Adam's Awesome Anecdotes

So, this Friday turned out just a bit different than the last one, but I decided to take advantage of the quiet night and get a head start on some of the weekend tasks.  One of the ones that’s been sitting on this list for way too long was checking out mint.com.  Of course the main draw being, at least for me, that I’m often on many different computers and oftentimes a Mac so I feel I could do a much better job of keeping up with my finances if I had something I could access anywhere, anytime.  I know a few people that use mint.com now and have said good things about it.  The worst criticism I’ve heard to date is that it doesn’t have the “power and flexibility” of Quicken or Money.  I’ve been a Quicken 2007 user, since, well, 2007 and I used MS Money for quite some time before that and while I can agree it’s true that it doesn’t have the insane reporting and manipulation of data, I see that as a strength.  I can get in, see what I need to see, and get out and move on with my life.

Where mint.com truly excels and blows Quicken 2007 out of the water is online integration.  The setup process for my various bank accounts and credit cards was stupid-simple.  Starting from scratch in either Quicken or Money is a full weekend project.  In mint.com it was about a 15 minute process and part of that was me trying to track down my login info for some lesser used online banking sites.  There were one or two things that didn’t work during setup such as the assessment of my condo’s property value.  There were also a few exclamation points on some of the accounts informing me I needed to go answer security questions or something similar in order to setup mint to communication with that account.  No big deal.  Bank of America even works with it!  (Quicken 2007 used to always tell me there was a fee to access it — which I think was a BOA issue.)  As soon you login, all of your accounts automatically update.  I didn’t have to create each individual account like I did in Quicken, I simply gave mint my username / password to each institution and it figured out each account under that login, interest rates, current balances, transaction history, etc.

I dare say few people can ever dream of touching their interface in a web-based realm.  It’s better that most desktop apps I’ve used, and I would put them in the Google league in appeal and slickness.  They are definitely pushing some boundaries in making the browser behave the way they want it to.  For the record, I did everything through Chrome.

One thing I wish it had done a better job of when importing my accounts was syncing up my Roth IRA.  I think the problem occurred because mint only pulls N number of days of transaction history for each account, where N seems to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 or 90.  So, although it can detail your portfolio history and performance pretty well, it looks like I would need to go back and flush out some purchase history by fund for that to have any effect.  I don’t hold this against mint, because I suspect Fidelity’s archaic site simply doesn’t dish up the info they need to pull it off.

In the same regard, I think the limited data history also skewed some numbers, such as my “monthly averages” for each bill category or payee.  It would assume Oct & Nov were $0 for everything in my 6 month average, so I’m assuming the more I used the app, the more accurate it will be.  That’s not uncommon at all for financial software.  It’s only as accurate as the data it’s given.  Still, I kind of wish I could have said, “base my averages off 3 or 4 months instead of 6 for a short time”.

Another complaint I had heard prior to trying it out myself was that it has trouble auto-categorizing some payments.  This is true, but what software doesn’t.  I would love to know why all financial software considers my payment to my student loan as “clothing”.  Apparently, ACS is a pretty diverse company.  :)  Again, though, their interface made renaming and re-categorization of all similar transactions insanely simple.  If you’re used to Quicken’s horrific renaming rules, you’ll love this feature of mint.  As soon as I saw it work, I breathed a sigh of relief — finally somebody got it right.  One thing I would like to figure out if there is a way to fix as far as “categorization” goes is it decided my Home Equity Line of Credit is a credit card.  I understand why, but still, I use “regular” credit cards so frequently, I would like to see those in their own category and not the massive, ever-looming home equity line starring at me under that section every time I log in.  It kinda makes me freak out thinking somebody has gotten hold of one of my “regular” credit cards.

Oh, and one other gripe, but again, every financial software app I’ve used has had this problem — I get paid on the 15th and last Friday of the month.  So my budget freaks out a bit saying “whoa, you’re expenses are through the roof (because everything is typically due from the 1st to the 5th), however, you’ve had no income this month!”  Well, Quicken at least gave me a way of saying, “I expect to get a paycheck on these days.”  I guess this is the part of mint where people mentioned it’s not quite as configurable.  Still, I can live with it.

One last feature to mention that is fantastic I think:  You can compare by category or payee your spending habits against your habits in prior months, the habits of the entire US or select cities.  I love seeing that info.  Apparently I spend way more on Subway than the average American.  I’m not surprised.  I suppose most people don’t live within walking distance of a Subway either.  :)  This feature didn’t seem to work in one of their views under Trends, but it worked several other places (such as establishing my budget).

Anyway, that’s about it.  Check it out for yourself.  Even if all you do it setup one or two accounts and log in on occasion to check out the homepage it has some pretty useful info at a glance and with how easy the setup is if you don’t like it, it’s no big loss.