Comments on: Mint: I Stand Corrected

By: Tom Krieglstein

Tom Krieglstein — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:29:42 +0000

Here is another site that might be worth reviewing. I think it is newer to the field, but looks slick.

https://www.spendview.com/default.aspx

By: Lynnae

Lynnae — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:23:31 +0000

@Donna – I’m glad to hear that Mint is continuing to improve on things. I can’t wait to see how it continues to develop!

And it was an oversight on my part, but I had said there wasn’t a budgeting feature, when there was. It’s only fair that I corrected my mistake. And I’m glad you mentioned it to me. I’d hate to think I was giving my readers the wrong information.

By: Donna Wells

Donna Wells — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:18:41 +0000

Lynnae, I didn’t think your post was in error, maybe just an oversight. But I really appreciate your informing your readers about our budgeting feature. Your readers rightly call out some features we still need to create or fix. I appreciate the feedback and assure you that we’re working on many of these.

Good news re Patrick L.’s comment: Mint.com will be adding investment accounts (and student loans and mortgages) over the next few months. Announced this publicly just yesterday (http://mint.com/press/download.....080108.pdf )

By: Harris

Harris — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 20:50:15 +0000

Come on, budgets are so silly. Only buy what you need. Starbucks is never needed. Mint is just another encumbrance.

By: rocketc

rocketc — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 04:09:24 +0000

Has anyone had trouble or success in connecting Mint to FNBO?

By: Patrick L

Patrick L — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 22:47:57 +0000

Yes, you are correct on the lack of configurable categories. I find that I can’t even list “Property Tax” as a category. Another huge downside is that Mint doesn’t link up with Mutual fund accounts or investment accounts in sites like ETrade.

So Mint doesn’t and cannot show a complete financial picture at all for many users.

By: SavingDIva

SavingDIva — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:29:09 +0000

I have been thinking about using Mint, but I’m going to stick with my spreadsheets for right now.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:26:58 +0000

The major flaw I see with Mint is it makes it impossible to track cash purchases (unless I’m missing something). The budget will really fail you if you think you only spend $70/month on Starbuck’s, but in reality, you spend $100/month there because you sometimes pay for your coffee in cash that you withdrew from the ATM, received as a gift, etc.

By: Kacie

Kacie — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:35:26 +0000

Thanks for the clarification! Your reviews on budgeting tools are really helpful to me, and I plan to highlight them on my blog next week some time.

I hate it when newspapers don’t run corrections, as well. When I was an editor at our college newspaper and we had a big mistake on the front page, we ran a correction on the front page, usually above the fold. You can’t undo a mistake, but you can try to make amends.

By: Michael Kaply

Michael Kaply — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:00:05 +0000

Mint’s budgeting (and as far as I can tell, any budgeting software that works with transactions in your bank account) suffers from the same basic flaw:

It assumes that a transaction applies to the month in which it cleared your bank account.

Some examples of where this is necessary is when you make your mortgage payment at the end of the month, but it doesn’t post until the beginning of the next month. Or when you are paid at the end of the month, but you use it for the next month’s budget.

Mint provides no way to virtually move transactions between months.

In addition, budgeting is based on the “magic month” concept, rather than creating a budget that is unique to each month.

Based on what I’ve seen so far of mint and other places, it seems like the people that write budgeting software have never actually lived on a budget before…