Is mint.com a replacement for Quicken?

[MotionMan]

(I know Intuit bought Mint.com, so things may change.)

Does one use mint.com instead of Quicken or in conjunction with Quicken? If the latter, how does that work?

(I am a long-time Quicken user, but I do not like having to launch into Windows for each use (I only own Macs now).)

MotionMan

 

[mugs]

Yes. It's awesome. I haven't used Quicken in a long time, but Mint is better than Microsoft Money.

 

[MotionMan]

Yes. It's awesome. I haven't used Quicken in a long time, but Mint is better than Microsoft Money.

What does it do differently that Money?

MotionMan

 

[mugs]

What does it do differently that Money?

MotionMan

It works. With Money I sometimes ended up with duplicate transactions which were a pain to clean up. It also stopped pulling transaction from some of my accounts. I re-entered my information and verified it a dozen times and it wouldn't work. Microsoft uses (used? they're not going to be supporting Money much longer) Yodlee to get transactions from banks, and apparently Yodlee was slacking. Mint pulls transactions from all of my banks flawlessly. I occasionally have to re-enter my login information for some accounts, but I've never gone any unreasonable length of time without being able to sync my accounts.

Mint is great, it has great reports and a great budgeting tool.

 

[thepd7]

I thought mint was bought by Quicken?

 

[QueBert]

I use Money because I don't want to have to link shit to a bank account, I like to do all my $$$ stuff directly on my PC. Mint won't even let you do anything until you link it to a bank account, unless something has changed recently. Money I can load it up budget away even without an internet connection.

 

[thepd7]

I thought mint was bought by Quicken?

didn't realize it was intuit, learn something new every day.

Has anyone used both Quicken and mint.com? I'm trying to decide between the two. Money isn't a big factor, Quicken is not too expensive but if mint is easier to use then I'll just go with that.

 

[MotionMan]

It works. With Money I sometimes ended up with duplicate transactions which were a pain to clean up. It also stopped pulling transaction from some of my accounts. I re-entered my information and verified it a dozen times and it wouldn't work. Microsoft uses (used? they're not going to be supporting Money much longer) Yodlee to get transactions from banks, and apparently Yodlee was slacking. Mint pulls transactions from all of my banks flawlessly. I occasionally have to re-enter my login information for some accounts, but I've never gone any unreasonable length of time without being able to sync my accounts.

Mint is great, it has great reports and a great budgeting tool.

Can you tell mint what categories to put transactions in?
Can you do splits in mint?

MotionMan

 

[MrColin]

With MS Money discontinued, Mint was the last competitor that had a working implementation of OFX ("open" financial exchange) after a law was enacted in late 2008 requiring two factor authentication instead of just plain ssl. Intuit bought them up and now has a pretty solid monopoly on OFX. Its the protocol that client programs use to access online banking info in the US. The EU has a different standard called hbci that actually is open and there are multiple software vendors to choose from.

I think its shameful that a supposedly capitalist country has such a closed market, involving a protocol whose acronym ironically starts with the word "open."

 

[Minjin]

I never had any issues with Money. I was a user for years until it, of course, died late last year. I considered Mint but read that they don't have the ability to write your own transactions (for tracking cash accounts, asset values, etc). That's something I really need. I also really liked the ability of Money to easily track my individual investments, not just the total value of the account. I don't think Mint can do that either.

I'm kind of in limbo right now. I might have to break down and try Quicken to see if it can replace Money.

 

[mugs]

Can you tell mint what categories to put transactions in?
Can you do splits in mint?

MotionMan

Yes and yes. You can make rules that assign retailers to categories. Mint does a pretty good job of assigning them automatically, although sometimes it just guesses (i.e. Bike Nashbar was assigned to the Alcohol & Bars category).

It also does splits, but I don't use that feature.

I never had any issues with Money. I was a user for years until it, of course, died late last year. I considered Mint but read that they don't have the ability to write your own transactions (for tracking cash accounts, asset values, etc). That's something I really need. I also really liked the ability of Money to easily track my individual investments, not just the total value of the account. I don't think Mint can do that either.

I'm kind of in limbo right now. I might have to break down and try Quicken to see if it can replace Money.

You can track asset values but not cash (as far as I know). Though I suppose since cash probably comes from a bank at some point you could split the withdrawal into a bunch of cash transactions.

I only use cash for fast food, so I've just assigned ATM Withdrawals to the Fast Food category.

 

[TwiceOver]

Have they added the ability to add future transactions, track bills, and add recurring transactions?

 

[MotionMan]

Have they added the ability to add future transactions, track bills, and add recurring transactions?

(Reviving my thread)

Good question.

Anyone?

MotionMAn

 

[thegimp03]

Have they added the ability to add future transactions, track bills, and add recurring transactions?

I don't know about future/recurring transactions as I don't look for that functionality, but yes it tells me when my credit card bills and mortgage payment is due. Most of my other bills I have auto-paid by credit card.

 

[AgentEL]

(Reviving my thread)

Good question.

Anyone?

MotionMAn

Mint.com doesn't have the ability. I use Quicken Essentials for Mac for that. I use mint.com mainly for past spending/looking at trends/rough budgeting. I use QE for future precise budgeting. It supports recurring transactions, which is helpful to make sure you don't go below zero balance.

 

[SagaLore]

(Reviving my thread)

I'm re-reviving it.

I was briefly looking at Quicken and saw a link over to Mint, when I remembered this mentioned before. At the time I thought have another vendor access all of your financial accounts which then also gets accessed online was a bad idea... but I read their FAQ and its at least Read-only, and reading this thread it sounds like they use some proprietary banking protocol.

So before I jump on the mint bandwagon, I was wondering if anybody else had any "security" issues with the site? Passwords getting sent in plaintext? Non-encrypted content from advertisers getting loaded with the page? Hear of any breaches?

 

[lxskllr]

How about Gnu Cash? I don't use this kind of software, but I like the fact that it's open source...

http://www.gnucash.org/

 

[TwiceOver]

I've tried Gnucash, I just couldn't handle it. Way too accountant for my taste.

My question from earlier still stands about Mint.

Have they added the ability to add future transactions, track bills, and add recurring transactions?

I regularly pay my bills in advance so without future transactions Mint just won't work for me.

Too bad Microsoft Money is no longer supported. Still holding on to my copy of 2006.

 

[Saint Nick]

Someone needs to make better record keeping software. IMO Quicken is a monopoly of horribly coded software.

 

[rcpratt]

This isn't exactly related to the bump, but I just wanted to say that Mint still does not work with all financial institutions, such as my JP Morgan 401k account, which pisses me off.

I have a spreadsheet that tracks far more information with that account than Mint would ever give me, but I'd still like to see it there.