Weekend Website
Seeing as Mint.com won the TechCrunch 40 competition this past week and received the $50,000 award as being the most impressive presenting company, we thought now would be a good time to introduce you to them for our Weekend Website Feature. In this article we’ll explain what Mint is, some of their features, how they’re keeping your information safe, and perhaps a few things that they could improve on.
–What is Mint?–
Mint is "Refreshing Money Management" online. Likely designed to compete (although not directly) with Quicken, one of the most popular current methods that people use to manage money, Mint is an all online version that will help you keep your finances in order. It has the capability to sync all of your accounts (bank, credit cards, etc.), and best of all, it’s free.
–Features–
- Mint categorizes your purchases into categories like gas and grocery, although it doesn’t always get it right
- It can potentially save you money — "Mint constantly searches through thousands of offers from hundreds of providers to find the best deals on everything from bank accounts to credit cards, cable, phone, Internet, and more." While it saves you money, this is how the make money.
- Access anywhere – one of the benefits of being online
- They connect with over 3,500 financial institutions in the US
- Each day your accounts will get updated – this will prevent you from going to multiple sites to keep your finances updated. The average person in the US has four different banks that they work with, so this can definitely save time
- Interface – it is intuitive, clean, and looks nice – unlike some of the Web 2.0 companies we’ve seen
- Helps you see where you’re "wasting" money with your purchases – maybe on food, clothing, etc.
- Get email and text message reminders – Mint tells you when you have upcoming bills due, and can email you with info on your spending activity
- Site is viewable on a mobile phone
–Security–
Security is probably the biggest issue for Mint because people are going to be skeptical of providing the username and password for all of their bank accounts to a start-up. However, if you want Mint to work for you, you’ll need to do this. They say they give you bank-level security and anonymity and they don’t share or sell information, however, just saying that they’re safe isn’t going to be enough for everybody.
If you’d like more information about how Mint keeps your information safe, they’ve got a whole page dedicated to explaining what they do. After reading it, I must say, I do feel better about it. They use the same back-end to retrieve data from your financial institutions as Microsoft Money uses, so that ought to make you feel better. Microsoft Money has been around for a while, with no security issues.
–Getting Started–
Getting started is as simple as entering the login information for your financial accounts. Mint will pull that data in and then show you a dashboard with all of your finances displayed. It only takes minutes to get started – literally. When I was test-driving the service, I was setup in about 5 minutes.
–What’s missing–
Mint is nice, but I wouldn’t consider it a "complete" financial planner and organizer. For those accustomed to using Quicken’s Online Bill Pay, they’ll be missing it in Mint. They’re also missing the ability to track stock portfolios and investments, and the service is currently only available in the U.S.
Another thing that’s missing right now is the capability to meet the demands of people wanting to give it a try. After winning TechCrunch 40, many people were having problems with the site . They definitely had a huge spike in traffic because of the fact that they won, and they just weren’t prepared for it. It’s understandable, but I’m sure they’ve lost a few users already because of it.
–Wrapping it up–
There are two things that stand out in my mind when I think of Mint – ease of use and interface. It’s so simple for anyone to use, and to boot, it looks nice! They’ve got all kinds of charts and pie graphs that make analyzing your spending habits simple and easy on the eyes.
Their biggest hurdle that they’ll have to jump over will likely be security. From the sounds of it, they’ve truly thought the security issues through, however proving that to skeptical users may be tough.
Mint is off to a great start, and it’s surely promising. Just winning the TechCrunch 40 competition has put them in a position where they can only go up from here. I look forward to seeing how they’re able to improve, and whether the mainstream will be willing to ditch Quicken or Microsoft Money for a web based solution.
If you’d like to get set-up on mint, visit www.mint.com and click "sign up now."
I’ve been looking for something like this for quite a while now, but haven’t been successful. Mint won’t do it for me either: it’s for the U.S. Does anyone have any suggestions for a programme to keep track of finances, but then for Europeans? Or for Belgium
Ashley:
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Thanks for the overview. I’d love to see a comparison of the top 5 online accounting sites…
One such site I’ve been testing is ClearCheckbook.com – what I like about this one is that it specifically *discourages* you from entering ANY account numbers for your financial institutions. Of course, that means there are no automatic downloads of your financial information, and none of the other aggregate features of the other similar sites. On the other hand, no account numbers means less risk! Features: track, balance, and upload an unlimited number of checking, savings, and credit card accounts; import existing bank records; reminders; set an unlimited number of categories; set spending limits; and it’s 100% free.
satur9:
You may want to check out Wesabe (wesabe.com) or Buxfer (buxfer.com). With a quick look at the FAQ sections on each site, I didn’t see “US only,” but I’m not certain what restrictions each may have… On Wesabe’s signup page, I did see a “Country” section, which may indicate that any country listed is eligible…
Aare you looking for a program or for a website?
Does it allow users to create a budget like Microsoft Money does? A budget tracking tools is a must for me.
@Scott: thanks for the tips, I’m checking them out!
@Ashley: I’d rather have a programme, but if there’s nothing that meets my needs around, I’d go for a website.
Not that I saw.
Here’s a free program (a lite version) that I’ve heard is decent:
[mechcad.net]
Thank you both Scott and Ryan for the tips! At the moment I’m trying out both AceMoney and Wesabe. I’m a bit reluctant for the website-stuff, but Wesabe is actually a lot of fun, so I’m doubting. AceMoney needs a bit of figuring out, but it certainly looks good, much better than anything I’ve tried out before.
No problem…let us know how they work out for you.
Well, I think I’ll stick with AceMoney. It does just what I need, has some great report functions, and is easy to use. I might even buy the paid version, multiple accounts will be useful – managing a family of 6 isn’t always simple
and right now anything in dollars is a bargain for us Europeans 
Have you thought about picking up Quicken or Microsoft Money if you’re going to spend money on the software anyways? They don’t cost that much more and they are both very respected pieces of software, and between the two I prefer Quicken.
I’ll give them a try too, if I can find a trial version of Quicken that is.
[quicken.intuit.com]
Great, thanks!
Hm, well, that was quite the disappointment. Both are really focussed on the American market. MS Money: trials only for US citizens. Quicken: I can’t import my bank data. So I’ll stick to AceMoney, which I did like a lot
Wow, that is disappointing. I didn’t realize that Microsoft Money wasn’t for a global market, and it is a problem that Quicken can’t import the common data types anymore. They decided to ditch the common files and replace it with a newer “better” format that hasn’t quite caught on. To help push it along they cut out support for that type of file from the application, and I’m guessing that’s the problem you’re having.
The new “better” format that quicken came up with also required a changed in the license agreement. Financial institution’s have to pay more money than before to use the new format. That’s why the new format hasn’t came along, why some banks charge a fee for downloading statement in the quicken format, and why some banks don’t offer statement downloads.