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Mint sucks, so why aren't there any real competitors in that space?
- ktcoupon 13y agoEvery budgeting application is going to have some problems with missed or incorrect data. And they've been consistently working on improving their connections with most of the major banks. The other stuff that the author talks about are simple website changes that the Mint team could make if he just send them suggestions and ideas for improvement. I don't think they're anything serious that would warrant the claim that Mint 'sucks'.
- antonpug 13y agoThere is serious feature deficiency going on there. If you look at support and feature forums, there are basic features that users have been asking for years, that are still not implemented. Connection and sync issues aside, Mint's math isn't always right either. I don't think Mint is completely useless, nonetheless, it sucks compared to what customers expect. Simple appears to have much more robust budgeting tools - too bad they are stuck with their "use our debit card crap"
- busterarm 13y agoI would say that I found Mint pretty close to useless. I was an early user and there wasn't much good that I got out of it. I have to give it some credit though, because just putting some effort in really helped me get control of my finances at a time when I was really bad at it. I can say the same for YNAB, which I've bought and since stopped using. I simply don't need it, but it's nice to know that I have it if I ever do. I actually think YNAB's model where you don't get to automatically sync your accounts works better at its goal. These days I have an excellent mental model of my finances at any given time. Eliminating debt plays a huge part in that. Mint got me to think about my cashflow in a way that motivated me to eliminate the burden of debt from my life. YNAB got me to think about my cashflow in a way that motivated me to control unnecessary spending and use short-term debt where appropriate. It probably could have done what Mint did too, but I was already at that point when I started using it.
- antonpug 13y agoI use Mint moreso for visual organization of sorts. I don't have any debt and pay everything on time regardless of Mint, but it's nice to have a visual representing all your spending, trends etc.
- busterarm 13y agoThat's basically what I used it for as well, but the constant bugs and worries about the potential of a data breach with software connected to my checking accounts got me to stop using it.
- DLarsen 13y agoI had similar experiences. The real value for a lot of folks would be to develop the proper mindset and decision making process for everyday spending. I have a hobby project (http://www.spendlight.com/ http://www.spendlight.com/) that's growing out of my own household's efforts to get on the same page with our mental model of our finances. The charts in Mint or the wall of numbers coming out of a typical bank statement wasn't directly helpful for my wife and I to truly coordinate our spending and reach a consensus on what expenses were good vs bad. The more we've focused on our decisions rather than the mere dollars and sense, the more progress we've made in becoming responsible spenders. Anyhow, I'd love to get more insights from folks such as yourself who were able to get their finances under control. I think a tool that accounts the behavioral realities of our spending habits would have substantial value for at least a handful of folks. Agree? Disagree?
- loupeabody 13y agoThere is some noteworthy competition to Mint. I don't have any experience with these, but they seem promising. Level - https://levelmoney.com/ https://levelmoney.com/ 22seven - https://www.22seven.com/ https://www.22seven.com/ There are likely others, but I just rarely hear about money management apps.
- antonpug 13y agoNever seen these! They look good at first sight, I'll be checking them out. Thanks.
- juliancox 13y agoAlso check out http://pocketsmith.com/ http://pocketsmith.com/ it has forecasting to tell you what you'll have in future months.
- Kequc 13y agoFor people like me who want a mint with _fewer_ features level looks pretty good. Unfortunately I can't just enter data myself, they want to connect to a bank. Good luck getting my German bank on board with that. Not to mention both are not on Android.
- jaxn 13y agoMint was the competitor. Then Intuit (Quicken) bought them.
- antonpug 13y agoI think Simple would get a lot more attention then they are getting if they offered a paid service for people who wanted to link their accounts and use their platform as a money tracking tool.
- ryanSrich 13y agoOr if simple had any competitive advantage; UX isn't enough. Yes they are a simple to use online bank but the their rates are pretty much non-existent.
- antonpug 13y agoI agree. Hence why I didn't join them. I told them I'd sign up if I could get Ally-like rates, or if they offered a credit card option with 5% cash back categories like the competitors.
- jcc80 13y agoHave been using it for 3 years and the occasional problems pale in comparison to the utility I've gotten from it. Have recommended it and set it up for less tech savvy family members. Simple on the other hand is pretty useless to me. The rates are awful and it's just a nice looking app - really don't get it. But suppose I don't fit the use case they pivoted to before launch since I don't set budgets and more just keep tabs on when money comes in or out. Will probably end up closing my account there but your idea of becoming more like Mint (linking accounts) could make it useful.
- innguest 13y agoBecause it's a boring problem to solve?
- antonpug 13y agoEh, but aren't they all? Fitness tracking solutions, weather information, feed aggregators, photo apps - are they more "exciting" problems to solve? It's a matter of perspective - to someone, making a nice photo app is boring, to someone else, financial problems are irrelevant.
- gburt 13y agoWave is much better than Mint for business.
- chrsstrm 13y agoBetter security because Intuit is a larger company? No one is invincible, see Adobe's latest incident. My major complaint with Mint is I don't get email alerts until I log into my account. Nothing gets sent to me when the event triggering the alert occurs. That is frustrating.
- antonpug 13y agoWell, arguably, if I see some startup that just started doing business, I don't think I would feel as secure with them as I do with Mint - but like I said, "arguably".
- jggonz 13y agoThe irony of this is that Mint was once a startup that simply asked you to trust them with your bank account's credentials (or at least that was my impression). I joined them way before they were owned by Intuit.
- mikeash 13y agoI don't believe that's the case. Alerts will still be sent without logging in. It's just that the automated checks only happen with a certain frequency, daily or so. If you log in after an alert-worthy event happens but before the automated check, you'll trigger an alert e-mail because that's when it sees the event. If you're logging in a lot, it might look like they only happen when you log in.
- SEJeff 13y agoI've been a mint user for over 5 years and actually love it. The web ui isn't amazing, but it is pretty good. The IOS app is excellent and let's me quickly get a grip on my financials. I couldn't disagree more with the author of this post. I've often had mint send me alerts when I mix up something stupid and get low balances or forget to pay credit card bills. To me, mint is simply a life saver. It isn't something I use every day, but when I need it, it really helps. I'm about as big of a mint fanboi that there could be.
- antonpug 13y agoJust curious, how many accounts do you have linked to it?
- SEJeff 13y agoMe? Perhaps 10 total between certificates of deposits, IRAs, my work 401k, a credit card, and some savings accounts, along with my regular "main" checking account. It is really invaluable to figure out where I'm wasting money and can improve my spending habits.
- doctoboggan 13y agoI have to agree with you. I've been using it for years, ever since I started getting real amounts of money in my account. I only wish it would work with my 401k.
- klenwell 13y agoI agree. I use it for the same reasons. To give me a simple bird's eye view of my finances and to watch out for fraud. It's even more helpful with my grandmother's finances. My grandfather had handled their finances all his life. After his death, I set up a Mint account for her and it has been invaluable in both its convenience and in helping me contain various crises: overdrafts, missed bills, fraud, bad spending habits. Unfortunately, when it comes to money, seniors are sitting targets. Not to say there aren't things that could be improved. But it's a long way from suck.
- pathikrit 13y agoI use this - https://www.personalcapital.com/ https://www.personalcapital.com/ - it is Mint minus all the ads and let's you add private equity and custom vesting periods
- antonpug 13y agoI don't like the UI. Also it feels investment-centric and I a lot of people just need a simple, beautiful and robust app that lets them see their transactions, budgets, set goals etc. Personal capital isn't horrid, but I feel like it's too much investment stuff that many don't need.
- EdgarVerona 13y agoNote that this is just my gut opinion on it, imagining the nightmares I've seen in healthcare integration and contrasting that with what I see as an end user of Bank integration. I've not actually seen the business deals and effort in the backend as a developer in the latter case, but as an end user of Mint I've seen missing integrations that hint strongly at the difficulties they must experience. I think the reason why is because it's a pretty large integration undertaking. To compete with Mint at this point, you'd have to offer similar levels of integration with banks, credit card companies, investment companies etc... The problem is that there are literally tens of thousands of these companies, each exposing their own APIs and each with their own unique caveats as to data they require, throttling limits, back-room deals for access, hesitation to even let people access their systems etc. For an anecdotal end-user example, I have an account with one provider who refuses to cooperate with Mint in integrating - ECSI. This is a small lending company for student loans, one of thousands of such companies. They decided for reasons that are not publicly available to not even allow Mint to integrate with them anymore, after having let them do so for the first couple of years. What sorts of negotiations were occurring in the back end between these companies, and what caused it to fall apart? The public doesn't know, but needless to say there was some level of custom integration effort for them, some level of business negotiation, and then finally something fell apart and made customers mad as a result. Now, all of this integration work and business negotiation had to happen between Mint and ECSI - and that is just one of the tens of thousands of companies out there. It is a very tall order to ask a new company to come forward and make that much upfront work in order to get on par with Mint so that it can start competing. The real fight that would make more innovation in the field would probably have to start with getting companies to standardize and expose their APIs without (or with common and well understood) strings attached. If this happened - as has been struggling but slowly improving in the Healthcare field - it'll become more feasible for a company to realistically compete with Mint. And then you can get to those enhanced features that Mint suffers for want of. (however, at that point Mint's significant engineering force could be redirected from integration efforts to these same features, and then you'll find yourself fighting against a much larger machine now bent on feature improvement)
- antonpug 13y agoIt's hard. But it's possible, and there are significant earnings that could be realized in that space. I think that if hypothetical "BetterMint" offered excellent features and something truly innovative, people would be willing to pay for it.
- robbfitzsimmons 13y agoI think actually the basic problem with Mint isn't those mentioned in the article (UI is meh, miscategorized transactions, data import customization). It's actually as mentioned in Wesabe's postmortem (http://blog.precipice.org/why-wesabe-lost-to-mint/); http://blog.precipice.org/why-wesabe-lost-to-mint/); for most people Mint doesn't actually get you to change your behavior. It just provides twentysomethings with some feeling that they're managing their finances, in return for getting pitched credit cards. Harder and more worthwhile than UI or functionality fixes are changing twentysomethings' behavior, or doing something interesting for older people with more complicated financial situations. [Mint's useless for my parents, with multiple bank accounts, investments, retirement, education and health savings accounts, etc.] One problem (and barrier to good competitors) are that aggregating finance data sucks. Mint started with Yodlee, which is nothing but a scraper for bank sites, and now runs on something Intuit built internally. It's hard to imagine many startups meaningfully tackling the problem.
- DLarsen 13y ago> Mint doesn't actually get you to change your behavior... Bingo! If you're spending more money than you should, it does you no good to see colorful graphs indicating you spent too much. If you get budget alerts but still blow through your budget, it really does you no good. Maybe it even makes you more resolute in your careless spending.
- tekalon 13y agoMy issue with Mint is that it is an OK budgeting/finance tracking app, but not too good with debt payoff. If I could use the integration of accounts (with all the interest and what not) and be able to show when interest is added to a loan or how long it would take to pay off (all automatically) would be nice. Yes I know I can do it myself (and do) but why have two+ apps/systems to do what one can do?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- nilkn 13y agoThis isn't a direct answer to the stated question, but personally I use Mint just to keep watch on my transactions and You Need A Budget (www.youneedabudget.com) to budget and plan future transactions. YNAB doesn't connect to any of your accounts. You have to enter in transactions manually. That limits its audience and makes it not really a direct competitor to Mint. But I find manually entering your past transactions really, really forces you to think about how you're spending money.
- nathos 13y agoI started using YNAB in May of this year, and I can say without exaggeration that is has changed my life. Great method, instruction, and support. I have personally convinced several other people to start using it, and happily evangelize the product whenever the topic of personal finance or budgeting comes up. Also, with all the focus on web apps, it is interesting to see (and use) software that is sold as a proper download.
- colinloretz 13y agoYodlee gave them their initial connections and I assume many of them were built as one-offs afterwards. I'm looking forward to seeing what companies like Standard Treasury (http://standardtreasury.com/ http://standardtreasury.com/) can do to modernize this area.
- pbreit 13y agoI don't love Mint but I would never say it "sucks". Also, it is a pretty difficult category. Being able to safeguard the data and credentials alone severely limits the universe of people/groups who might try to do it.
- possibilistic 13y agoI would like something like Mint that comes with a consumable personal API that is safe to call. I want to generate my own reports, but I certainly don't want to handle banking-level security.
- WesleyJohnson 13y agoPerhaps I'm in the minority, but I loved Microsoft Money. Yes, it was bloated and had tons of features I'd never use, but it did everything I needed it to. My biggest issue with Mint is the lack of proper Bill Payments. I don't necessarily need to be able to pay bills from Mint, but when it tells me a bill is due tomorrow and I don't pay it tomorrow, I want it to keep telling me it's past due until I mark it as reconciled or something of that nature. Instead, Mint just assumes I pay everything on time and stops reminding me. There again, perhaps I'm in the minority, but I'd imagine it's a pretty large minority in this economy that doesn't always have the luxury of paying everything right when it's due. I know they're more geared towards analyzing what you've spent, but I wish they'd consider adding more features outside of that specialization.
- toddh 13y agoI think people want a quicken like tool that will track all their finances...budgeting, tracking and stocks. mint never did that and users were spammed with too many ads. It's a hard thing to do. Intuit should had never bought mint and kept working on its online offering of quicken. Now the only thing that's any good is the desktop version of quicken.