I have been using Microsoft Money as my personal finance software for over 4 years. Unfortunately last year Microsoft decided to discontinue the software.
I have very less requirements from a personal finance software. I want to connect directly to my relevant accounts and download the statements, let me categorize transactions, define my own categories, and pull reports. As far as reports I look a lot into comparisons in spending per category. I also like to search over a defined time-period for all transactions of a particular category (esp. used during tax times).
After much research online, my choices came down to two – either the client based Quicken, or the web based http://mint.com. The later being free, I first gave it a try.
It was pretty easy to sign-up on mint.com. After signing up, I was immediately asked to add my relevant accounts. I could either search for my financial institution, or select from a list of popular banks and credit card companies. The list seemed pretty comprehensive, as I was even able to search and find a very local credit union where I have an account.
Upon selecting the account and entering the login information, mint.com connected to the institution and downloaded the transactions for the last 3 months. What I did not like is not having the ability to choose how far back transactions do I want to import. I must say that the auto-categorization of transactions by mint.com was pretty accurate. I was very impressed that I had to correct only of a few of the categories. It was also easy to add new categories. Another great feature was the ability to auto-apply the categories, tags etc. assigned to a transaction to other transactions with the same name.
One sore note for me was the ‘splitting’ transaction feature. There are times when a transaction can be categorized in multiple categories. In MS Money a transaction could be assigned to multiple categories with appropriate amounts, however in mint.com the transaction itself gets split into multiple transactions. There seems to be a 1:1 relationship between a transaction and a category. I also did not find a way to change the amount of a transaction.
The ‘budget’ and the ‘notification’ features of mint.com was pretty easy to setup. With budgets, it was very easy to select categories or sub-categories and add the appropriate budget amounts. There was a nice visual indicator which should the month to date spending for the category wrt. the budgeted amount. The notification feature enabled me to setup multiple emails (mine and my wife’s) to send notifications. I could have also selected sending messages to my phone, however did not. There were a bunch of thresholds that could be set for sending notifications, such as Low Balance, Bill Reminder, Overbudget, Bank Fees, Large Purchases, and Large Deposits.
The reporting piece of mint.com was disappointing. There were a bunch of pre-canned reports, however customization seemed limited. I was able to filter by accounts, however was not able to filter by categories. The basic options to customize reports was very less, leading to too much noise in the reports. MS Money had an amazing user customization for reporting purposes.
To end mint.com is definitely a good user friendly software for basic users for personal financing tracking. The account and transaction management interface and process has been very well streamlined for the user. The iPhone app for mint.com is also a very nice add on. However mint.com is missing some features required for folks more involved in personal finance. This is in the transaction splitting, and mainly reporting areas. Folks who know more about reporting feature of mint.com let me know how to filter categories.
I think I will plop down the money required for getting Quicken and give it a good try. I do hate saying goodbye to Microsoft Money, however looking forward to something new.
Wow! I remember my old school copy of Microsoft Money 2002! Those were the days huh?
After losing all my data due to a computer failure, I needed something online that I could access anywhere.
The comparison of spending vs. cities is pretty cool. I always though Mint.com was more of a budgeting tool than strictly personal finance.
No good personal finance person would recommend all of the credit cards like Mint.com does. Plus as I noted further in my mint.com budget software review, I think Mint has a few more problems like logging in issues.
But who can beat the price of free? Nobody, and because of its easy of use, I still use it.