Quicken Online vs. Mint.com?

I’m trying to consolidate all my financial information into one tidy place that I can access from anywhere (vs. having my “quicken computer”, which is particularly annoying since I use a Mac primarily). Mint.com looks appealing and is free, and Quicken Online I guess was just released.

I’d normally go with Quicken Online, but its feature set is really limited and it won’t fucking import existing data (WTF?!).

Both seem to try to base everything on actual statement and transaction data, leaving your error prone hands out of the equation, however I’m not sure if you can actually input like checks you wrote so that you know that they’re going to get cashed soon.

Anyone do any in depth comparison or try either one?

I’m really glad you posted this, actually.

Just this morning I was trying to remember the name of Mint.com as I sat stuck in traffic. When Mint was first mentioned here I took a look at it briefly, but never pulled the trigger. Eventually I forgot about it…

It’s a new year and I’ve been thinking a bit about how to better Get-My-Shit-Together. One step of this process is to come up with a better budget type deal for myself. A couple years ago I tried Microsoft Money and it didn’t really do it for me, Quicken doesn’t exactly excite me either, so I’ve been mulling over possible alternatives.

Perhaps tonight I’ll take the plunge with Mint and let you know how it goes.

I’ve started dorking with Mint.com and parts of it are amazingly slick but, uh, some of it is either totally retarded or I am.

For example, I can’t enter a check that I’ve written…wtf? And with my bank, it’s not showing me check #s, just date of deposit and amount. This kind of makes budgeting a pain in the ass.

I’d really hate to have to go back to Quicken Online…oy.

So yeah, Mint.com apparently doesn’t let you enter manual transactions or pending transactions, making it effectively worthless for actually MANAGING your finances. It’s a pretty awesome tool for analyzing your finances though.

Bleh. My bank isn’t supported by Mint. Looks like it’s going to be Quicken for me.

I’ve been using Mint since October, and I’m quite fond of it. Like Bacon says above, though, it’s essentially an analysis tool to see how well you’re staying within your budgets.

Is mint.com the web service that asks you to input all your bank account #s, usernames & passwords? I was a bit wary about giving my financial credentials to some dot com startup.

http://corporate.yodlee.com/

http://corporate.yodlee.com/moneycenter/index_postlaunch.html

Yodlee is the only site I’ve found that handles all my accounts without me having to enter anything manually. It rocks. Don’t know about the check entering thing - I write like one check a year so I don’t care.

I’m a little late to this discussion, as I stumbled on it while researching these services. I’m about ready to bail out on Quicken 2005 (desktop version), as I just learned that they are disabling the 2005 version’s ability to sync up with bank accounts as of April. They do this every year for each version that is three years old, to force you to upgrade to the new version.

So, I’ve looked into Yodlee, Mint, Wesabe, Buxfor, and Geezeo. As best I can tell, Yodlee is the only one that allows you to manually enter transactions. This makes the other services completely worthless to me. I’m not sure what boggles my mind more - the fact that these services don’t offer this, or the fact that almost none of the reviews mention this omission, yet tout them as Quicken replacements. I rarely write checks now, too, but if I do, I want to be able to input it. If I write a big check or two, they won’t clear for a while, so these services won’t accurately reflect the funds I have.

One thing I haven’t tested yet is whether Yodlee will reconcile my manually entered check with the downloaded transaction, and avoid a duplicate entry. Can anyone speak to this?

i DESPISE intuit and their policy of sunsetting–forced upgrading by expiring old versions which have no problems with their functionality.

http://www.mouseprint.org/?p=365
http://www.mouseprint.org/?p=357

this may not apply to the online version but their business practices are despicable.

any canadians use wesabe.com can comment on it?

That’s why I’m looking for another solution. Quicken does what I want and I can afford to get a new version every few years, but I refuse to support a product that uses these tactics. Intuit is also known for strongarming financial institutions. Perhaps someone else more knowledgeable can comment, but as I understand it, Quicken changed its file format a few years back, so that they could require banks to pay a fee to allow their customers to sync.

Now, ironically, Quicken Online does seem to support manual transactions, but I’ll only look there as a last resort.

I have a Mac, and yeah, Quicken apparently sucks on it. Mint doesn’t support my main bank (well, it tries too, but errors out when getting info). I like the idea, otherwise.

I tried iBank (Mac only), but well, perhaps my lack of experience with banking software shows here, because while it kind-of imported a transaction record, it didn’t have the right value for the account, which seems kinda broken to me.

http://consumerist.com/consumer/personal-finance/4-online-budgeting-services-reviewed-314108.php

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118177906703834565.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal

http://www.netbanker.com/2008/01/quicken_draws_a_line_in_the_sa.html

http://www.enablus.com/blog/2008/01/quickenonline-800-lb-pfm-gorilla-part-1.html

i’m going to buy moneywell or ibank for my mac.

Thanks for the links. One other option I’ve read about is something called Moneydancer, which is cross platform and seems to get good reviews.

The comparison chart in one of those articles is not 100% accurate, as far as I can tell. It indicates that Wesabe allows manual transactions. As best as I can tell, the only thing Wesabe allows as far as manual transactions is cash entries.

I’ve been using Mint since October also. I’ve been really happy with it for looking at my spending habits and all that stuff.

Taking over this thread to include discussion of You Need a Budget (now on Steam!).

Anyone tried You Need a Budget and Mint and want to compare them? I find Mint is overall pretty good for budgeting (most of its failures are really my fault, not its). But if YNAB deals better with non-monthly budget items or roll-over expenses, then maybe I will consider switching.

Looks like YNAB doesn’t directly import your banking info, which is a no-go for me since (a) I’m lazy, and (b) 90% of my transactions happen there and downloading transactions is a hassle.

I’m pretty happy with Mint, but I’m not a power user. I have had some problems with how it handles pending transactions in my checking account, but nothing serious.

I’ve used Mint and just got YNAB so I’ll chime in. They are fundamentally different in approach.

  1. Mint’s strength and downfall is the fact that it’s hands-off. You set it up to pull from your accounts and after the fact try to assign things into categories which then compare to a budget. This is a very reactive process in that it doesn’t force you to think about your spending ahead of time or as you’re doing it unless you want to. To me, I’ve always viewed Mint as an account monitor more than a planner for the future.

  2. YNAB adds a layer of abstraction between your accounts, and that’s your budget. For each category (eating out, fuel, etc) you assign your current savings. For example, I may put $300 in “Eating Out” for the month. When I then eat a $50 meal, I log it (under the account where I spent it) with that category. My available budget for eating out is now $250 for the month. If I ever exceed this, it gets flagged as overspending, and I’m forced to lower money on another category to make up the difference.

  3. Related to #2, their method has you allocate ALL of your money as soon as you have it. That means every single cent of income ends up your budget. For non-monthly expenses, you allocate part of your budget to savings/emergency categories. Maybe you put $250 this month into the ‘vacation’ bucket, or $100 toward future medical expenses. This budget category builds over time.

  4. Essentially you end up with a pile of mini-virtual accounts, each that has a very specific purpose. You can adjust between them, but it makes you think about where all of your money is going. This later gets reconciled with your real accounts to make sure everything matches up. The goal is to get to a point where you spend from your budget, and not worry about your rolling balance.

I’ve been in need of a budget program for awhile now. I tried Mint, but it’s just too easy to ignore. This seems very promising for sticking to spending limits each month. I also LIKE that it doesn’t auto-pull transactions. I want to be forced to grab my iphone (there’s an app), push a few buttons and log my $5 coffee directly against my budget for it (and see what I have left). I’m used to doing this sort of thing for Weight Watchers food logging anyway, so it’s not a huge shift for me. You can always just grab receipts and log them at the end of the day, or periodically check your accounts for transactions you missed. You CAN import transactions from standard formats, btw.

After I’ve been using it a bit, I’ll report back on further thoughts.

Vesper is absolutely right, YNAB is not just an expense tracking app, it’s a budgeting system that allows you to plan and track your expenses (both regular and irregular) as well as savings.

If in Vesper’s “Eating Out” example, in some month you underspend in that category, you can re-assign the excess to some other category - Emergency Savings, Car Repair, Winter Tires fund, Vacation or maybe a secret “Buy Some Game” category. :) If you do it regularly, i.e. if you “spend” (or rather allocate) every cent of your money every month, over time, you will know exactly what money in what category you have (or need). For example, if you have 5K in your saving account, you will know exactly how much of that money is for vacation, how much is for your car maintenance, new computer next year, etc.

Eventually, as you use the system more and more, the quality of your budget improves and you start planning for stuff that used to put holes in your budget like oil changes, fishing trips with your friends or Christmas gifts. :)

The only requirement is that you (and everyone in your household) have to use the system religiously, track everything that gets spent and refine your categories and budget, otherwise you won’t get much benefit from the system. This is what ultimately stopped me from using it - the system is great but my wife just wasn’t ready to stick to it. I am sure we are going to pay for it sooner or later but oh well.

Vesper, I think you’ve described why we haven’t been super-successful budgeting with Mint. At the same time, I’m like prolix and Stridergg, and I’m afraid I’ll start off great logging my own expenditures and then will quickly trail off. Or my wife will. But, hey, willpower! Maybe we’ll give YNAB a try. Definitely let us know how it goes a little longer-term.