Mint.com Review: Personal Finance Manager
I signed up for Mint.com, a personal finance manager, and I thought I’d post my reactions here. First, let’s walk through the process. You fill in your email address and passwords, and then almost immediately begin filling in sign-in information for the online banking service you use. The GUI is fast and intuitive:
Within minutes, Mint has pulled the most recent 132 transaction from four credit cards, a checking account, and paypal. They support hundreds of different accounts, from banking checking and savings, credit cards, macys and other store cards, as well as investment accounts. In the near future, they will support student loan accounts as well!
Yes, this is scary, but Mint claims they can keep you safe by not storing your banking login information themselves:
We ask for your online banking user name and passwords, but we do not see or store that information. That means no one at Mint, and no potential hackers of Mint.com, can access your banking credentials. Your online banking credentials are stored only with these institutions enabling Mint to automatically and securely update your transactions and saving you from updating, syncing or uploading financial information manually. All communication between Mint and its online financial service providers is encrypted using 128–bit SSL encryption, the financial industry standard for data protection.
The next step is to classify and review your transactions. Mint lets you put them in buckets–and naturally it will get a few wrong to start with–but you can set up rules to classify new transactions how you like. For example, I set one that sets any cheques with the amount of my rent to go into the rent bucket:
By doing this, you let them do some analysis on your spending or earning trends. Note, the trends feature appears to update daily, not in real time, so if you classify a bunch of transactions, it won’t update the trends page with your new categorization for some time. This is unfortunate, but probably necessary. This lets them make, say, a graph of your spending v.s. the average NY spender:
I guess I need to spend more money at Amazon and Best Buy to fit in these days. Lastly, there is their “ways to save” page, which is basically targeted affiliate ads with various banks. This is their revenue stream–getting you to sign up for new credit cards and open new accounts–so don’t trust anything it says:
The verdict? I love it, and I think it’s only going to get better. This is the new world, and services like Mint can make our lives infinitely easier! Please share your opinions about Mint.com, if you’ve ever experienced fraud after signing up, etc, below.
Update: There are some good reviews out there, too. PC Magazine says “Mint.com is a useful, intelligent, and free financial Web service that’s simple to set up and tracks your monetary life with little intervention on your part,” while Viewpoints has a single review which calls it “One of the best free money trackers on the Internet” and Girls Just Wanna Have Funds praises it for costing $50 less than MS Money.
| This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 8:44 pm and is tagged with personal finance manager, financial service providers, store cards, loan accounts, banking service, investment accounts, categorization, buckets, ssl encryption, cheques, checking account, mint, credentials, credit cards, financial information, student loan, passwords, hackers, real time, institutions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback. |
Hi
I am studying personal finance money management websites for a module at university and i just need some feedback from anyone that has used any money management websites or are thinking of using one, and which ones you think are the best and why?
Do you think that some of the money management websites are more appealing to customers? e.g. the layout..
Do some of them offer benefits that others don’t? Do they differ across countries?
Do you consider some of them targeting different demographics?
What are your overall attitudes towards money management websites?
I would really appreciate any feedback.
Thanks
Casey
I head a digital agency and believe mint.com to be one of the best designed user experiences on the net for its elegant handling of a potentially very complex system – and the fact that they have come up with a powerful business model that allows them to give their product away for free. The insight that aggregated data is more valuable than subscriptions is remarkably prescient. ( for more on this topic read the book “What would google do”)
I was impressed to hear that the founder had designed the program in reaction to a lousy experience using Quicken as I had experienced the same frustrations – especially being a long time Mac user whom Intuit did a lousy job of supporting. Intuit’s purchase only makes sense given that Mint was essentially poised to put them out of business with a better experience and free model. ( And If corporations using aggregated data to inform business and marketing decisions is something you can’t deal with, then you picked the wrong century to be living in.)
I’m personally not paranoid about providing login info and shop online frequently. While there is always a risk, in general I believe the greater onus is on Mint since their entire business depends on protecting peoples info. In the end it’s a personal choice – and I might feel differently if I had had my identity stolen – but after 10+ years online, the only time I had an issue with an online purchase, Visa (not the seller) refunded it.
www.jarcreative.com
Bill, Mint.com has over 3 million registered users and has won several People’s Choice Webby awards (among other awards). It’s not a scam looking to steal info from a few thousand people. You should try looking it up.
Wow Mitch I didn’t know not having kids means you don’t live in the real world. Funny how all the people with kids whose schools are supported with my taxes don’t seem to mind my fake money from the fake world I live in.
Well when the children who become doctors and nurses, are looking after you in your old age, I will remember that you chipped in a bit to educate them. We all benefit from an educated society. I am not sure what school you went to but I am pretty sure you or your parents did not foot the bill.
LOL..Good One Laurie!
Oh by the way, just went to the link “If you no longer wish to receive e-mails from Mint, click here.” on that email they sent me to unsubscribe(never subscribed in the first place), it says I have to log in first to do so. Log in with what?! Never signed up. So thats the loop, I should report them.
I just spend 2 hours adding my information and found out that my stock and detail mutual funds will not display. This pissed me off because it’s a financial website. Why would Intuit who recently brought Mint.com not fix this after a month. Seem kind of suspicious to me….
Well, i just received this mint.com email, says I’ve been a costumer for a while now, weird thing is… I have no clue what this is, I never signed up for it.
This looks to me like a scam, I’d suggest you all change your information immediately.
They usually do as they advertise, not well, gather a few thousand members then start stealing their info’s, so good luck with your personal life.
bill,
do you use turbo tax?
Wow, you mean I can give away my account info to total strangers and breathe easy! Whew. I was worried that it might get into the wrong hands.
Hahahahahaahahaha…amen, I totally agree! I can’t imagine freely and willing giving my account info out without researching some.
The thought is a good idea and the first two accounts I added I was impressed. Then it went downhill from there. Hard to get other accounts added. Says try later or says done and did not pull data down. Who wants to use it with just half of your accounts. It would be a waste. Plus it is Extremely slow!! I think I will pass on this until it gets tweaked better. It takes up too much of my time and is not accurate.
If you give away your account information you are crazy. The privacy policy doesn’t protect you. They just add sections that suggest that your information is protected, but there are exception cases that make your information free game and these exceptions are easy to meet. This “service” is rather useless, although it may seem “cool”. Give out as little information as possible even to companies you know and work with. That is always in your best long term interest.
I have been using Mint.com for about a week and was very excited to find a financial tracking and budgeting system that I can use with my MAC since financial software for MAC is so abysmal. But I am having trouble updating my accounts. Most of the time I get error messages telling me to try again later. It is taking many tries and long waiting periods. Do others experience this? Is it a problem with too much traffic on the site? My initial set up logins were fine and the accounts do update sometimes without a problems so I don’t think it’s any browser compatibility or set up issue. If this doesn’t improve, I’m going to have to keep looking for a program to use with my MAC
.
I am having this same trouble. It is so frustrating that I’m about to abandon the site. I have been trying for several hours to add just one account and I know it gets connected because it asks my security questions. After that it says downloading transactions, but then displays an error called a “temporary connection issue” with a link to fix it. That doesn’t really do anything except allow you to try again…same result. Baaaaaaaad experience.
I’ve used Intuit products for years, including turbo tax, quicken and quick books pro. I also use mint. The experience you’re having with banks is also experienced by quicken and quick book pro users depending on the bank. For example, Bank of America, Chase and such tend to work very well and easily. Community banks don’t always have the resourses available to provide good interfaces with outside programs although they seem to be getting better. I know the attention I get in quicken is better than that on Mint. The only thing I really don’t like a lot is that mint’s budgeting isn’t as detailed as I like it but it’s alerts for various things that are automatic are great. As far as security, well there are always smart people out there who apparently think what belongs to others belongs to them. Knock on wood, I have had no problem with any of the Intuit products I use in that area.
I was so excited by mint.com but it won’t see my credit union Visa as anything other than a loan and so no ability to categorize the expenses–hence not much use to me. If it takes your accounts fine then it would be great-otherwise no. As stated in many posts–no support service from mint.com.
I couldn’t get it to digest my personal profile or see an annuity account with Lincoln National Life Insurance (pretty big company). It advised me to roll over a very highly rated, low-fee 401(k) (ok–IBM) into an IRA. It saw a credit-card account as a loan. I liked the pretty pie charts, but I figured I’d spend more time tweaking mint than I would just using excel. Plus, giving it all my numbers made me nervous. I deleted everything and changed the passwords on my bank accounts. I was a member for about 45 minutes.
I tried out Mint. They have a feature that allows adding new/pending transactions and using mint.com as a check register. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work at all. It keep subtracting my pending transactions, not from my balance, but my “available cash” which is always $0 on my account and, according to the other reports I’ve read, is a completely fictional and imaginary number for many others.
There are LARGE security concerns for mint.com. First off, you give them login information. Even if mint.com’s website is read-only, if that login information gets compromised, all your accounts are compromised. There needs to be an industry wide single sign-on solution like you have with Twitter’s OAuth, Facebook’s Connect, Google’s Account or Microsoft’s LiveID where you never give out a password, but instead authorize an application’s token (a token you can reject without having to change your password).
Mint’s customer support is non-existent. Looking at their Get Satisfaction support center, there are unresolved issues dating for several months. Also, their mobile Android app doesn’t allow you to add pending transactions.
For all you ‘I don’t use checks’ people out there, you still have to keep track of your electronic transactions right? If you pay your credit card electronically, it’s still going to be a day or three before that ACH transaction goes from the credit card company to the bank. Electronic transactions are no substitute for balancing your checkbook. (Some of you may just pay for everything using your banks online bill-pay. I guess that works, but it’s just not the way I have payments setup).
Mint.com kinda sucks, as does that whole model. I prefer keeping track of my own finances.
Their customer service suuuuucks!! Every time I try to post a question or note a problem the comment box doesn’t work. Nobody ever gets back to you and the FAQ’s are not thorough. So, if you have a problem you’re out of luck as there is virtually no support.
So mint.com has a third party hold your information and then used the PoA to have them access your account and update their system. This sounds like a really interesting system, but if anyone would like to give me more information, I would appreciate it.
Wow. It sounds to me like you all need to just buy a legal pad and a calculator. What does that cost, like 8 bucks. That way you can track your money, not have to worry about “security” and POA’s and pry your fat asses out from behind that computer to go outside.
Wow, wonder what your fat *** was doing on a website designated for reviewing money management software, online! Maybe you should take some of your own advice WHAT? and pry your own fat *** out from behind your computer to “go outside.” You sound bitter and uneducated.
P.S. I see no problems with Mint.com, other than some of my accounts were not up to date when I uploaded them.
I think the financial firms should provide another form of authentication to let third party read my account data. It should be read only access and my financial information only with out personal information. And I will authorize the tools like mint to read my data for analysis purpose. Thanks
I just signed up for mint today and I am now hooked. It actually scared me, considering it adds up all of my student loan and credit card debt. It is very user friendly and I would recommend this site to anyone who wants to know where there money is going.
5 out of 5 stars for me.
sorry i was off topic.
can anyone post more updates about how it’s doing now that mint is an Intuit property?
I also have reason to STRONGLY dislike (and mistrust) Intuit products.
otherwise, mint sounds really inticing.
HI. Mitch is right, as a parent, I need to write checks for school/team stuff all the time.
However, there are still lots of places that take checks outside of the parent world.
At my own business, in our fight against the economic downturn, we tried to save the cost of processing visa and m/c (regardless of whether they are debit or credit) by promoting the switch from plastic(cards) to paper(checks). Because it was practically free for me to process the checks and the cards are expensive! For $5000 of business it cost me (a vendor) from $175 to $500 to process the visas/mc (depending on what merchant service i used) while only about $18 to process that much in checks. (my average sale was around $55). I think you will see more businesses gladly accepting checks as the economy continues to make us all ‘cut back’.
To all those who think no one uses checks anymore — you obviously do not have school age children. Checks are frequently required for filed trips, lunch accts, etc. Unless of course you want to give 5 year olds an envelope of cash. Try living i ht e real world not just the techie one.
Mint.com has horrible customer service. If your stuff works then great. If it doesn’t, you’re out of luck. They don’t respond to email requests for help, they don’t have a good FAQ section, and the forums are pretty much useless as well.
My bank info will not update. I sent three emails in the past 48 hours (they say they will reply within 17 hours) and have gotten nothing. When I tried to sign up to use their forums, it made me wait for a confirmation email that never ever came. I attempted to just go ahead and log in and it did let me. Why say you will send a confirmation email!!!??? And then not send one.
There are lots and lots of similar complaints in their user forums.
Mint.com- you get what you pay for.
Although not exactly on topic, everyone should be aware that Mint.com mines your data. Check out the current job opening…
http://www.intuit.apply2jobs.com/ProfExt/index.cfm?fuseaction=mExternal.showJob&RID=68860&CurrentPage=1
Highlights from the Product Manager description include:
“With 1.7m users tracking over $250 billion in transactions, Mint.com is a goldmine of information. Your job involves two aspects: getting the data in cleanly (from over 14,000 banks) and extracting value from all that data for insights into market and economic trends.
For getting data in (we call it “account aggregation”), you’ll be responsible for:
· Working with Intuit’s aggregation team, 50 engineers and scripters who maintain connections directly or via screen scraping to 14,000 banks, on the API fields, data timeliness, and data cleanliness needed as a key supplier across all Intuit Personal Finance products including Mint.com, Quicken and associated Mobile applications…”
And by the way, this isn’t exactly clear in their terms of use or privacy and security policy.
I’ve been an avid user of Quicken for many years and am hesitant to move to Mint simply because the data is stored in a place that I don’t have complete control over.
I love mint.com except for one problem. It is VERY slow to add additional financial institutions. It allows you to request the addition of a bank that it currently doesn’t support, but after making that request, you can wait months and months without the bank being added and without any information from mint.com on whether it is making an attempt to add that bank. In my case, this means that my primary bank, where I do my daily banking, is not included in the spending or income information shown on my mint.com account. This, unfortunately, is a huge downside to using mint.com.
By the way, Microsoft will stop selling MS Money in 2010, and will stop supporting it in 2011.
So, I have been looking at Mint. (I refuse to use any Intuit product since they screwed me with Tax Cut authorization a few years ago.)
On problem with Mint is it seems not to be able to find my Mortgage and Home Equity accounts at BofA. When I try to find them, Mint keeps on duplicating my checking and savings accounts, also at BofA.
THen you will be sad to know that Mint is now run by Intuit…
errr 1) mint is really, really easy to use
2) logining into ur accounts over wifi, not haveing good virus protection, banking over ur cell phone, and not shredding ur info all put u at a much bigger risk for being a fraud victim then mint getting hacked….mint has alot $$$ on the line, one screw up like that and they are out of business
3) besides my grandpa, who the heck uses checks anymore for anything but paying ur mortgage?
its 2009, unless ur liveing off the grid or something, or for some reason will lose alot more than the average joe if ur the victim of fraud, services like mint are a great way to budget and give you a quick picture of your fiscal health
(its about common sense not crippleing paranoia)
All the negatives of mint and Yodlee has been overcome by Perfios (http://www.perfios.com) it is fully automated and i have been highly impressed by it since the time i started using it a month ago…..
I have used MINT for over a year now, and really like it. I like the budgeting info, the graphs, investment tracking, etc. I had trouble with ING for a while, but finally got that resolved. I switched to MINT from Full View by Fidelity, when I was kicked off because I was no longer a customer. I like free, and MINT is the best one. I have checked PageOnce, Wasabe, Yodlee and a couple more but haven’t found one as good yet.
No check register.
Are people thinking only of the past?
That property tax check you have to write in December for 5 grand; don’t you want to see how that will affect your balance in the future?
Don’t you want a check register to see if you can add an extra check to your mortgage each month?
You use checks, for what? You buy music on those flat round CD things to right?
Rude. I am 21 and use checks for many things such as paying taxes.
Checks for my kids day care, for my mortgage, for anything my kids order at school, uniforms, dance equipment, sports affiliated, field trips… I’m constantly writing checks for things like that – plus any bill that I pay over the phone a month or so ahead of time generally requires my bank account information and a check number to create a system generated check…. people still use checks…. often.
Check register? When you read of all of what mint.com has to offer, the only thing that pops to your mind is that there is a check register missing from the equation? Interesting, thanks for sharing. How does a check register tell you if you can add extra funds to your mortgage?
Ok for starters I found Mint very easy to set up and I personally enjoy being able to check all my accounts using one web page vice going to 3 or 4 just for the normal ones. As for everyone who is scared about the POA and your passwords. if you make it a habit to check on your stuff daily you will notice a charge you didnt make and can then freeze that account for fraud with very little if any responsibility on your part. As for the POA it is only limited which is limited to allowing them to access your accounts not transfer money and make online purchases.
I read most posts…
I downloaded the app for my iphone when I found mint.com…
but…before I signed up completely…or gave any bank info…I read the part of the terms and policies before doing so. I didn’t like the part of limited Power Of Attorney. Acting as an agent on my behalf.
I didn’t sign up…I then realized, its my life, my fincances, and my problems in spending. It was time to take control of it and not let it control me. This world is so “lets make it easy”, well…why make it hard in the first place and then depend on someone or something else to get me out of my irresponsibile choices.
This software sounds great!!! But it won’t cause me to make much better choices with my $.
What needs to be understood is; why am I making poor choices to begin with and fix that problem, then the rest will correct itself.
US Citizens always live life by putting bandaids on every problem, from healthcare to personal fincance/credit. We need to take more responsibility in our lives and understand whats responsible for the issue before you feel the need to bandaid it.
Sorry for the rant, but its so frustrating when I don’t do what I know I need to. I at least feel I made the right choice ‘for me’ by not signing up this time around. Its not the fault of, but if my parents would have been more proactive in teaching me how money worked as a kid, it would have helped. I have to take responsibility for it now and for my kids. I will now focus more on them and teaching them $ principals…guess this was a good thing that came along. Thanks mint.com, my kids will now be wiser so they may not have to use your services.
) (this is in no way meant to be offensive to readers who use or would like to use the service. This is only a personal opinion and choice, but something for those reading to think about!) Best Wishes!
I agree!!!! good point. It’s so hard with this culture in the sense that we strive to be uber efficient that we run out of time to actually take the steps to manage our own finances, and put in the grunt work to do that.
Excellent points superdave. I am also not comfortable with the power of attorney bit or giving out my passwords etc.
Yodlee also giving the same functionality more than mint thro http://www.yodlee.com , the name of the application is MoneyCenter. Yodlee using encrypted username and passwords, so no worry abt security.Going to launch latest version with lot of new functionality. Mint now supporting INGDirect also, This site is MultiFactorAuthentication site. You need to give answer for the security questions. Mint just now supporting this functionality. So try with Yodlee.com
For a strictly non business personal account, exactly why does catagorizing income and outgo help? I quit long ago. The only statistic that is meaningful is whether inflow exceeds outflow as measured by comparing balances across time. So long as balances are steadily increasing, even modestly, I do not really care where the money is spent. If you know you need to spend less, you very likely know where to quit spending. I think managing money closely to that detail is a source of anxiety and interferes with enjoying it. My wife and I rarely ever discuss money, let alone argue over it. I do not care what she paid for something she wanted (and vice versa) so long as the important statistic of a positive cash flow is satisfied. Counting beans is no fun but been there.
This is mostly true, but some (most?) people (myself) aren’t self-aware of where they spend. So if they want to cut back, Mint gives them a great starting place by listing detailed inflows and outflows.
What if you found you spent $200/mo on Starbucks? Could you cut back? Maybe!
Took a look at mint. I rather use MS Money (don’t allow MS Money to connect to the internet after it’s been activated and you’ll be fine).
Here is the definition of “Power of Attorney”:
A legal document giving one person (called an “agent” or “attorney-in-fact”) the power to act for another person (the principal). The agent can have broad legal authority or limited authority to make legal decisions about the principal’s property and finance. The power of attorney is frequently used in the event of a principal’s illness or disability, or when the principal can’t be present to sign necessary legal documents for financial transactions.
Please read the legal obligation you are assuming by signing up. It is true! By signing up you are giving them “power of attorney”.
For purposes of this Agreement and solely to provide the Account Information to you as part of the Service, you grant Mint a limited power of attorney, and appoint Mint as your attorney-in-fact and agent, to access third party sites, retrieve and use your information with the full power and authority to do and perform each thing necessary in connection with such activities, as you could do in person. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT WHEN MINT IS ACCESSING AND RETRIEVING ACCOUNT INFORMATION FROM THIRD PARTY SITES, MINT IS ACTING AS YOUR AGENT, AND NOT AS THE AGENT OF OR ON BEHALF OF THE THIRD PARTY. You understand and agree that the Service is not sponsored or endorsed by any third parties accessible through the Service.
I am stunned that nobody has even mentioned the scariest part of using mint.com – you have to grant them Power of Attorney!!!
Mint Pros and Cons
Pros:
Online management of all my financial data, able to combine all of my financial data into one online place which is password protected.
I found mint very usable to the point that I entered all of my financial information into it,
To simplify my life I use only one credit card. For some reason Mint is sometimes unable to update my credit card accounts.
It showed no updates from JUNE 15TH TO JULY 2. So I did what anybody else would do. I reset the credit card account
What Mint did was that it wiped out my six months of painful entry of each data and expenditure that I did when I reset the credit card. It only goes back a month to retrieve the old data, not back to 6 months.
This is totally absurd.
Unlike Quicken their is no option to back up your work.
Just for that reason I would stay away.
As per my knowledge some of the sites displaying only last 30 days or 60 days old transactions and Yodlee agents are scrapping from the sites and saving in the database. So if you reset the account automatically you lost your old transactions. Instead of that option try to identify the issue of why the account is not updated?.Mint is not showing the error clearly, but if you use yodlee.com it will show the error code and further action.
don’t give your credentials, nor back account, nor emails accounts,(email accounts are used to retrieve all other passwords), don’t even use password managers, don’t even type your passwords directly to web pages, (store in pendrive with extra fake numbers, delete numbers copy and paste to web pages, then close file without save to keep fake numbers, this is to avoid keyloggers), don’t let pages to store passwords, ask your bank if they can charge you automatically, so you use the online account the less as possible, or even disable online transactions, use it to review only, block you credit cards against unauthorized transactions or amounts, etc etc etc… this is just a brief resume, don’t think this is paranoia,it’s actually to little compared on what you really should do to be really web safe.
I don’t recommend any software that use your credentials in any way, this includes any online banking web page too.
My wife set up mint.com. It proceeded to trigger fraud alerts at my bank when it tried to log in. Online accounts locked, all automated bill payments disabled and wiped out. Hours and hours on the phone with my bank. Still trying to clean up the mess. Use this yodlee and mint junk with caution.
I am using manageME both at business and home to keep a track on day to day income and expenditure. The best thing I love about manageME is its features and its easy usability. Anyone from a grandson to grandpa can use it without any assistance and difficulty.
Last year,I have been to my brother’s place and I found that He was using mint for managing his funds.
I was delighted, as like manageMe, mint is also helpful and easy to use.
From then I and my brother always get into fight boasting about manageME and mint.
Quite an informative post about money management. another such helpful post I have read at http://www.manageme7.com/blog/money-management/....
Shawn- Like you, I don't feel safe giving that info out. But I LOVE what mint could do and would definitely pay for the service if I felt that it was safe. What did you decide to do?
I have used 6 different versions of Quicken dating back to mid-1990 and I know prefer Mint to anything Quicken has to offer.
First of all, Quicken when installed puts a bunch of **** you don’t want on your computer…and Quicken is now really slow. And then they try to sell you other software programs. Quicken has really gotten away from their roots.
On the other hand, Mint is easy to use and if you want a basic tool for seeing where your money is going, that is free! and that can be used on any computer because its a website — then I highly recommend it.
This type of software is the future and you can see why the likes of Google has Microsoft shaking in their boots — no need for software loaded on your hard drive!
You do realize Mint is owned/operated by Quicken, right?
That happened in September 2009. The comment above was written almost a year earlier.
MINT is a great system, but the ways to save page doesn’t allow one to enter their technical info in regards to their credit card accounts (i.e. interest rates/ reward point structure, etc.)
I am really impressed with Mint.com. I signed up today, and within just 20 minutes, I had all my transactions categorized and could easily see where all my money was going… I highly suggest this service, its is SUPERIOR to everything else I have tried!!!!!
Go mint.com!
Pat, I have mint and it works fine with my ING account, which includes two saving accounts and an ING Electric Orange account.
I tried to setup an account at mint.com but I found out that citibank and ING did not support the mint site/ software. what to do, what to do?…. could someone suggest another software that is better?
mint does support ing, you just have to set it up after 8pm EST and before 8am EST, ing doesn’t want them access to slow down the site for others, I think since it is an online only bank (for the most part). I’m looking into getting my citi bank account to work, i think you can, but i’ll let you know what i figure out
I have a Citibank loan, and I had to enter the website (studentloan.citibank.com) to get it to work, but once I did, it went smoothly from there. The same might work with ing (they even show ing.com as an example).
Like Shown i don’t feel safe to give my bankin information. I just try Mint and it’s not really simple to use. So now i have tried 3 others websites: Wesabe.com ; sbudget.com and MyBudget-online.com
Wesabe and MyBudget-online.com are more friendly for everybody.
Finally looked at mint myself, and wow. I think I’d be willing to pay money for the service it provides.
So, it looks like Yodlee stores the data then? I’m still not sure I like the idea of someone else having my banking login information, but maybe I’m just paranoid.
Side note – you should consider getting the subscribe to comments plugin [1] for wordpress. Otherwise I have to remember to come back and see if you replied to my comment, which is never a safe bet.
[1] http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/
After reading your review, I figured I’d try it out… I am quite impressed with the way it generated my expense report. For someone that uses their debit card for everything, Mint will help you find where you are spending to much! Great review Elliot.
They use a service called Yodlee which does the access. You can google it for more info!
I don’t understand how they can get updated information from your banks without storing that data. For that matter, giving away your login credentials is probably a violation of the terms of use for most banks (just like it is for e-mail services but other sites ask for them).