit Card referral was/is a big business. I remember personal finance bloggers were making $50 dollar for each referral. If mint can convince each customer to get a new card every year, it will be a 500 million dollars business. It is not huge but a sustainable business.
Mint is vastly under capitalizing on its spending data. The recs are all generic / not personalized. Not like “hey you spent $10k on groceries, you could’ve gotten $300 back with amex blue cash everyday. Sign up now and earn a $150 welcome bonus”.
I gotta say, a Mint-that-doesn't-suck is something I could absolutely see myself paying $5 a month for, for the rest of my life.
The core functionality is indispensable, but it's become so outdated, inefficient, and difficult to use that I'm champing at the bit to jump ship. I'm surprised it's taken this long for a serious competitor to emerge, given that it's been saturated with ads for at least half a decade and Plaid's been around just as long.
The core functionality is indispensable, but it's become so outdated, inefficient, and difficult to use that I'm champing at the bit to jump ship. I'm surprised it's taken this long for a serious competitor to emerge, given that it's been saturated with ads for at least half a decade and Plaid's been around just as long.
That's You Need A Budget, which I love paying for.
I'm still on v4, it works great and I had to pay for it once. I know the model is subscriptions these days and $7/mo ($84/annual purchase) really is nothing in the big picture but it still bugs me. Looking through their release notes it doesn't appear that there has been major improvements in the budgeting aspect of the software. If you've used v4 is it worth it?
I used v4 back in 2012-2013 (when I was in college). They switched to nYNAB a year or so after, and I hated that everything was "in the cloud" and there was an option to "automatically import transactions from my bank account." I was like, what? I thought YNAB was about manually tracking my balances so I always knew what was going on.
But I got back into budgeting in mid 2018, and I actually love all of those features. imo the $7/mo I pay is well worth the auto-transactions, auto-syncing across all devices without dropbox, ability to link several different accounts (my checking acct is with a small local credit union, I have a brokerage account, a personal loan I'm paying down, etc.).
But I got back into budgeting in mid 2018, and I actually love all of those features. imo the $7/mo I pay is well worth the auto-transactions, auto-syncing across all devices without dropbox, ability to link several different accounts (my checking acct is with a small local credit union, I have a brokerage account, a personal loan I'm paying down, etc.).
YNABaaS brings automatic integrations to the table and the 'sync' story is, obviously, much easier since it doesn't involve Dropbox. That's all I noticed. I did a trial and just was not impressed. In my opinion, using the SaaS version when you own the desktop software should get you a charity write-off.
What does bug me is being forced to store all my data on their servers. I'm sticking to v4 until I'm forced onto something else (or I build my own replacement)
I'd go check the YNAB forums, there's a lot of v4 users who really hate the cloud version. I tried to switch and gave it up for two reasons:
- Import from v4 is super broken for credit card accounts and I ended up with weird positive balances that don't add up based on any combination of transactions. Forum advice was "start over".
- You cannot tag income as "available for next month", instead all income must be immediately budgeted. Which is different than the old YNAB advice of being a month ahead. Forum advice is to earmark it a special category then fix it when the next month lands (https://support.youneedabudget.com/t/63pgpp/budget-using-onl...).
- No side-by-side month view. You can only view one month at a time.
The differences were too much for me and the import was so borked that I immediately gave up and stuck with v4.
- Import from v4 is super broken for credit card accounts and I ended up with weird positive balances that don't add up based on any combination of transactions. Forum advice was "start over".
- You cannot tag income as "available for next month", instead all income must be immediately budgeted. Which is different than the old YNAB advice of being a month ahead. Forum advice is to earmark it a special category then fix it when the next month lands (https://support.youneedabudget.com/t/63pgpp/budget-using-onl...).
- No side-by-side month view. You can only view one month at a time.
The differences were too much for me and the import was so borked that I immediately gave up and stuck with v4.
Longtime YNAB user here. It was rough moving to nYNAB at first, and I missed features for awhile. It's generally caught up and surpassed YNAB 4 in most respects. Things I still miss: the red right arrow (good reason to abandon it, but I still liked it), and being able to see three months side-by-side. Starting over occasionally is not a bad thing, IMO, and I did a fresh start with nYNAB. I created a "Next Month's Income" category, and use it exactly like YNAB 4; I don't budget beyond the current month. It woekd just fine that way. I generally ignore "Age of Money", which took over as the "Live on Last Month's Income" rule, and still follow the latter.
I don't think your 2nd bullet is completely true, although I don't think it's the same as how it worked in v4.
You can receive income in January, then switch to February and allocate it to a category. When you switch back to January, it will not show that money in your To Be Budgeted total. So you can zero out January while having the next month already budgeted for.
My system is to switch to the next month, select all categories, then click the "Budgeted Last Month" button to automatically apply my previous budget to that month. Then I switch back to the current month and fix any underfunded categories and allocate any overflows to get the balance down to zero.
You can receive income in January, then switch to February and allocate it to a category. When you switch back to January, it will not show that money in your To Be Budgeted total. So you can zero out January while having the next month already budgeted for.
My system is to switch to the next month, select all categories, then click the "Budgeted Last Month" button to automatically apply my previous budget to that month. Then I switch back to the current month and fix any underfunded categories and allocate any overflows to get the balance down to zero.
I've had a Mint account almost since launch. I've tried multiple times over the years to pick up YNAB. Last week I started taking another stab at it. The two aren't quite equivalent.
YNAB seems to pretty actively want you to "Fresh Start." One of the giant values for me with Mint is historical information. I often will dump a CSV or troll through old transactions since I can't remember which account was used. After not touching Mint for a year I could go through and touch up categories and answer if "eating out" was something I'm doing more of in Nov/Dec than January. Or I could skim through and mark deductions when filing taxes or looking for medical expenses.
My needs have changed a lot since I was clawing out of debt. I don't really see myself setting a budget, but more tracking categories to find outliers. I guess kind of like changing my diet instead of trying to make my next meal "healthy."
That said, I'd love to ditch Mint. There are so many ads garbaging up the interface. I never found their charts all that useful. Their offers seem to be whoever bought ad space this month instead of what would improve my financial situation. YNAB is way better at things like bi-montly bills that use income split up each month.
YNAB seems to pretty actively want you to "Fresh Start." One of the giant values for me with Mint is historical information. I often will dump a CSV or troll through old transactions since I can't remember which account was used. After not touching Mint for a year I could go through and touch up categories and answer if "eating out" was something I'm doing more of in Nov/Dec than January. Or I could skim through and mark deductions when filing taxes or looking for medical expenses.
My needs have changed a lot since I was clawing out of debt. I don't really see myself setting a budget, but more tracking categories to find outliers. I guess kind of like changing my diet instead of trying to make my next meal "healthy."
That said, I'd love to ditch Mint. There are so many ads garbaging up the interface. I never found their charts all that useful. Their offers seem to be whoever bought ad space this month instead of what would improve my financial situation. YNAB is way better at things like bi-montly bills that use income split up each month.
Lots of these exist. I pay for PocketSmith.
Try Personal Capital (https://www.personalcapital.com/). I used Mint for years but jumped ship about 6 months ago and am glad I did so.
Ive had both for forever, and I dread the day I need to export all my custom categorizations and reinput them into pc. And ill lose all my budget vs actual data. If you were just starting out now, Im not sure what id recommend, because mint still does some things better (maybe im just more familiar with) than pc. But in a strict sense, pc is lightyears ahead of mint. I might have some stockholm syndrome.
I love being able to instantly graph net cash flow over the last 10 years.
I love being able to instantly graph net cash flow over the last 10 years.
Export it to excel / sheets and don't look back.
I started doing this a while ago because Mint only tracks the maximum account value for a particular month and doesn't let you modify historical data. So once or twice a year, something with an account would change and I'd end up with a month with a 70% or something jump in net worth which would drop off the next month.
Plus, you can do projections with excel.
I started doing this a while ago because Mint only tracks the maximum account value for a particular month and doesn't let you modify historical data. So once or twice a year, something with an account would change and I'd end up with a month with a 70% or something jump in net worth which would drop off the next month.
Plus, you can do projections with excel.
I agree with you; Personal Capital is very good. I use both. But they aren't interchangeable. Personal Capital is pretty good for tracking investments and net worth, but Mint is much better at budgeting and tracking monthly expenses.
I disagree. I find the budgeting to be equal (although I don't use it much in either) and personal capital to be better at tracking expenses. Both can categorize and analyze equally as well, but personal capital also has a nice cash flow view that mint lacks.
Personal Capital is free, works amazingly - not really a budgeting tool - but more an aggregating tool. Depends what you want to use it for, it does have some* budgeting capabilities.
Bank of America does it for free:
https://www.bankofamerica.com/online-banking/mobile-and-onli...
I run all of my spending through BoA credit cards / checking accounts, and they automatically categorize 99% of transactions and there's a nice little report of the last 12 months. It also incorporates Merrill data, and you can add other companies' logins to so BoA can import those transactions too, but I'm not a fan of giving out login information.
https://www.bankofamerica.com/online-banking/mobile-and-onli...
I run all of my spending through BoA credit cards / checking accounts, and they automatically categorize 99% of transactions and there's a nice little report of the last 12 months. It also incorporates Merrill data, and you can add other companies' logins to so BoA can import those transactions too, but I'm not a fan of giving out login information.
Its not just BofA - Amex does a great job of classifying your transactions and giving you monthly and yearly reports on your spending. Other banks with "premium" credit cards do similar things.
I'm sure many do, others in the thread have noted USAA and PNC. Doesn't seem like a hard thing to implement.
It's more UK-centric perhaps, but I've had a great time with Money Dashboard[0] for tagging and multiple-accounts overview. The In/Out chart is great for checking that I'm not spending too much each month.
[0] https://www.moneydashboard.com/ [0.1] affiliate: https://share.moneydashboard.com/71926HSZ
[0] https://www.moneydashboard.com/ [0.1] affiliate: https://share.moneydashboard.com/71926HSZ
It's old school, but I use Quicken. It works fine and it's less than $5/month.
Founder of Lunch Money (https://lunchmoney.app) here– I encourage you to check us out! I started Lunch Money because I was also surprised there wasn't a modern-day competitor to Mint.
How do you guys do the importing? (Specifically do you use a bank API service such as plaid?)
I'm unsure if this is still the case, but they relied entirely on Plaid when I tried it. I don't necessarily have a problem with this, however Plaid doesn't support some of my most critical accounts. In the end, this is why I had to stop using Lunch Money.
Co-founder of Truebill here. Try Truebill! And let me know what you think.
Wealthfront is great as well. The projections are far better than anything else I've seen.
This space is really difficult to crack for a few non-obvious reasons. The first is that the total TAM is less than you think; for most people, tracking their spending to manage budgets just doesn’t appeal to them. For many consumers, just seeing all of their finances is incredibly depressing. I suspect the 13mm Mint users are a large portion of the addressable market for this kind of product. So without a strong monetization engine that will work incredibly well at only ~10mm user range, you’re in trouble. Lead-gen isn’t sufficient here; Credit Karma has 10x the userbase and much stronger signals of intent, which is why they dominate digitize acquisition. When I was there, we put a lot of thought into how to crack personal finance, and ultimately felt that “spending” was too complex and too niche. The fact is you need radically different products for different parts of your consumer audience. That’s why you’ve seen a rise of more focused products like Robinhood, Wealthfront (going after the high end), savings apps like Acorn and digits, banking apps like Chime, etc (being a bank is profitable) that have incredibly strong revenue models attached.
I think you could run a reasonable lifestyle business here if you don’t take VC, but I’m skeptical this can ever be truly mass-market.
I think you could run a reasonable lifestyle business here if you don’t take VC, but I’m skeptical this can ever be truly mass-market.
I was told recently by someone who runs one of these types of apps that TAM that has been tapped so far is <1B. And these apps have been around for a while. So for some of these businesses, their consumer app can be a "wedge" to get them going, but they hedge by exploring B2B opportunities.
That makes a ton of sense to me. In some areas, I think our natural categories obscure human variation that's important from the product perspective.
For example, task management software sounds like a coherent thing. But in practice, people think and work so differently that there will never be a solution that everybody loves. At least from personal experience, personal finance is the same way.
For example, task management software sounds like a coherent thing. But in practice, people think and work so differently that there will never be a solution that everybody loves. At least from personal experience, personal finance is the same way.
Meta: do you view a product through the customer's eyes or through the eyes of the person making it?
That's been an important insight for me to understand. Describing something in terms of its features/how it works, you might say "photo sharing app". But this core feature could be wrapped, packaged, marketed, and described so many different ways: flickr, Instagram, Getty Images (!!), a scientific collaboration tool, etc.
"Task management" feels similar.
That's been an important insight for me to understand. Describing something in terms of its features/how it works, you might say "photo sharing app". But this core feature could be wrapped, packaged, marketed, and described so many different ways: flickr, Instagram, Getty Images (!!), a scientific collaboration tool, etc.
"Task management" feels similar.
Definitely!
With the caveat that this problem often persists even within the eyes of the customer. A lot of people would agree with the problem statement of, "I need something to help me keep track of what I have to do." But "I", "keep track of" and "what I have to do" varies widely in ways that the customer isn't aware of.
It's sort of like picking a place for a group of people to have dinner. A lot of people think they just want dinner until you say, "How about X" and then they realize their desires are much more specific.
With the caveat that this problem often persists even within the eyes of the customer. A lot of people would agree with the problem statement of, "I need something to help me keep track of what I have to do." But "I", "keep track of" and "what I have to do" varies widely in ways that the customer isn't aware of.
It's sort of like picking a place for a group of people to have dinner. A lot of people think they just want dinner until you say, "How about X" and then they realize their desires are much more specific.
> I think you could run a reasonable lifestyle business here if you don’t take VC, but I’m skeptical this can ever be truly mass-market.
You Need a Budget (YNAB) is proof of this. I don't believe they've taken any VC funding and are a pretty successful lifestyle business in the Budgeting/Finance space.
You Need a Budget (YNAB) is proof of this. I don't believe they've taken any VC funding and are a pretty successful lifestyle business in the Budgeting/Finance space.
They’re great, but they aren’t super quick with features and I wish the product had more, especially when it comes to the graphical reports.
It’s also an expensive product for most people. But we do need more of these sustainable low-growth non-VC style SaaS companies out there.
It’s also an expensive product for most people. But we do need more of these sustainable low-growth non-VC style SaaS companies out there.
I just wish their imports were a bit more reliable. Although some of that comes down to the fact they use 3rd parties that scrape the screen of your bank, so any time something changes, it breaks the imports. (it would be great to get an API standard, with proper authentication, etc)
Also, there is a plugin that gives you more reports: https://www.toolkitforynab.com/
Also, there is a plugin that gives you more reports: https://www.toolkitforynab.com/
If a product is good, we shouldn't judge it on its inability to continuously add new features.
Not sure I understand that. If I want feature X, and <app> doesn't have feature X, then that's a negative. Doesn't mean <app> is not "good", but it's certainly criteria by which to judge it.
Arguably, though, an app is more than just the sum of its feature list. Also, even if a feature is desirable when considered in a vacuum, that doesn't necessarily imply that adding it will improve the product.
Somewhere in between $very_long_ago and $long_ago, I stopped using a well-known personal finance app because I grew dissatisfied with it overall. It gained all sorts of genuinely useful capabilities over that time period, and didn't shed any, but still managed to become less functional (for my purposes) at the same time. I ended up replacing it with a competitor whose feature list was much, much, much smaller.
Somewhere in between $very_long_ago and $long_ago, I stopped using a well-known personal finance app because I grew dissatisfied with it overall. It gained all sorts of genuinely useful capabilities over that time period, and didn't shed any, but still managed to become less functional (for my purposes) at the same time. I ended up replacing it with a competitor whose feature list was much, much, much smaller.
If <app> is good, then its nice to focus sometimes on the fact that its good, rather than on what it doesn't have. Its similar to judging a Honda for not being a Maserati that gets 200 miles per gallon.
Sure, but whether or not I decide to stick with <app> depends on many factors. One of those is "does it do everything I need/want." If the answer is no, then that factors into my decision.
No app is gonna rub your back at night or hold your hand on your deathbed (well, yet, google is probably working on something), so "everything" isn't... really a thing.
Who said "everything"? You're just making up arguments I never made. Can we agree that an app with zero features is useless? Assuming we can, the utility of an application is a function of which features it has and how well those features are implemented. So the features are important, and how they're implemented is also important. I don't understand why that's (apparently) controversial.
I love YNAB but definitely not for the reports. I've been downloading my data and analyzing it in Rstudio whenever I want prettier charts.
Agreed. Their reports are horrible and for all practical purposes useless. It has a few other warts and areas of improvement, which bother me, but none as much as the lack of reporting.
The question is what happens to these lifestyle businesses when a VC backed company comes along with a $100MM raise in the space and a free product. Do they survive? Does the team lose their livelihood?
VC money does not fix TAM, be it 100M or 1B. What is does; allows startup to pivot and find other areas of growth (hopefully really fast), which is not easy or guaranteed to work either. Recent examples like WeWork, Zume and many more... I must also add, sometimes not everything that one sees fits in the definition of TAM... by true definition of TAM, AirBnB and UBER would have been a lifestyle business when they were first started....
I hate the phrase "lifestyle business." Look: it's a business. No, it's not going to make VCs billionaires. But it's a perfectly respectable business nonetheless. Nothing wrong with that.
Do not worry. There is only a tiny group of people who know the meaning of the term.
So I went to Wikipedia and found this definition:
"A lifestyle business is a business set up and run by its founders primarily with the aim of sustaining a particular level of income and no more; or to provide a foundation from which to enjoy a particular lifestyle."
Seems like a useful concept. What's wrong with it?
"A lifestyle business is a business set up and run by its founders primarily with the aim of sustaining a particular level of income and no more; or to provide a foundation from which to enjoy a particular lifestyle."
Seems like a useful concept. What's wrong with it?
It's a useful concept when used appropriately. There is nuance that you are missing.
When used it's a description that the business owners provide based on how they run their business, then it's OK. When you use it to describe someone else's business it's often considered a slur (unless they've previously shared this with you and you know that fact.)
Many smaller companies are not actually lifestyle businesses although that term is thrown around here. The owners may be part-time because they actually operate a group of companies, grow niche companies to sell outside of the VC world, etc. They are indistinguishable from lifestyle businesses, but the owners are looking to do a lot more than sustain a level of income.
When used it's a description that the business owners provide based on how they run their business, then it's OK. When you use it to describe someone else's business it's often considered a slur (unless they've previously shared this with you and you know that fact.)
Many smaller companies are not actually lifestyle businesses although that term is thrown around here. The owners may be part-time because they actually operate a group of companies, grow niche companies to sell outside of the VC world, etc. They are indistinguishable from lifestyle businesses, but the owners are looking to do a lot more than sustain a level of income.
> When you use it to describe someone else's business it's often considered a slur
I see.
I find it a bit unsettling that in some cultures stating that a business has priorities other than profit at all costs is considered a slur.
I see.
I find it a bit unsettling that in some cultures stating that a business has priorities other than profit at all costs is considered a slur.
I'm not sure it's specific to a limited set of cultures. I think there would be fairly broad cultural support for it being considered diminutive. Besides, the core of the problem is that it's only valid when that business owner describes itself as a lifestyle business.
I can say that, while competition is part of every capitalist society, at least in my region of Brazil the search for work-life balance is something few entrepreneurs would be ashamed of.
The German Mittelstand is a more positive version of this.
It is literally "Middle Class"
They want to stop at the 'M' part in SME.
It is literally "Middle Class"
They want to stop at the 'M' part in SME.
You nailed it. It can be either a neutral term or a slur depending on the context, as the above comment says. But I dislike it mostly for the reason you mentioned. It implies that the only really alpha, desirable businesses are those that make a bajillion dollars for VCs and don't have much benefit to customers or the general public.
Yeah, that is awful. And it's a shame that such a useful concept got a negative connotation.
If you are using "lifestyle business" to mean "a business has priorities other than profit at all costs", you are using it incorrectly. A lifestyle business is one where the owners have set a target business size and profit level, and do not try to grow past this; some owners even actively inhibit growth to keep the business from getting too large. The purpose of the business is to give its owners a fixed cash flow.
A company whose owners are working to grow the business consistently and organically is not a lifestyle business; it is also not pursuing "profit at all costs". Most privately-held businesses fall into this category.
As to "lifestyle business" being a slur, it is unfortunate that members of the growth-obsessed communities use it as such. They don't see a business with a fixed target size as serious. Incidentally, many also think the same about the organic growth case I mentioned. I ignore them, and most other things from VC startup culture.
A company whose owners are working to grow the business consistently and organically is not a lifestyle business; it is also not pursuing "profit at all costs". Most privately-held businesses fall into this category.
As to "lifestyle business" being a slur, it is unfortunate that members of the growth-obsessed communities use it as such. They don't see a business with a fixed target size as serious. Incidentally, many also think the same about the organic growth case I mentioned. I ignore them, and most other things from VC startup culture.
Yes, of course. As you said, there is certainly a spectrum between "profit at all costs" and "fixed growth" or similar constraints. That is easy to visualize.
I find it interesting and even inspiring that some economies allow entrepreneurs to make this kind of choice. That is not my reality at all. In South-America, we grab every chance we get and don't let go. There is much less opportunity.
I find it interesting and even inspiring that some economies allow entrepreneurs to make this kind of choice. That is not my reality at all. In South-America, we grab every chance we get and don't let go. There is much less opportunity.
> A lifestyle business is one where the owners have set a target business size and profit level, and do not try to grow past this; some owners even actively inhibit growth to keep the business from getting too large.
I think this is too far narrow a definition of "lifestyle business". The better definition is simply a business that fits the founder's intent and lifestyle.
I know several founders that started from nothing, built their company to turn a sizable profit and resisted big VC money.
It's demeaning and inaccurate to call them "lifestyle businesses", they made a calculated decision. Roughly, they took a chance with self-financing, and maybe a ~40% chance bet on making a good living, versus taking the VC money and having 3% on becoming unbelievably wealthy.
Given a 40% chance of making several million and a 3% chance of making billions, it's pretty reasonable for folks to take the higher probability, even if the statistical expected value is better with the VCs. These aren't people who "gave up", often, they made the smarter decisions.
I think this is too far narrow a definition of "lifestyle business". The better definition is simply a business that fits the founder's intent and lifestyle.
I know several founders that started from nothing, built their company to turn a sizable profit and resisted big VC money.
It's demeaning and inaccurate to call them "lifestyle businesses", they made a calculated decision. Roughly, they took a chance with self-financing, and maybe a ~40% chance bet on making a good living, versus taking the VC money and having 3% on becoming unbelievably wealthy.
Given a 40% chance of making several million and a 3% chance of making billions, it's pretty reasonable for folks to take the higher probability, even if the statistical expected value is better with the VCs. These aren't people who "gave up", often, they made the smarter decisions.
People who are looking for VC funding for their business consider it a slur, because VCs will use it as a reason not to fund.
To give an analogy: “family car” is a good way of describing a safe car that fits a lot of passengers. But if you set up your SUV for rock-crawling and somebody calls it “a nice family car” you might consider it a slur.
To give an analogy: “family car” is a good way of describing a safe car that fits a lot of passengers. But if you set up your SUV for rock-crawling and somebody calls it “a nice family car” you might consider it a slur.
Yes, I get the analogy. But the actual case to which it refers has much broader implications.
Sort of, but don't read too much into it.
Well, it ascribes an intent that may not be there. Why do you assume that the business is actively limiting growth, as opposed to trying but failing to grow? It's like calling something a pet project. You can say that about your own project, but if somebody else calls it a pet project, it could rightly be construed as demeaning.
It's often set up as a binary. Either you are a VC backed "big play" or you're a lifestyle business.
Which lumps a business that employs 140 people in several states and makes a few hundred thousand in profit every year with a bookstore with a cat that barely breaks even, and is closed every Wednesday so the owner can go skiing.
Which lumps a business that employs 140 people in several states and makes a few hundred thousand in profit every year with a bookstore with a cat that barely breaks even, and is closed every Wednesday so the owner can go skiing.
That's a fantastic description of the business model a guy I know runs his plane tours under. He likes flying. He doesn't earn enough to justify flying just himself around in circles every weekend. So what he does is take people up with him on scenic tours. No real room to grow. He's not competitive if he tries to start scaling and actually completely cover pilots, planes, and the advertising required to keep them busy. But he keeps his hobby mostly cost neutral through word of mouth.
What it is not is a good term for any business that doesn't take VC. There are many businesses where the primary objective is to grow and make lots of money but where VC doesn't make sense. It's probably most businesses. So when someone calls a business a lifestyle business simply on the basis that the market isn't big enough to warrant VC, it's insulting to a large swath of business owners and generally a case of unwarranted elitism. Like if Zuckerberg was looking at businesses earning tens or hundreds of millions a year and went "how cute, lifestylers" it'd be shitty but at least he'd have the success to back it up. Mostly on here you see it from people just leaching off the success of their industry. They earn hundreds of thousands but use their position in tech to look down on people pulling in millions.
What it is not is a good term for any business that doesn't take VC. There are many businesses where the primary objective is to grow and make lots of money but where VC doesn't make sense. It's probably most businesses. So when someone calls a business a lifestyle business simply on the basis that the market isn't big enough to warrant VC, it's insulting to a large swath of business owners and generally a case of unwarranted elitism. Like if Zuckerberg was looking at businesses earning tens or hundreds of millions a year and went "how cute, lifestylers" it'd be shitty but at least he'd have the success to back it up. Mostly on here you see it from people just leaching off the success of their industry. They earn hundreds of thousands but use their position in tech to look down on people pulling in millions.
Someone making tens or hundred of millions of dollars a year is far beyond the definition of a lifestyle business.
At that point you will have achieved significant scale and all the headaches that come with it.
Getting back to the above post, a budgeting tool is a lifestyle business. It will likely never grow to 100m+ revenue or 200+ employees.
It can however make for a great lifestyle business that generates enough money to cover living costs with minimal investment from the owners (after initial investment of building the business).
At that point you will have achieved significant scale and all the headaches that come with it.
Getting back to the above post, a budgeting tool is a lifestyle business. It will likely never grow to 100m+ revenue or 200+ employees.
It can however make for a great lifestyle business that generates enough money to cover living costs with minimal investment from the owners (after initial investment of building the business).
What if their lifestyle costs tens of millions?
This just proves how stupid the label is.
This just proves how stupid the label is.
I'm sorry, what is TAM?
total addressable market
Total Addressable Market
Total addressable market
Total Addressable Market - how many people might use your thing.
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Good baiting to gauge how many MBA/VC types are lurking....they can't resist!
Luckily for most founders, a business that tops out at $10mm a year in net income is still considered a lifestyle business for most VCs.
Yep. You can probably go higher than this today - $25 million these days seems to be too small for the VCs.
> For many consumers, just seeing all of their finances is incredibly depressing.
Fuckin' ay. Consider me one of those consumers! ...I should probably stop consuming.
Fuckin' ay. Consider me one of those consumers! ...I should probably stop consuming.
> The first is that the total TAM is less than you think; for most people, tracking their spending to manage budgets just doesn’t appeal to them. For many consumers, just seeing all of their finances is incredibly depressing.
I think that depends on how you address the market, actually. The Mint way, which requires continuous engagement and ad impressions, is something you’d be right about. But there’s a larger addressable market of people who intermittently think about getting their finances squared away, maybe as a New Years resolution or something. If you market to those people the way gyms do, there might be a larger market.
I think that depends on how you address the market, actually. The Mint way, which requires continuous engagement and ad impressions, is something you’d be right about. But there’s a larger addressable market of people who intermittently think about getting their finances squared away, maybe as a New Years resolution or something. If you market to those people the way gyms do, there might be a larger market.
I think you hit the nail on the head, which is that this is only a successful business if:
* The revenue model is stronger than lead-gen.
* The product isn't too complex or depressing.
:)
1. Is your new service still based on Yodlee backend? Everyone else who provides any consolidation service seems to. I am not saying they are bad, but it is better to be clear upfront.
2. Are their any features for Pro consumers who are not looking for budgeting or retirement planning? I don’t mind paying $100 a year for a good service. I would rather not have it free.
3. I am ready to switch banks or even brokerage firms if they provide a saner integration with your service
2. Are their any features for Pro consumers who are not looking for budgeting or retirement planning? I don’t mind paying $100 a year for a good service. I would rather not have it free.
3. I am ready to switch banks or even brokerage firms if they provide a saner integration with your service
Hi. Monarch co-founder here.
1. We are primarily using Plaid, but will support multiple data aggregators to provide our users with the best coverage for their financial institutions.
2. Yes. We will go way beyond what current products do. I can't go into specifics ahead of our launch, but we are confident we can help people achieve better financial outcomes cheaper and faster.
Our view is that a subscription-based model allows us to align our incentives with our users and focus on building the best product, rather than trying to optimize for advertising partners or data sales. On the latter point, we highly value privacy and will not share nor sell your financial data.
3. That's great to hear!
1. We are primarily using Plaid, but will support multiple data aggregators to provide our users with the best coverage for their financial institutions.
2. Yes. We will go way beyond what current products do. I can't go into specifics ahead of our launch, but we are confident we can help people achieve better financial outcomes cheaper and faster.
Our view is that a subscription-based model allows us to align our incentives with our users and focus on building the best product, rather than trying to optimize for advertising partners or data sales. On the latter point, we highly value privacy and will not share nor sell your financial data.
3. That's great to hear!
I did an 'onboarding' with you guys. Really wanted to like the app, but stills seems very early in the ideation phase.
When are you going to have a beta out?
When are you going to have a beta out?
Hey, just wondering: was the fast company article was placed there by your PR people?
Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just curious.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just curious.
No, this wasn't placed. Fast Company was already working on the article and just reached out to our CEO for comment.
I wrote the story and I can confirm that. It's been on my to-do list for a while--I had another client turn down the idea--and I finally remembered to pitch it to my editor at FC after being irked yet again at Mint telling me to install Flash, tweeting out my frustration and deciding I should monetize that frustration.
(Val made his way into the post when another ex-Mint dev tweeted his apologies for what had become of the site; I got in touch with him and he suggested I talk to Val.)
(Val made his way into the post when another ex-Mint dev tweeted his apologies for what had become of the site; I got in touch with him and he suggested I talk to Val.)
They didn't lose their soul. They never had one. It was a financial scheme from beginning to end. There was never any intention to produce anything useful. Probably one of the founders had a rich daddy.
Out of curiosity, is Monarch using Plaid for financial data aggregation? I have been wondering how long it would take for a standalone budget/asset tracker to emerge using Plaid's services. It seems most Plaid users are selling other financial products, and tack on aggregation as an additional feature, like Personal Capital.
From their Privacy Policy[1], they are:
> We use Plaid Inc. ("Plaid") to gather End User data from financial institutions. By using our service, you grant Monarch and Plaid the right, power, and authority to act on your behalf to access and transmit your personal and financial information from the relevant financial institution. You agree to your personal and financial information being transferred, stored, and processed by Plaid in accordance with the Plaid Privacy Policy.
[1] https://www.monarchmoney.com/privacy
> We use Plaid Inc. ("Plaid") to gather End User data from financial institutions. By using our service, you grant Monarch and Plaid the right, power, and authority to act on your behalf to access and transmit your personal and financial information from the relevant financial institution. You agree to your personal and financial information being transferred, stored, and processed by Plaid in accordance with the Plaid Privacy Policy.
[1] https://www.monarchmoney.com/privacy
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One of the features I think these types of products need going forward is end-to-end encryption. There's simply too much data being exchanged between Plaid, this service and any third parties used. Someone's every transaction, investment, and budget will be too lucrative not to sell. I would pay for a service that could keep all this data private.
You can use Quicken. It is a desktop software and does not store your data/password in the cloud.
I fear there exists a class of product that seems like a great idea, but can only survive in a "big" acquisition, and that getting acquired is a poison-pill. Mint may be one of those. We have a regional clone of Mint called 22Seven that was acquired by Old Mutual (a big insurance company), which means I'm not going near them with my banking data.
I’ve looked at a lot of budgeting apps. In order of priority, I want:
1. Don’t be evil (aka don’t be intuit)
2. Web based with some sane security (2fa, encryption at rest, etc)
3. The ability to sync transactions from my bank.
4. Budgeting/reporting.
5. Some sort of sane forecasting. You’ve got N months of data from a customer, why can’t you tell them in 6 months this account is expected to have $x in it?
6. Sane APIs.
No one I’ve been able to find has been able to do all 6 of these.
1. Don’t be evil (aka don’t be intuit)
2. Web based with some sane security (2fa, encryption at rest, etc)
3. The ability to sync transactions from my bank.
4. Budgeting/reporting.
5. Some sort of sane forecasting. You’ve got N months of data from a customer, why can’t you tell them in 6 months this account is expected to have $x in it?
6. Sane APIs.
No one I’ve been able to find has been able to do all 6 of these.
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#5 is so critical. If you can’t enter transactions ahead of time and know where you will be, then what is the point?
I'm the founder of Buxfer (https://www.buxfer.com)
Forecasting is one of the strongest aspects of our product. We also provide alerts ahead of time if we can predict your account balance will fall below zero (or whatever threshold you configure). Forecasting can also be used to preview your expenses/income/cashflow for the upcoming months / years.
We do have an API, but I admit it's not the best around. Other than that, our product does all the 6 things you point out.
Happy to hear more feedback at [email protected]
Forecasting is one of the strongest aspects of our product. We also provide alerts ahead of time if we can predict your account balance will fall below zero (or whatever threshold you configure). Forecasting can also be used to preview your expenses/income/cashflow for the upcoming months / years.
We do have an API, but I admit it's not the best around. Other than that, our product does all the 6 things you point out.
Happy to hear more feedback at [email protected]
I like your privacy policy. It's reasonably easy to read, has a nice chart, and makes nice sounding promises.
Why don't you link to it from your home page? I had to do a Google site search to find it. (And maybe even put the 'what we share' chart somewhere more prominent)
Why don't you link to it from your home page? I had to do a Google site search to find it. (And maybe even put the 'what we share' chart somewhere more prominent)
Added. Was an oversight, thanks for pointing out!
> 4. Budgeting/reporting.
> 5. Some sort of sane forecasting. You’ve got N months of data from a customer, why can’t you tell them in 6 months this account is expected to have $x in it?
I work on a methodology engine and have implemented both of these, at least on the data side, and they are essentially aspects of the same thing.
Fundamentally, what's hard is user trust. If they see numbers that don't make sense, explaining that "technically you told us this and this which all adds up to that" sounds like "we can't do arithemtic" to users.
The budget needs to agree with the forecasts. And the forecast doesn't quite semantically "fit" the budget; your forecast shouldn't "know" about the future or it can't give faithful metrics whereas your budget is supposed to plan ahead.
It also gets tricky when people use the damned thing, because your system needs to be resilient to users not doing the things they promised to do. For example, if they promise to deposit $500 in projected account A, but instead deposit it in tracked account B, you would project that the money lands in A, and also report that there's $500 more in B. So now those totals are off.
And budgeting itself is a surprisingly tricky problem. There are so many techniques to make a budget work that selecting good ones is hard. And users will say, "oh, I always want to spend $500 on this," and when that results in something stupid, "well, obviously not then." Even without that, it's hard to make the budget not do weird stuff that gives a user a WTF moment. The most counter-intuitive stuff tends to happen when the person is running low on funds, but that's also the raison d'etre of a budget.
> 3. The ability to sync transactions from my bank.
> 6. Sane APIs.
Between not making money off the APIs, having the user get frustrated being bounced between my support and the competitor, and that the APIs become another component that must be secured and administered, I'm not surprised APIs are uncommon.
Which makes me sad.
> 5. Some sort of sane forecasting. You’ve got N months of data from a customer, why can’t you tell them in 6 months this account is expected to have $x in it?
I work on a methodology engine and have implemented both of these, at least on the data side, and they are essentially aspects of the same thing.
Fundamentally, what's hard is user trust. If they see numbers that don't make sense, explaining that "technically you told us this and this which all adds up to that" sounds like "we can't do arithemtic" to users.
The budget needs to agree with the forecasts. And the forecast doesn't quite semantically "fit" the budget; your forecast shouldn't "know" about the future or it can't give faithful metrics whereas your budget is supposed to plan ahead.
It also gets tricky when people use the damned thing, because your system needs to be resilient to users not doing the things they promised to do. For example, if they promise to deposit $500 in projected account A, but instead deposit it in tracked account B, you would project that the money lands in A, and also report that there's $500 more in B. So now those totals are off.
And budgeting itself is a surprisingly tricky problem. There are so many techniques to make a budget work that selecting good ones is hard. And users will say, "oh, I always want to spend $500 on this," and when that results in something stupid, "well, obviously not then." Even without that, it's hard to make the budget not do weird stuff that gives a user a WTF moment. The most counter-intuitive stuff tends to happen when the person is running low on funds, but that's also the raison d'etre of a budget.
> 3. The ability to sync transactions from my bank.
> 6. Sane APIs.
Between not making money off the APIs, having the user get frustrated being bounced between my support and the competitor, and that the APIs become another component that must be secured and administered, I'm not surprised APIs are uncommon.
Which makes me sad.
Founder of Lunch Money (https://lunchmoney.app) here– I encourage you to check us out! We've got everything you're looking for except for #5 (forecasting) and our developer API is nearing completion and we'll be beta-testing that soon!
7. auto-categorization
How do you guarantee to your users that the company will never be sold to another company?
> Many personal finance products are free, but make money by selling data or trying to upsell you on something else that you don't need (like, say, a credit card you don't need or a tax product that is overpriced [2]). This is what happened with Mint. It became a "top-of-the-funnel" lead generation tool for other products.
Question about MonarchMoney. Is it going to be a cloud service or a standalone old-fashion desktop software? Most of serious personal finance people would prefer desktop software in order to protect their own data. However, most consumers prefer a free and hosted solution. Which market is MonarchMoney going after?
Question about MonarchMoney. Is it going to be a cloud service or a standalone old-fashion desktop software? Most of serious personal finance people would prefer desktop software in order to protect their own data. However, most consumers prefer a free and hosted solution. Which market is MonarchMoney going after?
Initially we're going to be cloud-based, but we hope to support other storage models.
How are you approaching your product in a way that discourages your company from morphing it into a money manager that upsells your users credit cards or loan products?
This is a super packed field. There are many budget apps out there. I was unhappy with all of them so I wrote my own. For a while I had some thoughts of pushing it and turning it into a company, but ultimately I just kept it for myself. Good luck, would love to see a budget app that is truly good.
I did the same thing. Shocked that five years later there still isn’t a great app that really wows. I think the fundamental problem is that the data is broken. Banks don’t get context from the merchants, and the devs only get ugly data from the banks. The only way this situation will improve is if we can somehow get devs better data. I kicked around ideas on how to do that for a year or so before running out of steam.
Would love to hear more about what you tried and what you learned, if you're up for it. Couldn't find a way to reach you but if you're open to it, my linkedin is in my profile link.
How are you going to get around 2FA? NerdWallet (which probably has more than enough money to hire lots of really good engineers to solve this problem) consistently has problems syncing my 401k/credit card/checking accounts.
I have a few requests for you:
1. Allow people to enter transactions ahead of time and plan ahead. I dropped Mint in favor of Quicken because no other tool allows me to properly plan ahead. But Quicken still lacks support for a number of financial institutions as well as stock options.
2. Please support stock options and non-public wealth tracking. Quicken has to be shoehorned into it, Personal Finance supports it but doesn’t allow you to plan ahead. You could do a lot here for people.
3. Have it be cross-platform. I wish I could edit Quicken transactions on my phone but I get this dumbed down synced version that is practically useless.
Put those three in and I’ll be one happy user.
1. Allow people to enter transactions ahead of time and plan ahead. I dropped Mint in favor of Quicken because no other tool allows me to properly plan ahead. But Quicken still lacks support for a number of financial institutions as well as stock options.
2. Please support stock options and non-public wealth tracking. Quicken has to be shoehorned into it, Personal Finance supports it but doesn’t allow you to plan ahead. You could do a lot here for people.
3. Have it be cross-platform. I wish I could edit Quicken transactions on my phone but I get this dumbed down synced version that is practically useless.
Put those three in and I’ll be one happy user.
> 1. Allow people to enter transactions ahead of time and plan ahead
This is such a no brainer. I tend to buy tickets to concerts/shows at times two months of time and I want to reflect that in that month's spending and not this months.
This is such a no brainer. I tend to buy tickets to concerts/shows at times two months of time and I want to reflect that in that month's spending and not this months.
FYI - you can forward-date purchases in Mint by a few months.
Just click on the transaction and then again on the date and modify.
Just click on the transaction and then again on the date and modify.
You can’t manually enter transactions in the register though last I checked. That’s the essential thing - predictive cash flow.
Sure but... Let's not kid ourselves. The FIs are actively killing these products because we all realize how much we can damage the PBR stickiness of American banks.
The "KLO-ification" of Mint, the C1Acquisition of Level, Visa tactically grabbing Plaid: they're all to consolidate the industry and allow existing players to stifle the American banking landscape.
The "KLO-ification" of Mint, the C1Acquisition of Level, Visa tactically grabbing Plaid: they're all to consolidate the industry and allow existing players to stifle the American banking landscape.
Cogent Question:
So are you saying you have a theory on how to build a business model here that continues to help people after they've gotten their budget sorted out?
Tangent:
Twice, I've had coworkers - developers, mind you - tell me in a meeting with the whole team that "We're not going to turn away money." Both times I was left speechless, and silently judging like mad.
Because if you really dig into what a statement like that says about their character, you're going to be very, very disappointed, possibly lose respect for them, and once you have no respect the temptation to say something unpleasant is much higher.
Which is not to say, "I'm surrounded by scoundrels." There's something systemic there. When we have to repeat back what we've said or how we've behaved it's often a lot easier to see that we're disappointed in ourselves. That this is not the person you want to be. You know someone who has done this to you, or rather, for you. You might even hate it a little bit at first but they've done you a huge favor. Eventually you see it.
Problem is, there's no incentive or even huge disincentives to try to do things like this in a business setting. I'm sure this has been playing out in slow motion at Google, if only for statistical reasons. It seems to happen most places.
Tangent:
Twice, I've had coworkers - developers, mind you - tell me in a meeting with the whole team that "We're not going to turn away money." Both times I was left speechless, and silently judging like mad.
Because if you really dig into what a statement like that says about their character, you're going to be very, very disappointed, possibly lose respect for them, and once you have no respect the temptation to say something unpleasant is much higher.
Which is not to say, "I'm surrounded by scoundrels." There's something systemic there. When we have to repeat back what we've said or how we've behaved it's often a lot easier to see that we're disappointed in ourselves. That this is not the person you want to be. You know someone who has done this to you, or rather, for you. You might even hate it a little bit at first but they've done you a huge favor. Eventually you see it.
Problem is, there's no incentive or even huge disincentives to try to do things like this in a business setting. I'm sure this has been playing out in slow motion at Google, if only for statistical reasons. It seems to happen most places.
I have had an idea of how I would want to build a mint competitor, but I’m not up for the challenge. But I’d love to see yours. Can I get on the email list? My username at google’s free email service..
YAMC? (Yet another mint copy?).
There are a lot of apps out there doing pretty much same thing as mint - can you give us a preview of how your app will be different?
There are a lot of apps out there doing pretty much same thing as mint - can you give us a preview of how your app will be different?
I still can't believe Mint is free. In the era of subscriptions, I'd totally be willing to pay for it, especially if it led to actual development and ability to have useful support.
Thank you for the thoughtful response. This is anecdotal, but I signed up for Mint as a pretty naive college student who had no idea that Mint was tossing my financial data all over the damn place. A few years later I eventually learned how Mint really works and promptly deleted my account (and then purged as much advertising data as I could in a bout of paranoia).
I hope the next generation of personal finance apps maintain strict privacy guarantees while running on a subscription model. I'll definitely be giving Monarch a look!
I hope the next generation of personal finance apps maintain strict privacy guarantees while running on a subscription model. I'll definitely be giving Monarch a look!
Good to see that there are some other competitors looking to emerge. I've had several discussions with my colleagues who can't stand Mint, have used YNAB to life-changing effect, but feel like they've "outgrown" the YNAB philosophy as it's targeted towards people still looking to set a solid financial foundation. They also have to straddle multiple tools for different purposes - YNAB for budgeting, Personal Capital for investment tracking, typically. Looks like you're aiming to fill in the gap there. Looking forward to seeing what y'all come up with!
Hi there, always interested in personal finance services, but I'm having a hard time understanding from your website what sets Monarch apart from other apps?
How does it differ from YNAB (of which I am a big fan), for example? At first glance YNAB has all the same features shown on your website, and the "budget with ease" screenshot in particular could have been taken right from YNAB.
And what exactly does "The first all-in-one personal finance platform" mean? What does it have that others don't?
Hope this doesn't come off as overly critical! I am really interested.
How does it differ from YNAB (of which I am a big fan), for example? At first glance YNAB has all the same features shown on your website, and the "budget with ease" screenshot in particular could have been taken right from YNAB.
And what exactly does "The first all-in-one personal finance platform" mean? What does it have that others don't?
Hope this doesn't come off as overly critical! I am really interested.
Thanks for asking! We're not yet ready to share too much, but if you're really curious feel free to find me (LinkedIn link in profile).
At a high level, though, if you read the complaints in the rest of this thread you'd get a pretty good sense of what a product in this space would need to do to be successful (of course).
YNAB is great as a budgeting tool if you're willing to subscribe to their entire budgeting system, which most people aren't.
At a high level, though, if you read the complaints in the rest of this thread you'd get a pretty good sense of what a product in this space would need to do to be successful (of course).
YNAB is great as a budgeting tool if you're willing to subscribe to their entire budgeting system, which most people aren't.
Psyched to try it! Any idea what the wait list time frames are looking like? I'm currently at position 11,178.
I had been using PocketMoney for a very long time, but it was recently destroyed by the company that acquired it. Seriously looking into GNUCash to try to avoid that kind of thing in the future.
Using an online service for financial tracking seems crazy to me, given the data free-for-all that is going on now.
Using an online service for financial tracking seems crazy to me, given the data free-for-all that is going on now.
I've been using YNAB4 for about 5 years, when it eventually stops working I'm planning to move to Eqonomize[1] - it's GPL so should avoid your concern, but isn't quite as drastic a jump as GNUCash, and it's cross-platform too.
[1] http://eqonomize.github.io/
[1] http://eqonomize.github.io/
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Same. YNAB4 has been great, I have no issues with it and their changelog indicates that nothing radical with regards to budgeting has been implemented since. Any idea if you'll be able to move YNAB data over to Eqonomize!?
YNAB4 allows exporting as CSV, then you'll need to massage this a little bit to get it into the format Eqonomize prefers (correct headings, etc) then import. I started the process to see if it was possible, didn't get round to finishing because I don't want to move until I have to, but it all seems possible from what I can tell.
I just started into GNUCash during the break. It can be simple or really complex, but the walk through and into guide was really good, once you get a full month done with thing in the right place, i.e. you can mark your mortgage as an expense but it's actually separated out into interest and equity and it needs to be split into both those boxes. Once you get everything set up, updating it and keeping it going seems pretty simple.
I use Mint regularly, perhaps there have not been many improvements, but it works very well and I have had no issues.
I feel like Mint has reverted in functionality. It used to be that I rarely corrected and auto-categorization and now I feel like I do it with 1out out of 10 line items.
The Flash issue is also terrible.
For more challenging but important features
- With companies like Amazon, a purchase can span multiple categories. While fraught with privacy issues, an innovation in this space would be to work with payment providers to capture more information, like receipt line items. If an amazon purchase could be split into my groceries vs media, that'd be amazing.
- I feel like Mint's budgeting misses the mark and is useless to me. While literal categorizations can be useful for digging into the data, it isn't how I budget. For example, "fun" money could come from several literal categories.
The Flash issue is also terrible.
For more challenging but important features
- With companies like Amazon, a purchase can span multiple categories. While fraught with privacy issues, an innovation in this space would be to work with payment providers to capture more information, like receipt line items. If an amazon purchase could be split into my groceries vs media, that'd be amazing.
- I feel like Mint's budgeting misses the mark and is useless to me. While literal categorizations can be useful for digging into the data, it isn't how I budget. For example, "fun" money could come from several literal categories.
To me nothing much has happened to mint. It is fine and it always could be much much better but this article does not make much sense. Who cares if its flash, it does the job like before. It still has issue categorizing some of the transactions but it works.
Mind for personally has been a game changer. It helped me take control of all my finances.
Mind for personally has been a game changer. It helped me take control of all my finances.
Mint used to be ahead of most banks. Nowadays, a lot of banks have budgeting tools built-in. My use of Mint slowly faded away as my bank's software became better. Now, I don't use Mint anymore.
I use Personal Capital and love it. It's just better when you have a variety of 15+ assets and supports things like Carta. Admittedly, it's been a long time since I used Mint but I now need a much broader view. I don't really care about my individual transactions; I'm more focused on turning a different set of knobs at this point in life.
My biggest complaint about Personal Capital is the frequent phone calls from their financial advisors despite asking them to stop. I'd be happy to pay $10+ a month just for their aggregation services but my private bank is leaps ahead in terms of sophistication and access to alternative investments not typically available to the public.
My biggest complaint about Personal Capital is the frequent phone calls from their financial advisors despite asking them to stop. I'd be happy to pay $10+ a month just for their aggregation services but my private bank is leaps ahead in terms of sophistication and access to alternative investments not typically available to the public.
Their sales calls are the reason I deleted my PC account and (reluctantly) returned to Mint. I, too, would be willing to pay some small subscription amount.
Same experience here. Tried to switch from Mint to PC, got like 5 calls from them in the first week or so, cursed the caller out over the phone on the fifth one, and then immediately deleted my account after. It's predatory and it completely destroyed any trust I reluctantly gave them in the first place.
I really wish there were self-hosted options for seeing all of your finances in a single spot. Even paid options. That's what I really want.
I really wish there were self-hosted options for seeing all of your finances in a single spot. Even paid options. That's what I really want.
It took me calling them out in a tweet to get myself off these calls. The only place I used my phone number was for two factor auth, which they then decided they would use to up sell me. There's also no way to opt out on their website. Very shady practice but love the product otherwise
I don't know if it was the cause of it, but I scheduled a meeting with the PC advisor and all of the calls stopped, presumably because I was going to talk to someone on the phone. Fortunately, they didn't have any validation on the dates so my appointment is scheduled for June 2076 or something. This has a slightly different annoyance since there's now an overlay on the top of the body that says "Prepare for your upcoming call" but at least no phone calls.
After struggling with Mint and YNAB for a while, I figured that I didn't really want to budget. I was tired of categorizing and setting up $20 budgets. I ended up with a simpler methodology which is basically a MUCH simpler version of YNAB. It worked really well and I've stuck with this for a while now.
Just a few weeks ago, my partner and I launched Funded [0] that follows this method. Would love to get feedback from the HN community too.
[0] https://apps.apple.com/app/id1438924754
Just a few weeks ago, my partner and I launched Funded [0] that follows this method. Would love to get feedback from the HN community too.
[0] https://apps.apple.com/app/id1438924754
Looks good, but it's free. Care to offer any insight on how you plan to monetize your app and make it sustainable?
Thanks! It's free for now because it's new. We want to get an initial set of users, polish the app further, and then start the monetization.
Right now, I'm leaning towards a subscription model because it makes the most sense. I think YNAB is too pricy and a personal finance app can sustain with a $2-3/mo subscription.
Is there any other monetization model that we should be looking at?
Right now, I'm leaning towards a subscription model because it makes the most sense. I think YNAB is too pricy and a personal finance app can sustain with a $2-3/mo subscription.
Is there any other monetization model that we should be looking at?
How do you plan to handle the transitionfrom free to subscription?
Once you price yourself at 0, it can be very difficult to convince users to start paying for what was once free.
I would generally recommend avoiding having a free period entirely, and instead offer an early adopters discount as well as a free trial period.
Since it sounds like you missed your chance on that one, I would look for ways to offer both a free and payed version. Again, the difficulty here is that once something is in the free version, you want to avoid removing it, so you will need compelling new feaures to make this work. You also need to make sure that the free version continues to leave a good impression.
Having said that, I suspect you will find there is a reason so many companies end up monetizing through avertisements...
Once you price yourself at 0, it can be very difficult to convince users to start paying for what was once free.
I would generally recommend avoiding having a free period entirely, and instead offer an early adopters discount as well as a free trial period.
Since it sounds like you missed your chance on that one, I would look for ways to offer both a free and payed version. Again, the difficulty here is that once something is in the free version, you want to avoid removing it, so you will need compelling new feaures to make this work. You also need to make sure that the free version continues to leave a good impression.
Having said that, I suspect you will find there is a reason so many companies end up monetizing through avertisements...
We don't plan on monetizing our existing users. As early users, they're providing their value with feedback and helping us work out the kinks.
Once the app is monetized, all new users will have to go through that. Even then, I think a free period is a good idea or maybe a freemium version. The only risk with freemium version is giving away too much or too little for free.
Once the app is monetized, all new users will have to go through that. Even then, I think a free period is a good idea or maybe a freemium version. The only risk with freemium version is giving away too much or too little for free.
Sounds good. I would definitely pay $2-3/month for a good "money" app that consolidates views in to all my spending and provides insight in to where my money is going.
How does "Sign in with Apple" work if I want to share Funded with my somebody on another device that has their own Apple ID?
How does "Sign in with Apple" work if I want to share Funded with my somebody on another device that has their own Apple ID?
Maybe I am just wired differently, but every budgeting program is just annoying at best. I get "scolded" because I went over my $40 clothing budget budget because I bought a coat or a suit, or took advantage of a sale. I don't buy clothes one pair of socks at a time per month, I take advantage of good sales and every few years I need a suit. One way to potentially solve this is to "roll over" any excess from month to month.
Even worse is these auto-budgets that try to take your previous 12 months of spending and use that as your future budget guideline. Thanks for telling me I have a $5/month starbucks budget, since on average I take out a coworker for coffee about that much (and again, one month I might take out 2 coworkers, and now I get an alert that I am over budget!).
I guess in general I am quite cheap, I don't need the "discipline" of being told how much I should spend in a month on things. If you don't have the self control to not spend too much on discretionary things like clothing or entertainment, I am not sure setting a budget is really going to help.
Even worse is these auto-budgets that try to take your previous 12 months of spending and use that as your future budget guideline. Thanks for telling me I have a $5/month starbucks budget, since on average I take out a coworker for coffee about that much (and again, one month I might take out 2 coworkers, and now I get an alert that I am over budget!).
I guess in general I am quite cheap, I don't need the "discipline" of being told how much I should spend in a month on things. If you don't have the self control to not spend too much on discretionary things like clothing or entertainment, I am not sure setting a budget is really going to help.
Trust me, it's not just you. That is exactly why I couldn't use any of the budgeting apps. I'm an adult and I don't want to be told by an app where I can spend my money.
Funded takes an "anti-budgeting" approach. You only set up your obligations and savings. You're left with discretionary spending that rolls over every paycheck and you can spend it on whatever you want. Not tracked and not budgeted.
Lmk what you think!
Funded takes an "anti-budgeting" approach. You only set up your obligations and savings. You're left with discretionary spending that rolls over every paycheck and you can spend it on whatever you want. Not tracked and not budgeted.
Lmk what you think!
I condensed most of my budget categories just to check if my total monthly spending is normal bounds and nothing unusual is happening.
It sounds like you aren't looking for budgeting and just want to see categories over time (which is mostly what I want and seems like a lot of people here). However, if you are interested in budgeting, one solution is what YNAB does. You can have an expense and carry it over between months. For example, if you have a utility that's due by-monthly you can budget half every month. Or if property taxes are due twice a year, do the same. For some reason a lot of budgeting tools fail miserably at this.
Isn't it a free service? Yet it costs money to run, more money to minimally maintain, and a lot of money to keep fully current and improve.
That doesn't mean it couldn't be a thriving product, but for that to happen Intuit would have to be wringing a lot of money out of it somehow through a side channel or back channel.
A semi-neglected aging service probably isn't the worst scenario for its users.
That doesn't mean it couldn't be a thriving product, but for that to happen Intuit would have to be wringing a lot of money out of it somehow through a side channel or back channel.
A semi-neglected aging service probably isn't the worst scenario for its users.
It broke. I have 2 BoA accounts and some time ago it made 1 of them inactive and I just couldn’t make them both work. The one I re add becomes the one Mint sees and another one becomes inactive.
It also miscalculated cash flow. Graph shows negative when in reality it is positive.
I guess it is a price to pay for acquisition.
It also miscalculated cash flow. Graph shows negative when in reality it is positive.
I guess it is a price to pay for acquisition.
FWIW, I have this same BoA issue and have been trying for months to escalate it to someone who can actually do something about it. It's frustrating, to say the least.
Off Topic, most of the services mentioned here use Plaid to connect to banks. This means that Plaid (now Visa) has full access to your entire banking history. Combined with credit card data they know almost everything you purchase.
I find that fact quite unsettling.
I find that fact quite unsettling.
I'm actually a bit less unsettled now that Plaid is part of Visa. I use my credit card for 99.9% of purchases, so Visa already knew almost everything I purchased. Now I can use Plaid without giving yet another company data about myself. I'm still deeply uncomfortable with typing my banking credentials into anything other than my bank's website though.
I think Mint uses Plaid, but I think the others may use Yodlee
In 2010 they transitioned from Yodlee to Intuits in house system, (FICDS?). I would be surprised if they moved from FICDS to Plaid, but maybe.
I thought Mint originally used a third party but transitioned to their own platform years ago? I remember reading about a rocky transition for users.
I've used Mint for years. It started as a cool tool to track you transactions. It then turned into a tool to sell me credit cards. The transaction logging never got "smarter".
Example: I use a credit card for everyday purchases and then pay it off each month. Mint counted every transaction AND my payment at debits therefore each month it showed I was spending double. Despite my efforts to train Mint to stop this, it never worked.
Last year I tried adding all my financial accounts, but it fell flat on it's face and never resolved the issue I had with double reporting (despite Mint knowing everything about my financial world).
I recently pulled all my accounts and added back only my primary credit card. I'll now use it only for the occasional "gotcha" such as a bank fee, double transaction or unrecognized transaction. I no longer am interested in fixing miscategorization.
Example: I use a credit card for everyday purchases and then pay it off each month. Mint counted every transaction AND my payment at debits therefore each month it showed I was spending double. Despite my efforts to train Mint to stop this, it never worked.
Last year I tried adding all my financial accounts, but it fell flat on it's face and never resolved the issue I had with double reporting (despite Mint knowing everything about my financial world).
I recently pulled all my accounts and added back only my primary credit card. I'll now use it only for the occasional "gotcha" such as a bank fee, double transaction or unrecognized transaction. I no longer am interested in fixing miscategorization.
Idk why it didn't work for you but I have both my bank account and credit card on mint and like you I pay it off fully each month. Each transaction on my credit card shows on my budget.
When I pay off my credit card, a transaction shows up on the credit card side, say +$1000, I put this is Credit Card Payment. Since I have my bank account also in Mint, another transaction of -$1000 comes my bank account and I put this in Credit Card Payment, so it cancels out.
I've done this enough that I no longer have to do it manually.
When I pay off my credit card, a transaction shows up on the credit card side, say +$1000, I put this is Credit Card Payment. Since I have my bank account also in Mint, another transaction of -$1000 comes my bank account and I put this in Credit Card Payment, so it cancels out.
I've done this enough that I no longer have to do it manually.
Yeah I have no clue. I performed those same steps but it never seemed to reflect on the budgets and income/debt reports. I've tried a half a dozen times to sort these and other issues out, and I've simply given up.
When I pay a credit card, its a credit and a debit. You see the money leave a checking account, and applied to the credit card.
IF for some reason the sign is backwards, open a support case with them, tell them they are interpreting the data wrong, and after spending a little time convincing level 1 and 2 support you arent wrong, they forward your call to engineering. In my experience, everything ive ever reported to them about them incorrectly ingesting data, gets fixed. (not always super promptly, but they fix it.)
IF for some reason the sign is backwards, open a support case with them, tell them they are interpreting the data wrong, and after spending a little time convincing level 1 and 2 support you arent wrong, they forward your call to engineering. In my experience, everything ive ever reported to them about them incorrectly ingesting data, gets fixed. (not always super promptly, but they fix it.)
Good to know, thanks for sharing. I may give it a final try.
I dunno... I kind of like the fact it hasn't changed.
I've been using it for years. It does what it needs to do, and literally nothing else.
Most of the charts and graphs work fine. It seems to be specifically the investment ones that require Flash, which is a bummer. Honestly I'd never used them before, so hadn't even noticed.
But in contrast to other software that completely overhauls its interface (usually for the worse) every few years, and turns into slower and slower bloatware... I guess it's kind of refreshing to me that Mint hasn't changed... knock on wood.
I've been using it for years. It does what it needs to do, and literally nothing else.
Most of the charts and graphs work fine. It seems to be specifically the investment ones that require Flash, which is a bummer. Honestly I'd never used them before, so hadn't even noticed.
But in contrast to other software that completely overhauls its interface (usually for the worse) every few years, and turns into slower and slower bloatware... I guess it's kind of refreshing to me that Mint hasn't changed... knock on wood.
It's a real shame that there isn't legitimate competition in this space. And before you mention it, personal capital is not a replacement as it solves a different problem.
One place to aggregate all financial accounts and give a clear picture, including bills, investments, categories, trends, credit score checks, and budgeting. Everything is easily synced. I don't need a desktop app, just a web app and an iOS app. There are manual solutions but I'm looking to have all this automated.
Basically Mint has nailed it if it wasn't completely abandoned and didn't as many account connectivity struggles. (it handles most of them well). They also have turbo tax, why isn't this integrated? You have your accounts connected already. Automatically pull the required forms from that financial provider into turbo tax. This doesn't seem impossible.
I don't mind the "offers" ad page, but when they started integrating ads in between transactions that was rather offensive. It's been a steep decline. I'm really hoping someone comes up with a strong alternative (VCs get on this). I'd be willing to pay annually too.
One place to aggregate all financial accounts and give a clear picture, including bills, investments, categories, trends, credit score checks, and budgeting. Everything is easily synced. I don't need a desktop app, just a web app and an iOS app. There are manual solutions but I'm looking to have all this automated.
Basically Mint has nailed it if it wasn't completely abandoned and didn't as many account connectivity struggles. (it handles most of them well). They also have turbo tax, why isn't this integrated? You have your accounts connected already. Automatically pull the required forms from that financial provider into turbo tax. This doesn't seem impossible.
I don't mind the "offers" ad page, but when they started integrating ads in between transactions that was rather offensive. It's been a steep decline. I'm really hoping someone comes up with a strong alternative (VCs get on this). I'd be willing to pay annually too.
Did Mint stay with Intuit when they spun Quicken out? I was assuming it went with Quicken and it seems like they are focusing on Quicken Online and Standalone. I'm not super thrilled with either at the moment.
Funny. I feel exactly the opposite. I use Quicken because I don't need a web app or an iOS app, just a desktop app. And I'm happy that Quicken seems to be mostly abandoned. It does what I need and I don't want a bunch of flashy new features added every month when I'm not going to use them anyway.
I think the original Quicken is in good hands. Eric Dunn, the CEO of the new company maintaining and enhancing the original version of Quicken, has a long and successful history with Quicken. His involvement with Quicken goes back to 1985, just one year after Scott Cook and Tom Proulx founded Intuit. Having some of the original leaders guiding Quicken again is a hopeful sign that it will remain relevant on the desktop.
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>One place to aggregate all financial accounts and give a clear picture, including bills, investments, categories, trends, credit score checks, and budgeting. Everything is easily synced. I don't need a desktop app, just a web app and an iOS app.
Most big US financial institutions offer it for free. BoA/AmEx/USAA are just a few named in this very thread.
Most big US financial institutions offer it for free. BoA/AmEx/USAA are just a few named in this very thread.
I haven't used Mint, so I went to take a look...
Am I missing something, or is Mint asking me to hand over the credentials to all my other financial accounts? That strikes me a horrendously awful idea.
Am I missing something, or is Mint asking me to hand over the credentials to all my other financial accounts? That strikes me a horrendously awful idea.
Yes they are and yes it is, but every other budgeting tool is going to ask for the same.
Yeah, I can't think of another way to do this, but one breach and all my financial accounts are leaked? That's not something I can risk.
It also boggles my mind that people are willing to give others their login credentials, even so far as to give all of their login credentials to one entity!
It's been normalized.
Even banks that explicitly prohibit user/pw sharing with external tools in their ToS (every one of them basically), will often have aggregation features in their portals that require you to enter the user/pw for the external accounts you want to connect.
They might even have back-end API's that allow other aggregators programmatic access to your data, that require your user/pw to auth. But don't share your user/pw with anyone, they say!
Even banks that explicitly prohibit user/pw sharing with external tools in their ToS (every one of them basically), will often have aggregation features in their portals that require you to enter the user/pw for the external accounts you want to connect.
They might even have back-end API's that allow other aggregators programmatic access to your data, that require your user/pw to auth. But don't share your user/pw with anyone, they say!
I mean, I can think of ways, the banks would have to actually implement them though. Why my bank doesn't let me generate account tokens the same way GitHub does is beyond me.
The value is in automatically adding transactions live, which requires access to live transaction streams from all of your accounts. If you want to do it manually... Excel, maybe?
Seems like all the big banks already have that functionality.
Wells-Fargo sure doesn't, nor does BMO, nor does American Express... so I'm not sure what you mean here?
https://www.wellsfargo.com/online-banking/my-money-map/
I know BoA definitely does, and that seems like Wells Fargo's implementation.
Someone else in the thread mentioned AmEx/USAA/PNC does it, but I can't seem to quickly find it via Google. I haven't used Chase, but I assume they also categorize their expenses. I guess I was assuming they do it since they all categorize expenses, it doesn't seem much of a leap to show a month to month breakdown of it.
I know BoA definitely does, and that seems like Wells Fargo's implementation.
Someone else in the thread mentioned AmEx/USAA/PNC does it, but I can't seem to quickly find it via Google. I haven't used Chase, but I assume they also categorize their expenses. I guess I was assuming they do it since they all categorize expenses, it doesn't seem much of a leap to show a month to month breakdown of it.
Yes, these institutions show your money map from their OWN institution, but not from any other institution, which is where the value lies.
Bank of America has functionality to add external accounts.
I'm currently trying out Copilot (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/copilot-smart-budgets-bills/id...)
Love the fact that it is a paid app, so my data will not be monetized as a revenue model. Happy to pay for privacy.
Love the fact that it is a paid app, so my data will not be monetized as a revenue model. Happy to pay for privacy.
"Love the fact that it is a paid app, so my data will not be monetized as a revenue model."
They say no ads. They don't say they won't sell your data.
They say no ads. They don't say they won't sell your data.
Under the heading: "Private and safe, like it should be."
"Copilot protects your information with bank-level security and has read-only access from your financial institutions. We treat your personal data like we’d want ours to be treated, which means never selling or sharing it with third parties. Ever."
Source: https://copilot.money
"Copilot protects your information with bank-level security and has read-only access from your financial institutions. We treat your personal data like we’d want ours to be treated, which means never selling or sharing it with third parties. Ever."
Source: https://copilot.money
Thanks for the correction. This wasn't clear from their homepage.
Privacy isn't guaranteed. They could take your money AND sell your data.
Thanks for the suggestion, I'm going to check it out. With that said, just because it's a paid app doesn't mean they can't also sell your information as an additional revenue stream.
Edit: Looks like it's been said already.
Edit: Looks like it's been said already.
I've never understood what motivated financial institutions to grant Mint access to account transactions and balances? Did pre-acquisition Mint somehow reach a tipping point in active users where financial institutions decided their customers would choose other banks if theirs wasn't accessible through Mint?
Are there other competing tools that have similar reach connecting to financial institution accounts?
Are there other competing tools that have similar reach connecting to financial institution accounts?
The financial institutions never gave mint access. What happened is that mint takes a users username and password then logs in as that user and downloads (or scrapes) the transactions.
Nowadays it’s a bit more integrated with the banks, with oauth support etc. but initially they were basically just scraping.
And yes, this is a massive security hole and likely against the banks TOS (deliberately giving your credentials to a third party).
Nowadays it’s a bit more integrated with the banks, with oauth support etc. but initially they were basically just scraping.
And yes, this is a massive security hole and likely against the banks TOS (deliberately giving your credentials to a third party).
A bunch of people in this thread complain how integration has gotten way worse over the years. I'm pretty confident this is banks "fighting back" with 2-fa and other additional security measures--many seem to have the goal of locking out these kinds of services. A very few seem to be embracing it (they have a token system that have revokable read-only access).
Personally, I'm looking to move banks/credit cards towards services with better integration at the expense of other things like better returns.
Personally, I'm looking to move banks/credit cards towards services with better integration at the expense of other things like better returns.
If you're looking for a envelope budgeting solution (along with meal planning, shopping lists, and more), consider using Domestica:
https://about.domestica.app
https://about.domestica.app
I don't know whether this is just nostalgia, or maybe my finances used to be less complicated, but nothing beats the experience I had with the Microsoft Money desktop app.
It was easy to download transactions from participating banks (I think in OFX format?) and it was easy to see the last successful sync date per account. The UI made it straightforward to categorize my transactions and dead-simple to compare monthly spend against an easily mutable budget.
In fact it was so easy to use that for a good long while I found myself manually entering cash receipts and even tracking my cash purchases. And it cost $0. It felt better than Quicken for personal finance.
Maybe I have missed some major innovation in personal finance software -- I largely use Mint and home-grown spreadsheets now, and I keep hearing that people use paid tools like YNAB or free complementary-to-the-company's-real-job tools like the Personal Capital suite -- but this all feels like it's worse now.
It was easy to download transactions from participating banks (I think in OFX format?) and it was easy to see the last successful sync date per account. The UI made it straightforward to categorize my transactions and dead-simple to compare monthly spend against an easily mutable budget.
In fact it was so easy to use that for a good long while I found myself manually entering cash receipts and even tracking my cash purchases. And it cost $0. It felt better than Quicken for personal finance.
Maybe I have missed some major innovation in personal finance software -- I largely use Mint and home-grown spreadsheets now, and I keep hearing that people use paid tools like YNAB or free complementary-to-the-company's-real-job tools like the Personal Capital suite -- but this all feels like it's worse now.
I agree. I tried GNU cash afterwards but it wasn’t the same.
Some early Microsoft products were so good - I was once lost in the middle of the Netherlands, typed a nearby company name in Microsoft Autoroute and got directions to my destination. All offline.
Nowadays, I’m can’t even get Windows 10 to navigate me to the correct program from the start menu search.
Some early Microsoft products were so good - I was once lost in the middle of the Netherlands, typed a nearby company name in Microsoft Autoroute and got directions to my destination. All offline.
Nowadays, I’m can’t even get Windows 10 to navigate me to the correct program from the start menu search.
Totally agree. Microsoft Money was close to perfect sometime in the 2000s. I am really sad that it got abandoned.
Presumably it still runs, do the integrations with banks no longer work?
Last time I tried no. If I remember correctly one bank after the other abandoned OFX.
What did they abandon it for, QBO?
I think for nothing. Are there any desktop programs that allow you to pull bank data without scraping?
Fun alternate history: Microsoft wins government approval of its Intuit purchase and spins off Money to Novell as promised, Novell handles Money as well as it did WordPerfect, and then nobody wants to challenge Microsoft-owned Quicken.
Reminds me that I really need to log back into this and wipe any data that can be wiped...
Just going to post a great alternative that people over at http://reddit.com/r/financialindependence/ recommend Personal Capital http://personalcapital.com/
I've been using it for about 4 years now. Best money management system I've used in a long time
I've been using it for about 4 years now. Best money management system I've used in a long time
Could you say what's good about it for you? Like task-management software, I think the "money management" category hides a lot of variation in how people think about and do things. The right product for one person is definitely the wrong product for another.
I switched because Personal Capital has much nicer UI and tools for understanding your investments. As my income increased over my career I found that budgeting was becoming the least complex part of my financial life compared to managing retirement, brokerage, stock grants, etc. funds.
I agree on PC being much better in tracking investments and performance especially as net worth increases compared to mint. I have also found it to be more solid connection wise vs. Mint over the last year where mint has really gone downhill for me for some reasonwith many unresolved issues, whereas the PC support tickets I filed were resolved rather promptly. Not all is great, categorization and tagging of transaction is terrible, and you can't have sub categories, so if you need that, you need to use something else, which is not great.
> Just going to post a great alternative
To clarify, personal capital is for US residents
From their support page:
>Although you can access the Personal Capital application from any location, we currently only support U.S based financial institutions (currency, USD) for linking accounts. Note that for security reasons, you will need a valid U.S. phone number to sign up for Personal Capital.
https://support.personalcapital.com/hc/en-us/articles/201169...
To clarify, personal capital is for US residents
From their support page:
>Although you can access the Personal Capital application from any location, we currently only support U.S based financial institutions (currency, USD) for linking accounts. Note that for security reasons, you will need a valid U.S. phone number to sign up for Personal Capital.
https://support.personalcapital.com/hc/en-us/articles/201169...
"For security reasons" is laughable.
They want your phone number because their "advisors" blow up your phone every month or two trying to get you to use their financial services (which I'll never do). They also like telling me in the UI that I'm "not putting enough of my money" to work or some BS, just cause I like having a little nest egg.
That being said, it's a massively useful tool. I'll gladly let my Pixel spam filter their calls every couple months in return for being able to track my net worth and investments so easily.
They want your phone number because their "advisors" blow up your phone every month or two trying to get you to use their financial services (which I'll never do). They also like telling me in the UI that I'm "not putting enough of my money" to work or some BS, just cause I like having a little nest egg.
That being said, it's a massively useful tool. I'll gladly let my Pixel spam filter their calls every couple months in return for being able to track my net worth and investments so easily.
I can confirm they will blow up your phone. I went through with their sales pitch once (didn't buy) and afterwards they stopped calling.
I use it in addition to Mint actually. Mint for tracking spending and PC for macro view, like net worth/investments. I recommend Personal Capital for this as well.
I use it in addition to Mint actually. Mint for tracking spending and PC for macro view, like net worth/investments. I recommend Personal Capital for this as well.
That's what ephemeral VoIP numbers are for. For a couple of bucks and ten minutes to install and configure the software you're all good.
Personal Capital is good, however, be aware they require a phone number for 2FA and they will call you once every 1-2 years on that phone number to try to sell you their advising services.
To me it's still worth that annoyance. The only thing I use it for is balancing my portfolio across ~8ish different brokerage accounts.
To me it's still worth that annoyance. The only thing I use it for is balancing my portfolio across ~8ish different brokerage accounts.
Personal capital is amazing for investments, but it's shit for budgeting, and that's why Mint still rocks.
Came here to say this. I use both and Personal Capital works better for investments than Mint and Mint for other things. I am still not satisfied with Mint Budgeting and I am currently trying YNAB. Mint sync with banks works better than all and YNAB is not intuitive to use (at least for me) . Maybe I am not the right demographic.
Same situation, I'm religious with budgeting in Mint, and Personal Capital gives me my over all net worth progress.
The Mint trends let you look at net worth and income over time... what makes Personal Capital so much better for looking at net worth progress? Genuinely curious because I might switch over if there's actual differentiation.
The biggest problem I had with Mint and investment accounts was that they were flaky, and always had some type of issue connecting. Personal Capital on the other hand works flawlessly with them. Conversely Mint seems to always work with other things like credit cards, while I run into issues on PC sometimes.
Haven't had the connection issue on my end. Ah well, seems like there's no reason to switch things over!
Can it aggregate/scrape data from your accounts though if you have 2FA setup on all your various accounts?
I tried it out after seeing all the glowing reviews in this thread and it couldn't connect to ally.com.
I've been using https://lunchmoney.app/ since it launched. On top of being one of the cleaner saas apps I use the developer has been super responsive whenever I've submitted feedback or feature requests. It's the first budgeting/expense tracking app I've ever actually stuck with which I attribute to the aforementioned "cleanness"/usability. Genuine +1 from me (and I'm not even including my referral link)
I've also become a Lunchmoney convert. To me, it really has the feel of Mint in the early days -- responsive developer, clean UX, and narrow focus. Definitely a product I'm happy to pay for.
LunchMoney has been amazing and the quality & speed of new features has been impressive considering it's being built by one developer!
Does it ingest transaction data from all major credit cards like Mint can? It only says "banks" on the landing page.
The data comes from plaid.com, so take a look.
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Founder of Lunch Money (https://lunchmoney.app) here– thank you everyone for the mention!
For those who haven't heard of Lunch Money, we launched originally on Show HN back in October 2019. I'm a solo founder and this is my full-time job. My motivation is to create a non-opinionated, delightfully simple to use personal finance tracker. We are a subscription-based service and I don't intend on ever selling ads. My intention is to keep this an indie product and continue improving for our small but growing user base.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to [email protected]
For those who haven't heard of Lunch Money, we launched originally on Show HN back in October 2019. I'm a solo founder and this is my full-time job. My motivation is to create a non-opinionated, delightfully simple to use personal finance tracker. We are a subscription-based service and I don't intend on ever selling ads. My intention is to keep this an indie product and continue improving for our small but growing user base.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to [email protected]
I actually deleted my Mint account this past weekend. I received a notification about one of my accounts not connecting and needed to upgrade the auth. It was then I realized I hadn’t logged in for years, it provided very little utility to me, and I was sharing a lot of purchase data and habits for no reason. So I deleted it. This article about sums up Mints demise.
Anyone who has seen how Intuit has bungled Quicken for the Mac multiple times in multiple ways for over a decade would not be surprised. I'm willing to pay for upgrades and still incredibly frustrated.
Quicken is a different company now than Intuit, as of spring 2016.
FWIW, I worked at Intuit after that divestiture, and there are super smart honest people there, comparable to high ranking pals from years of Apple engineering days, but, cripplingly, some total engineering absurdities from old-timers.
Basically, technical debt was vast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicken
FWIW, I worked at Intuit after that divestiture, and there are super smart honest people there, comparable to high ranking pals from years of Apple engineering days, but, cripplingly, some total engineering absurdities from old-timers.
Basically, technical debt was vast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicken
Oh, that explains why they seemingly have a real version out there. I've been suspicious to try it, but if they are separate it might be worth a try.
He forgot to mention all the innovation they've added to Mint in the way of new types of intrusive ads. Intuit bought Mint anti-competetively to protect Quicken. But they've also neglected Quicken and shifted it to a scummy subscription service. Probably they can't see a way making enough money off of personal finance. Intuit is a scummy company and I stay away from them. The real problem is banks not giving us open APIs to build our own personal finance tools.
I started using Actual Budget[0] and I love it. Not more SaaS that can break a any moment or sell my data. End-to-end encryption and scripting built-in is just perfect for me.
[0] https://actualbudget.com/
[0] https://actualbudget.com/
This is still an aaS, no, at $4/mo? If the apps still work if the company’s servers stop working or bug out, then why pay monthly if you don’t need the syncing?
I'm really intrigued by this, but the lack of bank syncing is kinda killer for me. That said he's been adding features at a pretty fast clip so it may have the level of parity I want this year.
I’ve never found these account aggregators to be that useful for me.
Most people have one bank account and maybe 1-3 credit cards. Often at the same bank. To me the digital experience for the big US banks like Chase and Amex are good enough that I don’t find something like Mint would add anything for me, and worse I can’t actually do anything with my account in an aggregator so what’s the point?
Most people have one bank account and maybe 1-3 credit cards. Often at the same bank. To me the digital experience for the big US banks like Chase and Amex are good enough that I don’t find something like Mint would add anything for me, and worse I can’t actually do anything with my account in an aggregator so what’s the point?
Quick: in the last year, what % of your discretionary income did you spend on dining out? Across multiple payment methods?
That's the kind of question that my bank's statements don't let me readily answer, but something like Mint does (I use YNAB because its flow works better for me, but YMMV).
That's the kind of question that my bank's statements don't let me readily answer, but something like Mint does (I use YNAB because its flow works better for me, but YMMV).
I've been using Mint consistently since mid-2016, and it's worked just fine for me. The Flash requirement for investment charts is annoying, but you can get around that with the trends charts by account. Frankly, what's useful to me is seeing the trends in my spending, earning, and savings rate over the past 3.5 years, and if I were to switch to another option that's being recommended here, I imagine I would lose all of that trend data.
Mint can be stupid at times (like counting transfers as spending), but you can fix those errors pretty easily. The ads are surprisingly irrelevant to me (e.g. offering a credit card that's worse than the one I primarily use), but I don't really care about that. If anything, I just need more investment guidance, not more credit cards...
Mint can be stupid at times (like counting transfers as spending), but you can fix those errors pretty easily. The ads are surprisingly irrelevant to me (e.g. offering a credit card that's worse than the one I primarily use), but I don't really care about that. If anything, I just need more investment guidance, not more credit cards...
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my brokerage/bank now does what mint does - aggregate data from different accounts from different banks and brokerages.
I like Mint primarily for its aggregation of all of my accounts. There are some occasional hiccups but in general it works very well with that. Then I download transactions as a CSV file and reconcile them manually in a spreadsheet.
Are any products mentioned here more tailored to that use case? More about the transaction log and quick glance at assets/debts than the budgeting and charts?
Are any products mentioned here more tailored to that use case? More about the transaction log and quick glance at assets/debts than the budgeting and charts?
There are so many avenues to lead generation that Mint can take that would also benefit the consumer that they just choose not to take. A simple one could be helping me optimize which credit card products I have to maximize my rewards. Another is offering an API to mint to allow developers to build out plugins and tools. Mint really has an opportunity to become the defacto personal finance platform and have market dominance similar to FB but they just aren't capitalizing.
Does anybody know of automated waterfall budgeting solution? I want to be able to forecast the future if I stick to my pay off plans. I want to be able to enter my bills, what I owe on them, then run scenarios on my financial future if I payed certain things off before others in waterfall fashion. Having an idea of the future helps motivate.
It was just a shell company, nothing but a social monetization machine. Like most startups of that time.
Bought out. Lack of innovation. After a while it feels a lot like lack of trying (in a relationship sense). I'm looking at you Evernote.
> It’s as if Mint, with 13 million-plus registered users, were a resource-constrained startup instead of a property of Intuit
Somebody doesn't get how business units work. Your OPEX has to constantly decrease while the revenue has to constantly increase, but your revenue mostly goes to other BUs' CAPEX. So there's no money to fix tech debt, unless it's buying crap to scale with, if you can show growth. Doesn't matter if your daddy is M$, your allowance will still suck unless your lemonade stand is making bank.
Somebody doesn't get how business units work. Your OPEX has to constantly decrease while the revenue has to constantly increase, but your revenue mostly goes to other BUs' CAPEX. So there's no money to fix tech debt, unless it's buying crap to scale with, if you can show growth. Doesn't matter if your daddy is M$, your allowance will still suck unless your lemonade stand is making bank.
Does anyone have suggestions on an alternative to Mint that simply aggregates data into a CSV / XLSX export across all of my accounts? I understand that Plaid's technology is designed to do this; I just wasn't sure if anyone had implemented it. For the record, I'd pay probably $10 - $20 per month for a service that does this with no privacy implications.
I've considered writing my own scraper specifically for the banks I use. This might be the most reliable way to do achieve your goal with your privacy requirement.
I just built an app that does this as part of its feature set - https://launch.getreconcile.com
Tiller (https://www.tillerhq.com/) does exactly this. You can dump the data into Google Sheets or into Excel.
I do this with a tool called plaid2qif, and a free Plaid developer account.
I've been using Mint daily for 12 years.
The #1 thing that I need from Mint is 100% reliable integrations so it can automatically pull all my data, which it no longer provides. I have been talking to their support for about a year asking to fix an integration with US's largest mortgage servicer.
The #2 thing is reliable inference of transaction categories. That's also starting to wither. Categories are all over the place.
Everything else I really don't care about. Even if there's on interface and just a big "Export to CSV" button I'd be thrilled about it.
The #1 thing that I need from Mint is 100% reliable integrations so it can automatically pull all my data, which it no longer provides. I have been talking to their support for about a year asking to fix an integration with US's largest mortgage servicer.
The #2 thing is reliable inference of transaction categories. That's also starting to wither. Categories are all over the place.
Everything else I really don't care about. Even if there's on interface and just a big "Export to CSV" button I'd be thrilled about it.
I use Mint purely as an API to coalesce and export the transaction history. I then use a Google Sheets workbook to view my balance and expenditures (by Mint-assigned category) over time — allowing for coarse insights, prioritization, and adjustment.
The Mint-assigned categories are terrible, and I regularly have to review and re-assign categorizations.
The Mint-assigned categories are terrible, and I regularly have to review and re-assign categorizations.
It you’re just using it to get data into Google Sheets then you should checkout https://Tillerhq.com
Do you have blank templates of your Sheets workbooks that you could share?
> The #1 thing that I need from Mint is 100% reliable integrations
So Mint does it's own integrations instead of using something like Yodlee or Plaid. For me, Mint has been way more rock solid than sites that use the others. All of them have gotten way worse over the years as banks have cranked up security and generally been hostile to APIs like this.
Personally, I'm looking to move my financial services in order to get better integrations (specifically faster ACH transfers and integrations like Mint). There's no reason a secure solution (that doesn't involve me giving Mint my credentials and allows read-only access) can't be widely adopted.
So Mint does it's own integrations instead of using something like Yodlee or Plaid. For me, Mint has been way more rock solid than sites that use the others. All of them have gotten way worse over the years as banks have cranked up security and generally been hostile to APIs like this.
Personally, I'm looking to move my financial services in order to get better integrations (specifically faster ACH transfers and integrations like Mint). There's no reason a secure solution (that doesn't involve me giving Mint my credentials and allows read-only access) can't be widely adopted.
I 100% agree with this, as an active Mint user. The integrations lately are terrible. I have to reconnect most accounts almost weekly, and they usually still fail after that. It's incredibly frustrating.
I use mint and it's so very helpful. I also have noticed some of the issues raised in this article. It's sad, but then again I've also marveled that the free service has lasted this long because I know I'm never going to click on any of the ads. Most people who are intelligent enough to budget with Mint are not going to pick a mortgage from a banner ad.
You still give them plenty of data to sell.
I was a big user of Mint for years, loved it. Then one day I realized they are aggregating all of my valuable data for nothing in return in terms value added product. So I left.
I'm confused as to why you loved it, if it added no value. Do you mean that you emotionally loved using it, but on an actual examination, realized it didn't help you manage your money?
my experience: I felt like I was a Responsible Adult when I used it, but didn't actually budget any better.
my experience: I felt like I was a Responsible Adult when I used it, but didn't actually budget any better.
On the surface it’s a great tool to consolidate all of my financial accounts in real time- checking, savings, credit cards, and investments. With a little effort the categorization of each transaction was helpful in tracking my spending. That’s where the usefulness ended. Most categories became cluttered with noise after a while and when I left there were no bill pay tools (not sure if they have those now?). Budgeting tools weren’t smart and at some point I started seeing ads for new credit cards each time I logged in. They has access to every single transaction I made, priceless data, and blew it.
I switched to https://www.honeyfi.com/ and couldn't be happier. It's really powerful for handling joint finances.
It's pretty clear what happened to me. Mint suddenly needed to be profitable once it was acquired, so the user experience was severely degraded by ads/"offers" being plopped in as often as possible.
One of my longest standing mint mysteries is how I alone was A/B tested into them trying to bum pizza off me: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CSg_ZxLU8AAF96d?format=png&name=...
I haven't been able to find any other confirmation that this was a thing outside the one time I saw it.
I haven't been able to find any other confirmation that this was a thing outside the one time I saw it.
That sounds like a April Fool's joke. Or maybe they saw you are a billionaire pizza entrepreneur?
I think it's just an awkward way to write $5, $15, and $30.
This is hilarious. Thanks for sharing.
Yikes, for-profit companies begging their customers for handouts to pay their employees? What a shit show.
lmao is this real
Could be a malicious browser extension or virus trying to steal your payment or bank login credentials in a seemingly innocuous way.
Wave is actually pretty decent now. Used to have an abysmal interface, but made some moves in the last few years.
I wish mint kept going. Used to love it.
I wish mint kept going. Used to love it.
Extremely coincidentally, I literally had Mint.com open for my daily scan when I saw this article.
From the quote: "For all of Mint’s failure to evolve and improve, its core functionality continues to be fundamentally useful."
--> Brilliant. That makes it EXACTLY how I like my tools & apps. It has basic, streamlined, mature, well-evolved and easy functionality, it works well and predictably, the owner is not trying to squeeze it out of extra revenue, and all's well with the world.
From the quote: "For all of Mint’s failure to evolve and improve, its core functionality continues to be fundamentally useful."
--> Brilliant. That makes it EXACTLY how I like my tools & apps. It has basic, streamlined, mature, well-evolved and easy functionality, it works well and predictably, the owner is not trying to squeeze it out of extra revenue, and all's well with the world.
I like TillerHQ (https://tillerhq.com/) for just extracting the financial data and dumping into a spreadsheet.
I have been using Prism for the bill pay feature.
https://www.prismmoney.com/
https://www.prismmoney.com/
Hey all, I noticed a bunch of folks talking about categorizing charges and the difficulties surrounding that. I've been working on an app that makes this a one-step process just by using Siri. Check it out here: https://launch.getreconcile.com/
Sorry for the shameless plug! Thought it would be appropriate to share my solution as it might help some of you out.
Sorry for the shameless plug! Thought it would be appropriate to share my solution as it might help some of you out.
IMO, the image showing all the various Siri interactions should be at the very top. It succinctly describes the product quite nicely.
Thanks for that feedback, I'll move some things around!
The killer feature I am waiting for is any site or app with automatic transaction importing from my bank without requiring me to input my online banking password and thus being one data breach away from someone having full access to all my accounts (sms-based 2FA notwithstanding)
This is a solved problem in tech (OAuth, I think) so clearly there are perverse financial incentives (ie. my bank doesn't want to make it easy to me to export my data)
Does anyone know what would have to happen to make this possible? My bank is in Canada, if that matters.
This is a solved problem in tech (OAuth, I think) so clearly there are perverse financial incentives (ie. my bank doesn't want to make it easy to me to export my data)
Does anyone know what would have to happen to make this possible? My bank is in Canada, if that matters.
For personal tiller excel with service account credentials
Yes, you need bank collaboration and they don't want to share the data. Right now the only way to get it is web scraping, basically.
You could create a company that stores all your credentials for you, and they perform an OAuth layer, but then you have to trust them :)
You could create a company that stores all your credentials for you, and they perform an OAuth layer, but then you have to trust them :)
Spendee? Not sure if they expanded out of Europe finally.
Or a financial institution could create read-only accounts with no permission to transfer any money anywhere. Besides fintech apps, these are useful for guardians of young or elderly to monitor them. Or when I am traveling in an area with untrustworthy wireless or cellular and want to see if a transaction cleared.
Fidelity Brokerage has this kind of account.
Fidelity Brokerage has this kind of account.
The issue is that many banks treat "read access" as a piece of verifying info that can give full account access.
Try a European bank, but I get the impression that they firmly wait until local regulation allows what they’ve built for elsewhere.
This is a solved problem in the EU thanks to PSD2.
It’s my understanding that banks in the EU must make their APIs public after PSD2. So...regulation is about the only thing they will get the incumbent to share their data
There are ways. I'm working on one right now!
It's not easy and go to market will take a looong time so I'm keeping my day job but I believe it's a problem worth solving.
> It's not easy and go to market will take a looong time so I'm keeping my day job but I believe it's a problem worth solving.
Is your solution technical, or do you also have a solution for the fact that it's a service banks have no incentive to offer? (And incentives not to)
Is your solution technical, or do you also have a solution for the fact that it's a service banks have no incentive to offer? (And incentives not to)
Fintech companies have tried to get at this goldmine of user data. You got it right, banks will never willingly give away this treasure trove of highly monetizable and privileged data abd drive their memberbade away from their own digital offerings.
I see lots of alternative suggestions here, but not much mention of PocketSmith. I just ditched Mint a couple weeks ago after using them for 10 years and settled on trying PocketSmith. So far I've been pretty impressed. Their support has been on point, and they have some really neat forecasting features. There are some pain points though like their mobile app lacking some critical features and their use of Yodlee. Not associated, just wanted to share.
I can't believe no one here has mentioned Buxfer (YC W07) yet! - https://www.buxfer.com/
I've tried a bunch of these apps and they're either too expensive, don't support multiple currencies (a deal-killer for me), or don't work well.
I highly recommend them. The founders have kept it alive and even launched a much better account syncing feature in the last few months - I happily pay for their $5/month Pro account.
I've tried a bunch of these apps and they're either too expensive, don't support multiple currencies (a deal-killer for me), or don't work well.
I highly recommend them. The founders have kept it alive and even launched a much better account syncing feature in the last few months - I happily pay for their $5/month Pro account.
I’ve never seen them before - and it allows me to enter transactions ahead of time! However, it can’t track stock options without doing it manually. Wish they supported that.
Founder here.
Our product is very optimized for people who want to see things ahead of time. Entering stuff manually, reminders, budgets, forecasting, all the way up to retirement planning.
About stock options: We do support automatic syncing with investment accounts. Is your institution not supported? Or is there some other issue you are facing?
If you'd like, you can email me at [email protected] and I would love to assist you further.
Our product is very optimized for people who want to see things ahead of time. Entering stuff manually, reminders, budgets, forecasting, all the way up to retirement planning.
About stock options: We do support automatic syncing with investment accounts. Is your institution not supported? Or is there some other issue you are facing?
If you'd like, you can email me at [email protected] and I would love to assist you further.
Curious to know why MFA is only available in the most expensive category (PRIME)?
It seems like if I don't pay the full amount I don't deserve my budget to be as secure as possible. And this is a no go for me.
It seems like if I don't pay the full amount I don't deserve my budget to be as secure as possible. And this is a no go for me.
Yeah, that's something we have received feedback about several times. The initial reasoning was something like this:
1: We didn't have MFA until we had PRIME. Generally speaking, we only add new features to our higher-end plans.
2: Our business model doesn't allow us to give away stuff for free. No ads, no selling data, simple subscription based pricing. MFA costs us money (SMS, phone calls).
So that's the logic, which I understand might not be very convincing. We are exploring making it part of our free plan, or a lower tier plan.
1: We didn't have MFA until we had PRIME. Generally speaking, we only add new features to our higher-end plans.
2: Our business model doesn't allow us to give away stuff for free. No ads, no selling data, simple subscription based pricing. MFA costs us money (SMS, phone calls).
So that's the logic, which I understand might not be very convincing. We are exploring making it part of our free plan, or a lower tier plan.
Understandable, thanks for the extensive info! I think this should be included in the lowest paid tier, at the very least. Or disable SMS/phone calls and have people have the option to only use an authenticator app.
Honestly I couldn't get past the homepage. The UI looked horrible, and there are no screenshots of the app so I suspect its even worse. You should invest a bit more in your presentation
they have a live demo
https://demo.buxfer.com/dashboard
I now use firefly-iii. I always found Mint's storing banking credentials uncomfortable. I find that inputting transactions manually increases my awareness of spending.
Personal Capital is great -- it's free, way better than mint, and you don't have to do the investment stuff if you don't want to. I really like it. Get $50 at my referral link, too. :) https://share.personalcapital.com/x/xtw34J
My favorite Mint bug: If you are lucky accounts get listed twice so you can double your money by using Mint.
Bug or a feature :)
Bug or a feature :)
I really like `albert` on the Apple Store for this. They even have texting as a component to it which is really nice.
I mean, they were feature complete. There was nothing to add, only to remove to add an upsell.
It also doesn't help they run on Plaid and Plaid's a ticking time bomb piece of tech (despite what they sold for).
It also doesn't help they run on Plaid and Plaid's a ticking time bomb piece of tech (despite what they sold for).
Mint is great for tracking my spending and plain numbers, but lacks a lot of features.
I use a Google Sheet to track my worth bi-annually. It's real easy to update and only doing it twice a year forces me to not micro-manage my money which reduces bad-decisions and stress.
Here's the template with some dummy data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AKA3qM8T5PNbmXoW5XKY...
I use a Google Sheet to track my worth bi-annually. It's real easy to update and only doing it twice a year forces me to not micro-manage my money which reduces bad-decisions and stress.
Here's the template with some dummy data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AKA3qM8T5PNbmXoW5XKY...
Are they still using YUI?
I left because it felt like updates never happened; they just lost or reset my cost basis for my three years worth of investment tracking at the time; and it was now owned by a company hostile to tax-payer convenience.
It felt great to leave.
I left because it felt like updates never happened; they just lost or reset my cost basis for my three years worth of investment tracking at the time; and it was now owned by a company hostile to tax-payer convenience.
It felt great to leave.
Truebill is what Mint was supposed to be if it wasn't acquired. Plus, we're YC. If you haven't yet, try it!
Title needs "... Mint [personal finance service (USA)]"
I assumed it was Mint the Linux distro, it's one of the most over used company names.
I assumed it was Mint the Linux distro, it's one of the most over used company names.
More like, "Why is Intuit so awful?"
My personal story on this:
I was a Mint early-adopter, and some time before Intuit purchased Mint I was also a TurboTax online user. I liked using Mint mostly just to track my net worth / assets and did so for several years.
Fast forward a year or two, and Intuit had purchased Mint. A few months later I came to realize that Intuit was now creating TurboTax accounts for all existing Mint users without bothering to cross-reference existing account email addresses between the two databases. When I signed up for Mint originally, it was using your full email address as a user name. So now, I had a Mint account which was my email address, an old TurboTax account which had that same email address on file, but a different user name, and a new TurboTax account which WAS my email address, tied to the existing Mint account.
So what happened? I tried to log into Turbo Tax using the account I already had used for taxes in the past to import my Mint information, but I was told that email address is already in use by another TurboTax account - the one Intuit created for me instead of merging my existing accounts...
Several phone calls later, I was assured the only path forward was to start using the new account to do my taxes if I want Mint integration. I decline and asked why they couldn't just get rid of the erroneous new account they created for me and let me combine the ones I already had. I was not about to lose years of tax returns on my old account to start a new account without that information. They said it was impossible.
Ultimately, I decided I'd delete the old Intuit/TurboTax account and start fresh, to take advantage of the integration features. They told me they were required by law to keep my old TurboTax account data, but that I could change the password to something random/long and change the email address to something non-existent to prevent myself or anyone else from being able to log in anymore.
At this point, I was very annoyed, and chose a suitably-annoyed fake email address directing hatred toward Intuit, which I won't repeat here, but rest assured it included a reference to Intuit and non-standard sex acts. I also changed the password to a 64-character random string, which I did not write down. Fast forward a couple weeks...
Lo and behold, I tried logging into Mint a few weeks after changing my Intuit password and wouldn't you know, that account was inaccessible now, the exact opposite of what I was told they were going to do... Better yet, I couldn't reset the password because I had changed the account email address on file to the aforementioned vulgarity. Now you see where this is going... I called customer service, and the rep assured me she could help if I could recall the email address I had used... So, I apologized in advance, and proceeded to tell her the address was "Eff"IntuitInThe"A"@"eff"you.com (something in this ballpark, and edited for language).
Needless to say, we had a good laugh. I haven't really used Mint ever since, and have been considering deleting my account (if I can even do that without destroying my TurboTax account...)
My personal story on this:
I was a Mint early-adopter, and some time before Intuit purchased Mint I was also a TurboTax online user. I liked using Mint mostly just to track my net worth / assets and did so for several years.
Fast forward a year or two, and Intuit had purchased Mint. A few months later I came to realize that Intuit was now creating TurboTax accounts for all existing Mint users without bothering to cross-reference existing account email addresses between the two databases. When I signed up for Mint originally, it was using your full email address as a user name. So now, I had a Mint account which was my email address, an old TurboTax account which had that same email address on file, but a different user name, and a new TurboTax account which WAS my email address, tied to the existing Mint account.
So what happened? I tried to log into Turbo Tax using the account I already had used for taxes in the past to import my Mint information, but I was told that email address is already in use by another TurboTax account - the one Intuit created for me instead of merging my existing accounts...
Several phone calls later, I was assured the only path forward was to start using the new account to do my taxes if I want Mint integration. I decline and asked why they couldn't just get rid of the erroneous new account they created for me and let me combine the ones I already had. I was not about to lose years of tax returns on my old account to start a new account without that information. They said it was impossible.
Ultimately, I decided I'd delete the old Intuit/TurboTax account and start fresh, to take advantage of the integration features. They told me they were required by law to keep my old TurboTax account data, but that I could change the password to something random/long and change the email address to something non-existent to prevent myself or anyone else from being able to log in anymore.
At this point, I was very annoyed, and chose a suitably-annoyed fake email address directing hatred toward Intuit, which I won't repeat here, but rest assured it included a reference to Intuit and non-standard sex acts. I also changed the password to a 64-character random string, which I did not write down. Fast forward a couple weeks...
Lo and behold, I tried logging into Mint a few weeks after changing my Intuit password and wouldn't you know, that account was inaccessible now, the exact opposite of what I was told they were going to do... Better yet, I couldn't reset the password because I had changed the account email address on file to the aforementioned vulgarity. Now you see where this is going... I called customer service, and the rep assured me she could help if I could recall the email address I had used... So, I apologized in advance, and proceeded to tell her the address was "Eff"IntuitInThe"A"@"eff"you.com (something in this ballpark, and edited for language).
Needless to say, we had a good laugh. I haven't really used Mint ever since, and have been considering deleting my account (if I can even do that without destroying my TurboTax account...)
The addressable market for Mint is people that want to track their budget. They maxed out. Their only revenue model is giving you leads for credit cards based on broad categories.
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With a little more data it would be amazing. Just forward your Gmail to it and it would line up all your receipts with all your credit card purchases. Now its revenue model is Honey and giving you targeted adds for competitors to specific SKUs it knows you are buying.
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Who would be dumb enough to give all their emails to this type of company? I don't know, but there are piles of people that give out their bank passwords to "validate their accounts" with Plaid. So maybe it is not too low.
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With a little more data it would be amazing. Just forward your Gmail to it and it would line up all your receipts with all your credit card purchases. Now its revenue model is Honey and giving you targeted adds for competitors to specific SKUs it knows you are buying.
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Who would be dumb enough to give all their emails to this type of company? I don't know, but there are piles of people that give out their bank passwords to "validate their accounts" with Plaid. So maybe it is not too low.
I stopped using mint for two reasons.
1.) Privacy reasons: they don't charge for the service so I pay via data sharing
2.) Legal concerns: my bank's TOS imply if I give my password to someone it harms my ability to claim fraud. I worry if there is ever a security issue with the protocols Mint uses, I will have my checking account drained or CC used willy nilly and have to fight uphill to dispute the charges.
I used Mint for many years to track my spending.
I found that moving my "entertainment" budget - for meals out, movies, and sundries - into cash led to me overall spending less, without the mental strain of pouring over things.
Most credit cards nowadays give pie charts and stuff similar to Mint in the web UI. I wish I didn't have to spread spending across multiple vendors since I maximize cashback, but I wish someone would examine whether, in the long run, cashback actually saves you money or if it just makes you spend more due to the frictionless nature of using a credit card. Casinos use chips for a reason.
I withdraw my entertainment money monthly, and it makes me think hard about each cup of tea out etc. I think in conversations about cashless being king, we forget the very real phenomenon of overspending with plastic.
1.) Privacy reasons: they don't charge for the service so I pay via data sharing
2.) Legal concerns: my bank's TOS imply if I give my password to someone it harms my ability to claim fraud. I worry if there is ever a security issue with the protocols Mint uses, I will have my checking account drained or CC used willy nilly and have to fight uphill to dispute the charges.
I used Mint for many years to track my spending.
I found that moving my "entertainment" budget - for meals out, movies, and sundries - into cash led to me overall spending less, without the mental strain of pouring over things.
Most credit cards nowadays give pie charts and stuff similar to Mint in the web UI. I wish I didn't have to spread spending across multiple vendors since I maximize cashback, but I wish someone would examine whether, in the long run, cashback actually saves you money or if it just makes you spend more due to the frictionless nature of using a credit card. Casinos use chips for a reason.
I withdraw my entertainment money monthly, and it makes me think hard about each cup of tea out etc. I think in conversations about cashless being king, we forget the very real phenomenon of overspending with plastic.
Every year around tax time I find myself looking to replace Mint, being unimpressed with the competition, and wondering the same thing as I import the previous year's mint csv into a spreadsheet... Why isn't there an open source set of tools for us to do this for ourselves?
Considering how many people seem to use Mint just to download the CSV of their transactions for Excel or whatever, I'm surprised there isn't some sort of open-source scraping tool (or set of scrapers) meant to be used by developers (and normal people) that will simply grab data from your bank using your credentials and save them into some sort of standardized format.
The standards of such a tool would revolve around standardizing the inputs (url and auth) and outputs (structured financial info).
The obvious answer is that I should start it ("...2nd best time is now"). Unfortunately, I don't have the time. I suppose that's also the answer to the larger question.
Considering how many people seem to use Mint just to download the CSV of their transactions for Excel or whatever, I'm surprised there isn't some sort of open-source scraping tool (or set of scrapers) meant to be used by developers (and normal people) that will simply grab data from your bank using your credentials and save them into some sort of standardized format.
The standards of such a tool would revolve around standardizing the inputs (url and auth) and outputs (structured financial info).
The obvious answer is that I should start it ("...2nd best time is now"). Unfortunately, I don't have the time. I suppose that's also the answer to the larger question.
My impression of Intuit's acquisition of Mint was always that it was done precisely so that it wouldn't grow and become a major player in personal finance. That what they were really purchasing was the Mint userbase in an attempt to cross sell them on paid products. And so they have kept Mint around with the absolute bare minimum of effort for the sales funnel through to revenue generating products
I have this same impression, but I also use Mint to organize my finances.
I'm a big fan of how I can categorize expenditures and export them as CSV's or charts, which I can then send to my accountant for an easy tax season.
Without this (so far) free tool - as I have not paid for anything Intuit related minus likely my personal data - my annual U.S. taxes would be a massive pain in the rear end, being that I'm self-employed.
I'm a big fan of how I can categorize expenditures and export them as CSV's or charts, which I can then send to my accountant for an easy tax season.
Without this (so far) free tool - as I have not paid for anything Intuit related minus likely my personal data - my annual U.S. taxes would be a massive pain in the rear end, being that I'm self-employed.
What tool will take Mint’s place for this exact use case?
Yup. As an avid Mint user, nothing as happened to Mint as far as I care. The people working on Mint competitors are probably going to get a rude awakening. Sharing one's bank and brokerage passwords is not done lightly, after all.
I use Wave, free accounting tool that has ledger and account-driven structure (i.e., you set, say a "Software" account, perhaps with a sub account of "subscription" etc.) I was able to use it to setup the exact structure I needed to categorize expenses/revenue to correspond to my Schedule C every year. Connects to credit cards and bank accounts to capture all of those transactions too. It's been extremely useful for me, though I'm not sure how long that will continue: They were purchased by H&R Block this past year.
[deleted]
Yeah, this is what's gonna happen to Plaid.
Honestly, the biggest value Mint and all the Intuit products have is the import from X-bank/investment account/etc. I'd pay for the ability to import into a spreadsheet from my money accounts.
I've had it linked to my accounts since 2011, and it's great to have such a rich history to search through. Sure it's not the greatest, but it's miles ahead of the bank's interfaces for searching through transactions. It's easy to export things to csv and make budgets by adding up category totals.
I didn't want to share my financial data and wanted to use the six jars budgeting system so I made this tool to help myself. It's a pwa so you can save it to your phone and all of the data is stored locally (very private). Nothing ever gets posted to the server.
sixjars.xyz
sixjars.xyz
> Intuit buying out its own competitor, in turn, echoed Microsoft’s failed attempt two decades earlier to purchase Intuit, which had trounced its Microsoft Money software.)
Anybody know the history about why Microsoft Money failed to hold ground?
Anybody know the history about why Microsoft Money failed to hold ground?
I've been using https://copilot.money/ which is great.
Clean UI, uses Plaid to import transactions, paid for by subscription, not your data.
Clean UI, uses Plaid to import transactions, paid for by subscription, not your data.
If it uses Plaid, they are taking all of the data they can get from your banks with your login.
Fair-- I've resigned to viewing Plaid as our necessary evil banking infrastructure provider.
It's my understanding that, at the least, Plaid doesn't sell data to third parties you don't authorize. If I'm wrong about this I'd love to know.
It's my understanding that, at the least, Plaid doesn't sell data to third parties you don't authorize. If I'm wrong about this I'd love to know.
Unfortunately, personal finance has been strange as far as innovation is concerned. Mostly it has regressed (negative innovation?). I haven't encountered a single service that has managed to even come close to the depth and breadth of decades old Microsoft Money. MS Money supported budgeting, bills, cashflow forecast, investment portfolio, performance, allocations, comparative reporting etc. All with a incredible depth. Despite all its faults, MS built an incredible product, just that it didn't move their bottom line. It was a sad moment when they discontinued it.
Today I like Personal Capital. But it lacks breadth. Solid Portfolio tracking, Retirement Planner. Shallow budgeting, bill tracking, cash flow.
I miss MS Money
Today I like Personal Capital. But it lacks breadth. Solid Portfolio tracking, Retirement Planner. Shallow budgeting, bill tracking, cash flow.
I miss MS Money
I'd love to find an app that supports my use case. I already know my consistent monthly bills (house, electric, gas, water, sewer, internet, cellphone, student loans, etc etc etc) and I know how much I have left over for varying costs which are basically food/booze/entertainment. I'd like to make a budget for just that and have it let me know how much money I have left to eat/drink/play today, this week, this month. I already use mint and a spreadsheet to see the big picture, I don't want to connect to anything.
Prism is pretty amazing and seems woefully underutilized:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobilligy....
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobilligy....
What's saddening is that Mint was so ahead of their time in this area, but it just didn't happen.
Why can't your banker do your taxes for you? Why can't they tell you how you'll pay for your kid's college tuition? Why can't they give you a personalized budget to reach some level of wealth in a certain number of years? Why can't your banker tell you when you're ready to buy a house or if you're borrowing more than you can realistically afford? Why can't they tell you when you're reaching dangerously high credit card debt or whether you can really afford that auto-loan?
They could do all of this with the current data that they have. But imagine if you gave them more data, like your current employment position, geographic location, and family status. They might be able to tell you if you're being under or over-paid, how others similarly situated plan their savings, or when is the right time (if ever) to move from renting to owning real estate.
Banking systems have an enormous wealth of data, that can do so much good, but they are still mostly a simple table of deposits and withdrawals.
Why can't your banker do your taxes for you? Why can't they tell you how you'll pay for your kid's college tuition? Why can't they give you a personalized budget to reach some level of wealth in a certain number of years? Why can't your banker tell you when you're ready to buy a house or if you're borrowing more than you can realistically afford? Why can't they tell you when you're reaching dangerously high credit card debt or whether you can really afford that auto-loan?
They could do all of this with the current data that they have. But imagine if you gave them more data, like your current employment position, geographic location, and family status. They might be able to tell you if you're being under or over-paid, how others similarly situated plan their savings, or when is the right time (if ever) to move from renting to owning real estate.
Banking systems have an enormous wealth of data, that can do so much good, but they are still mostly a simple table of deposits and withdrawals.
I believe its mostly to do with the business model of Mint. In their initial years they were radically focused on the product and customer experience. But as with every so-called FREE product owners, founders of mint have now shifted their complete focus to monetization.
This is pattern and I have witnessed it happening in india too with personal finance products. Infact founders are expressly building products on mint model: create free expense tracking app, spend a year on customer experience, acquire millions of users, and finally shift their focus on upselling financial products leaving customers in the lurch. This looks like a brutal barter system to me.
One day users will figure out a solution to this pervasive problem in software industry and will choose products/tools prudently.
This is pattern and I have witnessed it happening in india too with personal finance products. Infact founders are expressly building products on mint model: create free expense tracking app, spend a year on customer experience, acquire millions of users, and finally shift their focus on upselling financial products leaving customers in the lurch. This looks like a brutal barter system to me.
One day users will figure out a solution to this pervasive problem in software industry and will choose products/tools prudently.
I moved around through a lot of budget apps/ynab/etc. Ended up just binding the .csv from different accounts together and taking another look by hand. It's good to review spending, anyway.
Wow! I see that they removed flash now!
I have a mint account. Have not used it in three years. It kept failing to sync to my accounts and I got sick of correcting it all the time. It ended up being a huge burden compared to the value added.
The best non-US service I've found is Everypocket[1]. It almost seems like a glorified Excel, but it's just so simple. Unfortunately, it looks like the dev has abandoned the project. He doesn't respond on his own subreddit[2] anymore.
I prefer the so-called zero-based budgeting. I dislike YNAB though.
[1]: https://www.everypocket.com/
[2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/everypocket/
I prefer the so-called zero-based budgeting. I dislike YNAB though.
[1]: https://www.everypocket.com/
[2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/everypocket/