# Mint.com update and alternatives



## mfd (Apr 3, 2009)

So I used Money for 3 years and my finances were always spot on. However time got limited so I found myself having less time to load up the software and update my transactions. I decided to move over to mint for its automation and the experience has been horrendous. The lack of flexibility in the filter rules causes a bunch of transactions to be categorized incorrectly to the point that it makes the service unusable. At this point I'll have to move back to a software based solution unfortunately. Just curious of the following: 

1 - What have been other peoples experiences with Mint ?

2 - What are people using now for a software based solution? I'm thinking Quicken. 

P.S. lets keep the discussion away from "being afraid of mint". Ultimately a service like Mint is the future and either you get on board or get left behind.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

^I don't agree about Mint being the future. I might use such a service if it were provided by someone I already had to trust, such as my financial institution. I don't trust some small, random, opaque, privately owned company with very detailed financial information.


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

mfd said:


> Ultimately a service like Mint is the future and either you get on board or get left behind.


I am more than happy to be "left behind", thank you very much.
Your question is valid and of course you should ask it, but let's leave the judgements aside, please.


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## jamesbe (May 8, 2010)

LOVE MINT!

I started using it 2 months ago now, it's so easy to use, I love the iPhone app i can keep track of everything on there. You can make your own categories or exclude things from Mint even if you wish.

So far the only thing I can't figure out is "cash" but not a big deal as I spend next to none.


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## CanadianCapitalist (Mar 31, 2009)

Mint, IIRC, is now owned by Intuit, so it's not a small, random company any more. However, I agree with andrew, I simply don't trust personal information with a third party, even a reputable one like Intuit.

I still use Microsoft Money and am very happy with it. Yeah, it has its limitations but for tracking expenses, it does a competent job. Moreover, it's free now, so the price is right!


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## mfd (Apr 3, 2009)

Andrewf: I don't disagree with you. Thats why I said "a service like Mint". Bottom line some aggregation service is the the future whether its offered my Mint or your local financial institution.


HaroldCrump: unfortunately its not a judgment but a fact. With the proliferation of the smart phone and aggregation of services to a "cloud" environment. More and more people want information sent to them, they wanted it sent instantly, and they want it all in one place.

Any argument you can make about a service like mint people were probably making the same argument about internet banking 10 years ago. 



Jamesbe: have you not run into issues with filter. I have several things that listed a certain way from my financial institution:

INTERNET BILL PAYMENT;ENBRIDGE 
INTERNET BILL PAYMENT;Rogers

Mint only allows you to look at "Inter Net" so now my Enbridge bill gets filtered as my television bill. Though this is also financial institution specific I believe. It all depends how your local bank describes the transaction so you might be having a better experience then me with Mint because of your bank.


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## mfd (Apr 3, 2009)

CC: I loved MS money. I just found it a pain to log into my accounts and d/l my transactions and I was falling behind when life got busy. Also the Mint notifications really appealed to me. 

I'm also a bit concerned that Microsoft will no longer support Money. Which was a major factor in me wanting to move.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

A fact? According to you?

You make people sound like a bunch of mindless robots. Sorry, but I'm no robot. *I* control my finances and I keep track of my accounts via a simple excel sheet. I also use online banking and reconcile the two. I do respect your opinion though, even if I don't agree with it. I just take exception with you projecting your opinion as fact.


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## jamesbe (May 8, 2010)

mfd, I haven't had that issue, I'm using RBC it seems to report everything properly.

I was pretty amazed how nearly everything went in the proper bucket when I opened my mint account. I only had to change a handful of transactions and they were correct but I wanted to place them in a more detailed bucket.


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## mfd (Apr 3, 2009)

the-royal-mail: It has nothing to do with people being robots. Why am I going to go into a store when I can order a bluray on Amazon and get it the next day? There will always be people who will want to go into a store but they will eventually become the minority. It just the path we are on as a society and an aggregation service like mint is a step along that path.

This is my last response on this particular aspect of my post because I don't want it to become the focus.




jamesbe: glad to hear its been working out for you  . Darn PCfinancial. I'm curious if CIBC people have the same problem.


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## larry81 (Nov 22, 2010)

Quicken is the best


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## OptsyEagle (Nov 29, 2009)

OK, I'll bite. What to heck is it? I guess I must be behind.


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## CanadianCapitalist (Mar 31, 2009)

I hear you mfd on life becoming busy and I also agree that keeping Money updated will take say 15 minutes or so every month. I only mentioned Money because you were wondering about Quicken as a solution.

Please note that if you use financial aggregators such as Mint.com, you may be in breach of user agreement with your bank.

http://www.fcac-acfc.gc.ca/eng/resources/consumerAlerts/alerts_posting-eng.asp?postingId=311


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## GregoryWong (Aug 11, 2011)

CanadianCapitalist said:


> Please note that if you use financial aggregators such as Mint.com, you may be in breach of user agreement with your bank.
> 
> http://www.fcac-acfc.gc.ca/eng/resources/consumerAlerts/alerts_posting-eng.asp?postingId=311


I read a similar article a while ago and closed my Mint account right after. I wasn't positive if the bank would reimburse my account if it was hacked knowing that I had supplied my info to Mint. I didn't want to take any chances so I closed my account.

If anyone has dealt with the bank with this sort of scenario it would be interesting to hear what they had to say.


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## mfd (Apr 3, 2009)

It seems odd since mint has to work with the banks to get access. I know CIBC was an issue for a while.

I'm really considering Quicken at this point since they offer a server component. This one of the other reasons I moved over to mint. I wanted the ability to access my information to update from whatever PC I happen to be on.

http://www.theofficemaven.com/products/whs-quicken


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## Maybe Later (Feb 19, 2011)

I use Quicken. It has it's quirks, but I like it. I can't speak for the newer versions, I think I'm still using Cash Manager 2009.


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## Jungle (Feb 17, 2010)

Been using excel spreadsheet for 4 years now. Every penny is tracked.


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## KaeJS (Sep 28, 2010)

I have mint, but it's pretty useless.

So is everything else.

Like TRM, I just keep things in my head.

I know where my money goes. I know that my networth is increasing every 2 weeks, so I don't really care to check my budget or where I'm spending my money.

I keep myself in check, so a program doesn't have to.


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## Causalien (Apr 4, 2009)

Mint is great for its warning system.
I use it on my credit cards and my transaction accounts. Since it is in breach of user agreement. I keep minimal amounts in these ones tracked by mint because whatever happens, my loss is isolated. What mint does for me, is it helps me avoid getting scammed or double swiped by informing me of outrageous spending and organizing my spending.

At one point in life, the time saved from Mint will out weight the slight discomfort of occasionally losing the small amount of money in transaction accounts.


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

Every single online banking service I use provides download of transactions as CSV or XLS.

Once the data is in Excel, the power is enormous.
You could sort, filter, run macros to determine where the money is going, calculate average spending per category, calculate standard deviation per category from budget, do what-if analysis...it could be as simple as you want or as complex as you want.

I see no reason to use a third-party service like Mint.


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## marina628 (Dec 14, 2010)

I have quicken 2011 ,have no plans to upgrade to 2012 it is fine for all I use it for.


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## rd_aaron (Jun 24, 2011)

Mint is great. I had trouble at first as my Mosaik Mastercard's transactions were doubling up, but they seem to have fixed that problem. I've also noticed that Mint learns about your transactions, so once you categorize it into the right category, it knows to put it in that category again the next month.

Honestly, I'm sure I could do my own tracking in Excel but why would I bother when this automatically categorizes it (it's pretty accurate). It takes maybe 10 minutes a month to fix a couple of the mistakes. I only wish I could include my investments (maybe I can?) so it showed a true representation of net worth.


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## canehdianman (Apr 7, 2009)

rd_aaron said:


> Mint is great. I had trouble at first as my Mosaik Mastercard's transactions were doubling up, but they seem to have fixed that problem. I've also noticed that Mint learns about your transactions, so once you categorize it into the right category, it knows to put it in that category again the next month.
> 
> Honestly, I'm sure I could do my own tracking in Excel but why would I bother when this automatically categorizes it (it's pretty accurate). It takes maybe 10 minutes a month to fix a couple of the mistakes. I only wish I could include my investments (maybe I can?) so it showed a true representation of net worth.


Depending on your broker, you might be able to add your investments. I use Questrade and they recently added them.

Also, my credit card was compromised in October. Someone used it to buy $4k worth of laptops from Dell Canada. Mint notified me of the "large expense" (You can set triggers like that), and I knew about two minutes after the transaction was posted.

As a consequence, my CC stopped the transaction (and notified Dell immediately) and everything was resolved quickly.

I like Mint.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

canehdianman, it was not necessary to quote the entire post above yours. This causes for unnecessary scrolling.


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## Dmoney (Apr 28, 2011)

the-royal-mail said:


> canehdianman, it was not necessary to quote the entire post above yours. This causes for unnecessary scrolling.


It was not necessary to post this. It actually caused incrementally more scrolling than the inclusion of the quote in the previous post.


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## canehdianman (Apr 7, 2009)

canehdianman said:


> Depending on your broker, you might be able to add your investments. I use Questrade and they recently added them.
> 
> Also, my credit card was compromised in October. Someone used it to buy $4k worth of laptops from Dell Canada. Mint notified me of the "large expense" (You can set triggers like that), and I knew about two minutes after the transaction was posted.
> 
> ...





the-royal-mail said:


> canehdianman, it was not necessary to quote the entire post above yours. This causes for unnecessary scrolling.


Thanks for your opinion. I will file it accordingly.


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## Anonymous (Aug 21, 2011)

does anyone know if the MBNA Smart Cash card can be linked to Mint? I tried it a while ago and wasn't able to..


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

the-royal-mail said:


> canehdianman, it was not necessary to quote the entire post above yours. This causes for unnecessary scrolling.


Then why do we have a checkbox in this forum "quote message in reply"??


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## slacker (Mar 8, 2010)

Dmoney said:


> It was not necessary to post this. It actually caused incrementally more scrolling than the inclusion of the quote in the previous post.


I agree with your comment.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

slacker said:


> I agree with your comment.


+1


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## nathan79 (Feb 21, 2011)

I've been enjoying using Mint. So far I have set up ING Direct, Coast Capital Savings, and BMO Mastercard.

They don't support my mortgage company, so I manually entered the property value in terms of my equity.


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## nuke2uk (Nov 1, 2011)

Anonymous said:


> does anyone know if the MBNA Smart Cash card can be linked to Mint? I tried it a while ago and wasn't able to..


Yes, it can. I have mine linked and it updates flawlessly 9/10 times. Likely still some integration issues but these will be smoothed out eventually.


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