MINT RIP - you were great, then ok, not awful. 💣
So I've been tracking my money since I started working at 15. Start out with MS Money until that was discontinued. Was able to export that into Quicken.
I liked Quicken for awhile because it was a lot more automated then MS Money and imports transaction was a lot less painful. Eventually they added auto sync stuff to your accounts. This big issue I ran into was one of my Credit Card wouldn't syn and things didn't always seem to work. I know they had tax stuff in there, but it didn't seem realizable enough to use. Eventually I got sick of it not work correctly and all the manually work to get things to work. I moved to this cool new software called MINT
MINT is a online spending/budget tool. It took awhile to go all in because I was very security focused and didn't like handing over my information to this unknown software. After a year or so I started to trust it more and started to leave Quicken behind. This tool was great an free. All my accounts syn'd and for the most part the categories were correct. The of course MINT became to good and free. Then in 2009 Intuit bought them. I think they mostly did this because MINT was taking there business and it was better.
So for the first 5 years or so MINT didn't change much just bug fixes and normal redesigns. My guess the original development team was around the Intuit didn't get full control for a curtain amount of time. Then the Intuit team took over. You would expect better service and more security from a company like them. And they did. 😀 Then came the bad parts. Ads started showing up and they starter to sell your data to help advertise and focus on your data. I found the ads annoying and mostly I could work around for a great free product. Then the bad started happening. The rock solid syning started to fail. In fact the checking account I've been using and categorizing started getting duplicates and going inactive off and on. Then one day it just disappeared. 😱😱 So all this work was just gone. Then the checking showed up on my wifes bank account, but duplicated. One with only the last month expense and the other all the old data. It's been like this for the past few months.
I can't have unreliable software that I can't restore back to a good state. I'm using this software to budget and track expenses. So with all the Ads and bad User experience for the past year or so I've reached a breaking point. I'm moving on. Bye Bye MINT
I'm decided to go with either Personal Capital or YNAB. I've been using Personal Cap. for about a year to just track Stocks and stuff for a rough net worth estimate. While YNAB seems to be the go to app for people in the FI community. I usually stay way from software I have to pay subscription services to. I don't mind spending a one time buy, but not monthly. Anyway I'm currently trying to setup both to see if I can transition to these. I was going to start with PC since I had some accounts already sync'd, but I ran into issue with it's retirement calculator not working correctly so I decided to try YNAB first.
I need these tool to have these thing
Must:
- Secure
- Syncs with all my accounts
- Good User experience
- easy to use Budget tool. My wife is finally on board and need to keep her engaged
- Easy translations tracking automated as mush as possible. I don't want to keep having to change the same places to the same categories everyday.
- inexpensive (free is best)
- staying power
So far YNAB has all the thing I want.
- Security and uses two-factor auth plus and using latest iPhone auth features
- All my accounts sync with there service. I have one weird card that isn't supported by all
- able to import all my transactions from MINT or the Bank software :) Major plus
- Easy user interface. Wife needs to be able to understand
- budgets
- 34 day free trial
Negatives so far
- Have to relearn how to setup budget since they do it a little different. All dollars get a job
- $$$ 7-11 a month
- Budget is the main focus as you would expect from a app called "You Need A Budget". It takes a couple of seconds to get to transaction screens
- When you setup your accounts it comes in fresh with only current balance. It doesn't go back and get previous transactions. *plus above is a workaround - so for me at least for my checking account and Chase accounts only a minor thing.
Personal Capital - still need to evaluate with transactions and credit cards
Pluses so far
- Good Auth using latest IPhone features.
- clean user interface similar enough to MINT that not hunting for features.
- Sync up to a year in the past
- Big focus on net work and investing
Minuses so far
- bug in there retirement calculator
- Advertisements for there CPA advice
- They use the aggregated data (anonymous style) on account for there needs
- Budget section has a lot to be desired. You basically set total you expect to spend and you are given an arrow and color when you are above or below that mark. It does give you a break down by % on what you've spent your funds on.
- I don't like this. Mostly because it's harder to tell if we go over on an area. Like hey we budget $100 on water in a month and it's at $300. Maybe we have a problem at the house. This is obvious on MINT and YNAB, while on PC it may get lost since I'm below my budget.
- Budgeting is very much an after thought for this software. Kind of a widget some intern created and then left the company. They though it was ok and just left it at that.
A couple of days in has been disappointing. I really wanted to love YNAB. I do like it, but it has to blow me away to have me pay. Personal Capital: budgeting section is very disappointing. MINT is looking better 😖. I've going to running all three for a month YNAB. or PC can answer all my needs. As of today PC looks to be a place I will only keep my stock tracking/network and not track transaction or budget let see if it can change my mine. While YNAB has some work today to makeup for the price tag.
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