I just told my wife Mint was shutting down and she gasped, frozen in shock. I was thinking she was taking it really hard. Took me a minute before I realized she thought I was talking about our favorite Indian restaurant.
I used to use Mint before they got acquired, I stopped in 2012ish for security concerns because back then the way you connected was just giving them your password.
Also it broke all the time and my student loans got stuck while my checking accounts didn't so it ruined my net worth chart which was like 80% of why I liked it.
But, shame it's shutting down even if I didn't like it I'm sure it was useful to others.
Mint very quickly gave me the feeling of original devs cashing out just in time before the new owners found out its intervals were toothpicks intricately held together
YNAB is a waste of money imo. It's literally just a spreadsheet with a bunch of mumbo jumbo to justify you paying for it while still manually doing all the work.
Pre-Intuit it was pretty decent, before banks had their own apps and before there was much competition. Once I could use my credit union's app and it had all the usual features no more need for Mint.
These day-to-day budgeting apps with categories and stuff, it's great when you're spending in a similar manner or have specific goals. Once I had a mortgage and bills and stuff, I found the granularity of the information wasn't as relevant, I kind of know what's going on intuitively enough. Also you have a lot bigger unscheduled spending, like propane every 2-6 months which is gonna be like $1000 and seasonally dependent, yeah you can work it out per year to know you're okay, but to have some alert that's like "YOU WENT OVER YOUR AVERAGE ON BILLS THIS WEEK BY 300%!" is unnecessary. Similar with food, I'm gonna load up on meat and it's gonna be like YOUR FOOD SPENDING IS OFF THE RAILS. Things like "you spent x more on gas this week" it's like useless info, "okay I won't buy gas and go to work then... thanks." "You spent x more on vices," sure, but I think people know they're making a bad decision and it's just a 2nd validation to "manage" the vice spending.
For useful reporting you can just export your data from your bank/cu and make your own reports. Apps that amalgamate your financial data are still useful but then you're in to legit financial planning territory which is sort of a separate category of apps.
Also this is an interesting read from the original developer of Actual. Basically, it started as a closed source web app funded by a subscription model. When the business failed, he decided to open source it
Thank you for posting this. Stupid question, how do I download just to put it on my laptop? I don't download from github a lot and I'm a little lost pulling down the exe.
I don't think it's offered as as an exe as it's server-client model where you access it through a web-browser. If you want to just run it on your laptop, it can be both your server and client. The installation instructions are here, and there are also instructions for Docker on the left-side menu.
It’s awesome. I recommend not linking bank accounts anyways and doing all transactions manually. Helps with keeping track with your budget better, imo.
I also have a robust spreadsheet that has enough VLOOKUPs to choke a supercomputer. Mint was just an aggregate for all my financial institutions that I could then export from the site and into my spreadsheet. I'm willing to pay for this aggregate service, just not a lot.
I switched before this because I wanted to keep an eye on my credit score. Credit Karma gives me both scores and with more detail than I was getting from Mint.
I'd recommend avoiding Credit Karma. It was great until it was bought by Intuit a couple of years ago. I don't know that it's changed a ton yet, but Intuit, so if it hasn't enjoy that while it lasts I guess.
I guess it depends on what you're using Mint for, but I've been getting a lot of use out of Empower (formerly Personal Capital) for tracking all my accounts in one place. No subscription or anything, just some pressure, sometimes including phone calls, to use their financial advisor services.
I've had an account with Credit Karma for ages and I'm not sure what service they offer that would be comparable, but they were bought by Intuit a few years ago, so I'd find it hard to recommend them for much anymore.
The main draw of Mint for me was how it pulled all transactions from all of my financial institutions. Can GnuCash do that too or is it just a FOSS alternative of QuickBooks?
I've been checking YNAB out. I really like that it has an API subscribers can use.
One of my complaints is that it doesn't seem to have rule-based categorization, but I may just write a script (or find someone else's) that interacts with the API.
I've been using Rocket Money. It has mostly the same functionality as Mint, but seems to work a lot better. It also doesn't wait 5 days to notify me of deposits like Mint does.
Have several credit cards for your categories, and use the same checking account to autopay for all. View credit card statements for breakouts and ytd expenditure for each category.
Just a heads up that the Citi custom cash card gives you 5% back on the most spent category, great for rarely boosted categories like gas or groceries.
Seems to mesh really well with your budgeting method. Limited to one per person, but if you have anyone you trust to be an authorized user you can each have one to have two such categories.
I made the move years ago and haven't regretted it at all. I just hate that most of the solutions are subscription crap (looking at you YNAB) though the one I use is a pay once service unless you pay for the bank connection.
I got YNAB 4 in a Steam sale before it was delisted and I don't understand what the subscription version could possibly add to make it worth the cost. Having it connect to your accounts is more convenient than downloading OFX files, but that's not worth $99/year.
The "Sunset" edition of Microsoft Money is still available for free, although not directly from Microsoft anymore. It's old but it can handle regular accounts and investment accounts; no online functionality, but it supports importing OFX files, and QFX files if you change the file extension.
I liked using mint for budgeting for years. It felt good to have a sold hold of expenses vs expenditures. But then one day the syncing between my primary credit card and mint stopped working. That was the day mint died for me, I use my primary credit card for everything and pay it off every month to build credit. When mint suddenly wasn't allowed to connect to my credit card to get transactions it became useless.
I tried another budgeting service, but it did budgeting completely different approach wise and I just didn't like it. Oh well such is life I guess, everything I love goes away.
Whatever happened to the free credit report.com band? I know that they didn't get paid for any of the jingles they wrote and so they tried to sue, but I haven't heard from them since then.
Intuit first acquired Mint in 2009, an app that has offered a free way for users to track their budgets, manage expenses, negotiate bills, and keep tabs on subscriptions.
On a support page on Credit Karma’s website, Intuit says “the new experience in Credit Karma does not offer the ability to set monthly and category budgets,” adding that the app instead “offers a simplified way for you to build awareness of your spending, and track your savings.” Intuit says it still plans on adding ways to view transactions, track spending, and aggregate financial accounts.
The Verge reached out to Intuit for more information about the features coming to Credit Karma but didn’t immediately hear back.
Earlier this year, Credit Karma added one of Mint’s key features: the ability for users to track their net worth.
Users can also download and delete their Mint data if they don’t want to move to Credit Karma.
This change seems to have been in the works for quite some time now, as Mint users across Reddit have seen prompts to migrate to Credit Karma over the past few weeks.
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