We Experienced a Problem Retrieving This Information Please Try Again Later Mint

Advertizement Disclosure This article/post contains references to products or services from one or more of our advertisers or partners. Nosotros may receive bounty when you lot click on links to those products or services

Mint is a FREE online personal finance (spider web two.0) service like to Quicken. Over the past several years, I've taken mint.com for a exam spin with my personal finances. With Mint, you have no local software to install, and it's a service you tin can access with any browser or mobile device.

Cost - x

Customer Service - 6

Ease of Use - nine

Tools & Resources - 8

Synchronization - 7

Accessibility - 8.5

8.5

Gratuitous personal finance app Mint tin make budgeting and expense tracking paying like shooting fish in a barrel. It tin fifty-fifty runway your credit score. Yet, when information technology comes to investing, in that location are many more sophisticated products, and users have complained nearly problems with the bank synchronization functions.

What Is the Mint App?

With more than than 15 million users, Mint.com is a simple personal finance plan that'due south web-based. It's free to sign up, and it takes simply a few seconds to add new accounts. I picked 10 personal accounts to test the service. I selected a mixture of banking, credit cards, loans, and investing in brokerage accounts. Upon initial setup, Mint.com seamlessly downloaded my fiscal information.

Every time you lot visit the site, your financial information gets updated automatically. Mint presents your financial information in a slick, like shooting fish in a barrel-to-apply web interface, with pretty graphs and all.

Although the service appears to be more most glitz than useful functionality, information technology's notwithstanding very helpful for things like budgeting, creating goals, and aggregating all your financial accounts in 1 place. Mint's dashboard gives a quick summary of your personal finances at a glance.

Mint.com Features

Price	Min: $0, Max: $0, Term: free
Budgeting
Bill Payment
Investment Tracking
Access	Web Based, iOS, Android
Credit Score Monitoring
Bill Direction
Retirement Planning
Revenue enhancement Reporting
Reconcile Transactions
Custom Categories
Import QFX, QIF Files
Two-Factor Authentication
Online Synchronization

Budgeting and Tracking Expenses

Mint'southward main characteristic is all almost budgeting and tracking expenses, and this is where the service shines. Budgeting is super easy to ready: Afterwards downloading and syncing your transactions, they will become auto-categorized into predefined categories. You can create your own subcategories but, unfortunately, cannot alter the important ones.

Yous also have the option to make changes to your transactions after they are downloaded. The auto-categorization is far from perfect, and you'll need to make adjustments from time to time. However, once Mint memorizes your transactions, it volition automatically place them in the correct categories in the future.

Creating and Managing Goals

Another prominent feature is the goal tracking and managing feature. New goals, such as paying off credit card debt or saving for a new dwelling house, are uncomplicated to set up upwards and are hands reflected in your monthly budgeting.

Monitoring Credit Scores

Mint recently rolled out a free credit score tracking selection, which makes keeping track of your entire financial picture every bit piece of cake as logging in. Simply click on the "Show Details" button to view your credit score, payment history, age of credit accounts, and lots more. You also have the chance to upgrade to a premium version.

Mint.com'due south service seems to be more focused on catering to the masses. Information technology's very stiff with budgeting and tracking expenses, just its investing surface area is simplistic at best. Like most of Mint, it's much simpler than Intuit's Quicken and lacks many features (come across our Quicken Review).

With the conquering of Mint by Intuit, it's obvious this is the future of the Quicken production line. Also, Microsoft discontinued Money in January 2011, and then there aren't many viable alternatives around.

MInt Alternatives

Highlights
Rating	nine.5/10	8.5/10	8.5/ten
Budgeting
Investment Monitoring
Retirement Planning
Bill Payment
Manual Entries
Bill Management
	Sign Up Read Review	Sign Upwardly Read Review	Sign UpRead Review

Get more Mint Alternatives we recommend.

Mint.com Apps

Mint offers complete access to your fiscal data through both its website and your favorite mobile device. The service has mobile apps for Apple's iPhone and iPad and Google'due south Android. This makes it easy to access your finances on the go. For added security, Mint recently rolled out the Touch ID sensor for iOS that reads your fingerprint and automatically unlocks your phone, allowing you quick access to the Mint.com app.

Commencement released in 2012, Mint QuickView is a companion app bachelor only for Apple'southward Bone X operating system. It'due south some other method to become a quick glimpse into your personal finances. Mint QuickView is easy to install from Apple's App Shop and syncs up with your Mint.com account. You then get a green leaf at the top of your toolbar that's e'er running in the groundwork.

The app volition alert you via badge notifications of changes to your finances. If you have Apple tree's Mountain Lion or Mavericks edition of Bone X, it tin also put notifications into your message bar, which is quite useful. QuickView has similar functionality to Mint'southward website and is recommended if you employ Apple'due south Bone Ten and like Mint'southward service.

Get Alerts From Mint

Mint keeps an middle on your money, then you don't have to. It's easy to sign upward for alerts to be sent via email or direct to your smartphone. Get alerts for:

Late fees
Over budget in a category
Nib reminders
Rate changes
Large purchases

Mint.com Screenshots

How Does Mint Make Money?

The service is gratuitous to utilize, and in that location are no hidden fees; this is otherwise known equally the freemium model. You might exist asking, "How does Mint brand coin from this gratis service?" Well, it makes coin by offering "ways to relieve" or to brand you money by recommending various fiscal services from which Mint gets a referral fee. Mint likewise recently introduced ad banners in various parts of the website to monetize users. Additionally, you tin can now sign up for premium access to your credit report.

Mint also sells the aggregate (not your individual) financial data to diverse providers. This includes information about consumer spending, the boilerplate credit bill of fare balance, how many retirement accounts a user may accept, etc. It must exist stressed, still, that the information is collected anonymously and does not refer back to individual usage.

Is Mint Secure?

I think locally installed applications like Quicken are going the manner of the dodo bird. I do think a hybrid of local and remote (cloud-based) applications like Mint.com is the futurity of this industry.

Since I'thousand in the engineering industry and deal with security all the time, I know the risks of leaving security to a tertiary party. Mind you lot. I'thousand not saying Mint is insecure. In many cases, an individual'due south desktop computer is much less secure. Of course, the perception of security is Mint'southward biggest adoption roadblock.

The recently added two-factor hallmark is a nice but needed touch for whatsoever financial service. Mint won't allow you admission to your account until you validate your computer with something you take (this is the second factor, with your countersign beingness your starting time). You can exercise this via one of ii methods, either via the email address when yous signed up or by an SMS text message to your cellphone. Mint will transport you a random code, which you lot then must enter on the website.

How Does Information technology Compare to Quicken?

While I use Quicken as our primary method to manage our unabridged finances, I have as well somewhat outgrown Quicken as well. Recently, I've been creating Microsoft Excel spreadsheets for managing parts of my portfolio. Specifically, I manage our precious metals and our security bucket (which is primarily fixed income) outside Quicken.

Quicken, or any other awarding for that matter, does not seem to have tools to help manage these areas of your finances. To manage these avails, I wind upwards transferring the total amount into a Quicken account. With this said, Quicken still has many features and functionalities that in Mint are either very simplistic or non-existent.

For a more in-depth comparing of the 2, read our Quicken vs. Mint article.

Mint.com Pros & Cons

[table "proscons" not plant /]

Summary

Mint is excellent for creating and tracking your budget, goals, and credit score. The alerts sent via email are a useful and welcomed feature. Unfortunately, Mint'southward investing area is very weak for all but the basic investors. In fact, the investing surface area is so weak that they don't list it on their website as one of the master reasons to use Mint.com.

Mint, unfortunately, does not have investment and asset resource allotment tools like Personal Capital (cheque out our Personal Uppercase review). If you take over $100,000 in investments, Personal Uppercase is a much better fit.

Besides, Personal Uppercase doesn't have the same synchronization issues as Mint.com. When Intuit acquired Mint.com, information technology replaced Yodlee (which does the financial synchronization) with its internal system.

Many users of Mint.com stated synchronization issues started happening merely after this switchover occurred. Personal Upper-case letter uses Yodlee to link upwardly accounts (which is what Mint used earlier the Intuit buyout). My feel Personal Capital's synchronization has been more reliable.

Until May 2018, Mint offered a Bill Pay feature that was very handy. Notwithstanding, the company decided to nil this service, for reasons not entirely clear to united states of america. This puts a strike against Mint if you're looking to manage your finances from ane business relationship completely. Here are some beak direction alternatives.

Nosotros recommend using Mint for its basic budgeting, goal, and credit score features. Since Mint.com does not cost annihilation to utilise, you lot might as well sign up and requite it a spin. For better investment tools and more than reliable synchronization, I recommend using Personal Capital instead.