In this guest post, SC takes a look at Mint, one of the recent batch of on-line financial management tools. I haven’t had a chance to use the site, so SC volunteered to write about his experiences.
Mint is a new website that claims it will help you organize your finances, automate your financial life, and help you save money at every turn. I have a credit card with Capital One, two bank accounts with E-Trade, and a number of certificates at E-Trade, as well. Normally I use Quicken at home to manage all my finances, and but I gave Mint a whirl a few weeks ago.
Here is a quick summary in case you don’t like to read: Mint is great for helping you identify spending habits and prioritize your finances. It has wonderful charts and graphs, and was very easy to use. Also, if you are not using the most efficient “financial vehicles”, Mint has good suggestions. It is not a good tool for finding “deals” on your day-to-day spending. Mint just can’t get enough information from your credit card bill to adequately offer cheaper alternatives to your shopping habits.
Getting started
The first thing you do at Mint is add your various online accounts. This was easy as pie — mint pie.
The interface for adding and organizing your accounts was very simple — it felt a lot like moving around widgets on the iGoogle homepage.
Financial overview
Once you’ve uploaded your credit card account information, Mint is able to offer a variety of information about your money. One of the neat features is the Financial Overview page, which shows you the current status of all your accounts — updated every night:
The Financial Overview also displays your cash vs. debt breakdown, and how much you spend on various categories (shopping, restaurants, gas, entertainment, groceries, etc) with a bar chart. If you click on one of those categories, Mint will show you the associated charges, so you can easily see what you are spending where.
For example, here is my grocery breakdown:
And my entertainment expenses:
Spending trends
Mint tracks your spending trends across the months of data it has for you. Then it puts a fancy pie chart together for you. (This probably will look familiar to Quicken users.) Here is my spending breakdown per Mint:
This chart shows each category and how much I spent. If I click on a category — Food and Dining, for example — it will expand to show me more details:
I found this to be very helpful to identify specific areas I can cut back. I wish I could click a subcategory and see a listing of those charges, but that’s not an option I can find.
On the same page with the nifty pie charts, there are a series of bar graphs showing how your spending pattern has changed. This is fairly limited since I just signed up with Mint (and my credit card only keeps two months of history), but I would imagine that as time goes on, it will become more and more helpful:
I sold my car last month and now only ride a motorcycle, so it’s nice to see my gas has gone down. I also made a more concerted effort in September to eat at home more and eat out less. My grocery bill went up, and my restaurant bill went down! Yay!
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So here is where Mint loses its flavor. Basically, it offers you “ savings options”, which are products you don’t currently use and could save you money. There are two kinds of offers that Mint shows you:
- Consumer services — Mint told me I should switch from Sprint to Verizon. It noticed that I spent ~$450 on phone service this month and offered a Verizon alternative. There are a few issues here:
- I bought a new phone this month, so my monthly number is very inflated. There’s no way to adjust this with Mint.
- I use Sprint for a reason: I can’t get what I need with Verizon. I have an unlimited phone, data, and text plan, plus a cellular WiFi card, and the connection speed on Sprint is notably faster than Verizon. Mint’s “Verizon Offer” is a generic “you can get your phone, internet and cellular service for $145 a month!” and there’s no way to update your needs and get better tailored ads.
- Financial services — Mint does a better job here — at least the offers were comparable products. But again, Mint didn’t know what specific rates and costs my accounts were. So, for example, Mint told me I should open an ING checking account and get 3.50% APY, a yearly savings of $250. But my E-Trade checking account has an APY of 4%! Same thing for the Discover Credit Card it suggested. I have a cashback plan with my Capital One card, but it didn’t ask (or have a way to input manually) what my plan is. So the $4,489 in savings I could have each year is completely inaccurate.
Sometimes — especially if you aren’t taking full advantage of competitive financial vehicles — this might be handy. If you don’t getting interest on your checking account, you should look into it!
But this certainly isn’t the real strength of Mint.
Bottom line
I think Mint is a wonderful tool to organize and analyze your finances; it’s a more detailed and user-friendly online flavor of Quicken. (But without the check writing abilities.) As a free site, it’s pretty cool. It doesn’t get much better than free!
But in terms of actually saving you lots of dough through promotional offers, I would take a pass. Unless they find a way to really tailor their recommendations to your needs and situation, it doesn’t seem like it will work very well for the average consumer. It didn’t work for me.
Thanks for the review, SC! What about you folks? Have you used Mint? Do you like it? How would you improve it? Last year about this time, I reviewed Wesabe, another online personal finance tool. Have any of you tried both? How do they compare? For myself, I’m happy to keep using Quicken for now.
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I’ve used Mint and was initially VERY excited about it because I have been wanting an online replacement for Quicken for a long time. However, it is very, very buggy — to the point where it becomes unusable. Sometimes charts don’t work or are not accurate; often times it couldn’t figure out how to handle the ING accounts and its “pending” status. My other big problem with it is that you cannot modify the categories at all. I don’t need a lot of customization, but I do need some.
The good thing about Mint is that it led me to Yodlee, a far, far superior online finance solution. It is so good, I’m amazed it does not get more publicity, especially on personal finance sites like this. First, it does everything Mint does, but better. No serious bugs that I’ve seen, and I’ve used it daily for the last 3 months now. And then it far surpasses Mint’s functionality. It includes bank & credit card accounts but also investments accounts and even mortgage account tied to Zillow.com valuation software so you can get a good read on the equity you have in your house, all of which contributes to the net worth report it makes available.
I could go on about other features, but it would take a long time. If you are looking into online personal finance solutions, you owe it to yourself to check out Yodlee.
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I use Mint and this review is right on target with both the good and the bad points (almost exactly what I would have said).
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I tried mint for about 5 minutes a few weeks ago. I set up one of my bank accounts and it did seem to look very good. Then (about 5 minutes after I started) I said, “wait a second, I’m a software engineer who works in security, what the heck was I thinking just giving out my bank account’s password to some random website?!” So I promptly disabled the account and changed my bank’s password.
I think it’s a neat idea IN THEORY, but cannot bring myself to, or recommend others to give out their bank passwords.
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I used Mint briefly. For me the bad outweighed the good. This review is right on with the service. I view Mint as a place for people to start getting a grasp on their finances. If you are already there it is not a great tool.
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I’m stunned that a review of Mint wouldn’t include anything about the serious privacy concerns raised by Mint! Unlike other online money managers, Mint asks for your logins, passwords, and account numbers for all accounts you’d like to track. Are you guys being paid in any way for reviewing this service? Is it relevant to mention that among the terms and conditions for using Mint, you waive your right to a trial by jury or to participate in a class-action suit against Mint?
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I tried Mint and ended up canceling because of two problems: there is no way to exclude accounts when you have multiple at one institution (like the business account my bank has listed under my name but whose money does not belong to me), and the lengths to which I needed to go to get their site to crack into my ING account. The bells and whistles look nice, but I’m still just concerned enough about my financial privacy online that I’d rather not be giving my bank account passwords to third party sites.
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I tried Mint out briefly but later cancelled my account because of security concerns as well. I don’t quite feel comfortable giving all my username/passwords to a small internet startup.
I realize they have strong privacy policies right now, and are most likely not going to doing anything inappropriate with my information, but say they get bought out by a company that isn’t quite as “concerned” about that sort of thing. I don’t think the small value gained by having all your financial info in one place is worth the risk.
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Doesn’t the fact that this site has access to all a person’s financial data send red flags to anyone?
Identity theft is the fastest growing white collar crime right now, and its a billion dollar “industry”.
Imagine the GOLD MINE that a malicious hacker would find if they were able to breach Mint’s site. How many users does mint have? How many credit card and investment accounts are those linked to? Right. I’ll keep it to myself thanks.
Oh, and I’m sure they’re not selling users’ personal information. Not that the wonderful banks that we all know and love didn’t already do that.
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I’ve heard concerns about Mint’s security, too, which is one of the reasons I haven’t tried it personally. The other reason is that I do not trust the revenue model. I don’t trust the “you could save $1,000 by switching to this credit card” thing. It sounds to me like a way to sell lucrative credit card applications. (If I were to pimp credit cards at GRS, I could have quit the day job long ago!)
I’m not saying that Mint is bad. Obviously some people love it. But I, too, am wary about using it.
I would be happy to share a guest post at GRS from somebody who is concerned about Mint’s security. This would probably be better if it addressed online security in general, of course. (Actually, this sounds like a good idea for an article, even if nobody volunteers to do a guest entry. I’ve added it to my “future stories” list.)
I just dropped a line to the folks at Mint asking them if they’d be willing to come address reader concerns.
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I’ve tried Mint and I think the one area the site is really lacking in is budgeting tools. I’ve been using Mvelopes.com for about 6 months now, and their budgeting tools have helped me make dramatic changes in my spending habits.
Sure, I could save myself $7 a month by switching to Mint. The way I see it though, Mvelopes’ budgeting tools help me save far more than that $7 a month by helping me stick to my budget.
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@Amber – I had the same issue re excluding accounts at banks. I’m the power of atty for my mom and her bank in my primary bank, so having the primary checking account of two separate households killed by initial trial of Mint.
I went on there today and they do now have that option.
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i’ve been entertaining the idea of using an online tool like this, but can you tell me what the risks of giving a FREE online tool access to your personal accounts would be?
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I do like the interface with Mint, but my ING account is very hard to adjust. It keeps asking me for my information to log ina nd most times I can’t access it.
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After reading the part about Mint’s user agreement I promptly went to the site and deleted my account. That is just plain scary.
I also agree with J.D. about the credit card peddling. I think that a site trying to help people manage their money is really only hurting most consumers by advertising credit cards. Many of us think we have learned responsible use of them, but very few of us actually have.
One of the sites that I don’t think has been mentioned yet on GRS is expensr.com. I checked it out a few weeks ago. It isn’t as Web 2.0-ish as Wesabe or Mint, but it works fairly well. It doesn’t seems to work very well if you use credit cards as far figuring out how much you actually spent per month. It does have ways to compare your spending with other people (in groups) as well as a way to enter your monthly budget, which is nice.
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YOU HAVE TO GIVE IT ALL YOUR BANKING PASSWORDS!
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You might also want to look at Expensr.
I haven’t tried it, but a few of my friends like it.
Lise
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I tried Mint, but it was way too limited for me. I have an account with Citizen Bank, and Mint.com couldn’t get connected too it. I raised a feature request in the forums, along with many other Citizens bank customers, and we were just fobbed off with no resolution or even commitment.
So when my main bank can’t be added – it was useless too me. At least with wesabe I can upload my statements manually.
So I cancelled my Mint.com account, quite unsatisfied with the experience.
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I like mint, I’ve been using it for a couple months now. It helps me set a budget and I can look any time and see how I’m doing with my monthly budge.
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I agree with cms. I tried mint and wasn’t that pleased with it but after doing some research mint led me to Yodlee (moneycenter.yodlee.com) and I have been really pleased ever since. I currently use a combination of Yodlee and Mvelopes to track my finances. Yodlee to track my net worth and my overall status in all of my accounts and Mvelopes to have a more proactive way to budget and track what I have spent in each category. This has been very helpful for coordinating the budget with my wife since we can both access the budget online whenever we need to.
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[...] 14, 2007 by Linda Well now, Get Rich Slowly just posted quite an in-depth review of Mint. How [...]
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As others have stated, the security concern is a real one and that is what keeps me from signing on with a company like Mint. My take is that even if the guys at Mint are doing everything they can to give your information the best security they can, what happens when they get bought out by some faceless corporation?
Do you think someone isn’t working very hard to get all of those account names and passwords out of Mint right now? Could they not possibly be smart enough to pull it off? It’s just a matter of time in my opinion…
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I use mint. I’m a little frustrated because they sent me these emails telling me when my credit card bills were due, but it forgot one, so I didn’t pay it. I shouldn’t have trusted it. My fault, but I usually look at my credit cards each time I get paid to look at the finances, and pay the bill if it’s due. Since I started using mint, I haven’t been visiting each credit cards site as frequently. Well, not I’m going to move all my credit card bills to the same day, and pay them all of at once so I don’t forget again. And I’ll still use mint.
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Thanks for the through review, SC!
As was mentioned by other commenters, Mint uses Yodlee as a partner to access financial accounts – the very same service that powers Bank of America’s My Porfolio, Microsoft Money, and other bank’s branded personal finance management system.
Amber: As mentioned by Kraft, we’ve recently added the ability to exclude or hide accounts, depending on your preference on Mint.
Paul #1: Our privacy policy does in fact address the concern you’ve mentioned.
Paul #2: We’re well aware the problem many users are having with Citizens bank, and we’re working with Yodlee to address the issue. Unfortunately there’s no quick resolution to the problem.
For those that are concern with security and privacy, which is always a valid issue for applications such as these, I invite you to read Mint’s safety page and privacy policy.
You should also be aware that Mint does not require personal identifiable information to use the service. We do not ask for your name, address, birth date, and certainly not your social security number to register for use with Mint.com. We only require an email and password of your choice. We also strip away account numbers from banking and credit accounts so these information are not shown when you access Mint. At Mint, we want to ensure that our users are as anonymous as possible to protect their privacy.
In regards to the Ways to Save page, or the SmartSave engine, it is in beta and will definitely be more robust as time progress. We only show offers that are calculated to show savings, regardless if the offers are sponsored or not. For anyone that’s a rate-chaser, or a savvy credit card user, they’re most likely aware of the massive amount of choices out there in terms of high-yield savings or credit card rewards – it’s not easy to swim through the myriad of terms and condition on APRs and fees! As the database grows and algorithm refines, the aim with the SmartSave engine is to provide a quick and objective way for people to identify better rates and savings opportunity.
There’s also a reason why the page is separated on another tab, if you’re a savvy consumer that’s fully aware that you’re using the best account for your financial situation, then you most likely won’t need to check the page out. In future releases, we’ll try our best to fit in more functionality so that users can give more feedback to the types of offers they see.
Our users constantly give us feedback, whether positive or constructive criticism, we read them all and take them into account. At the end, we’re consumer advocates. We’re trying to make a financial application that’s secure, simple and objective so that our users can get a better handle on their finances, to truly see where their money is going and have a better tool to grow their net worth. If you have an idea on how we can better do that in the forms of feedback or product suggestions, please contact us and send them our way!
Since JD has also invited others from Mint to address other concerns, expect more responses to follow (I personally just read the post right now).
Cap
Mint Community Team
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I really like the Mint interface. It’s very clean and easy to use, but there were actually several of my accounts that Mint couldn’t connect to. I may try it again in a month or so to see if that problem has been resolved, but I guess I’ll be sticking to Quicken for now.
- Brandon
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Even putting security concerns aside, this isn’t worth it to me if I can’t enter stuff in manually. Like my student loans, or a check I’ve written that hasn’t cleared. I’ll stick to MS Money.
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SC (and JD) – thanks for doing that writeup.
My biggest concern about Mint isn’t the security aspect of it, but the hands-offiness of it — their focus seems to be on eliminating as much financial thinking (on the user’s part) as possible. Granted: you can use their service and still be involved in budgeting and whatnot, but when you “put your finances on autopilot,” I think you tend to put your spending on autopilot, too. Or you miss important payment dates, like Jeffeb3 (post 22).
Two other services in the personal finance space that look good are clearcheckbook.com and expensr.com (mentioned above). And, as you mentioned, Wesabe. And, of course, once we launch PearBudget, we’ll be in the space as well (although our focus will be much more on making a spending plan and keeping a budget, rather than synching up bank accounts). Even though I’m behind PearBudget, please don’t think I have anything against Mint. Clearly, a lot of people have found them to be useful.
Each of the services has strengths. And, depending on what you’re looking for, each service has weaknesses as well. But what’s most exciting is that people are finding tools to engage with their finances. Regardless of what tool you end up using, getting your financial house in order is crucial. It’s awesome that tools are emerging to work with different peoples’ approaches to money. It’s just a bit of a shame that there’s not a quick way to compare them all to see which one works best for you.
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bank of america’s website sort of has something like this.. it’s called MY PORTFOLIO.. it lets you add all your accounts (assets and liabilities) and also filters expenses into graphs.. i kinda like it because i can keep track of my net worth all in one page
(only thing is it won’t let me add my ING direct account for some reason)
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SC,
Great review. I’m glad you see Mint as a quick, easy way to see where all your money goes without much work.
Regarding Mint offers, we’ve noticed that the interest rate that you get on your bank, or the rewards you have on your credit card may not be accurately reflected. In our next release (one week away) we’ll be incorporating data from nearly every checking, savings, and credit card in existence (a monumental task to be sure) to ensure accurate, reliable savings recommendations. We’ll also let you over-ride our inferred spending (e.g. $450 on your mobile because it included a phone) as well.
Thanks for the great feedback.
Aaron Patzer
Founder & CEO, Mint.com
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Re: Security
On Mint.com security, I’ll make a bold statement: You’re safer on Mint than with online banking. Mint has a read-only connection to your bank; there’s no money transfer in Mint.
On Mint, you’re completely anonymous. We never ask for a name, address, or SSN – just an email. We know about your finances…but not about you. We’re also independently verified by Verisign, TrustE, and several outside agencies.
We also have serious physical security. Our servers are in a secure, unmarked facility. To get in, you need to pass 3 biometric scanners, 4 locked doors, and several guards. We have our own cage so we’re physically separated from all other companies. Cameras monitor our servers and power supplies 24/7. The servers themselves have additional locks. The hard drives are encrypted. It’s like Mission Impossible (except without the electrified floors…maybe one day).
Perhaps more interestingly, 90% of all fraud actually occurs offline, not online (e.g. someone swipes your card at a restaurant or from your mail). Because Mint sends proactive alerts for low-balance or unusually high spending, you’ll know right away. It’s better than logging into 4-5 different banks every day, or waiting 30 days for a paper statement before finding that something went wrong. It’s better to be proactive in protecting yourself vs. passive – and Mint.com helps tremendously there.
Mint uses Yodlee on the backend to connect up to banks. In 10 years of operation, there’s never been a major security breach at Yodlee. This is the same secure “account aggregation platform” used by Bank of America, Microsoft Money, and Fidelity.
Aaron Patzer
Founder & CEO, Mint.com
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To the people concerned about security, I suggest you think of a couple of things. First, many, many banks use Yodlee for their security. So, if you feel comfortable with an online account at your bank, you can feel comfortable with the security of Mint and the source, Yodlee. Second, if someone were to get into your accounts, what exactly could they do? I defy you to even find your own account information at your online bank, and you certainly wouldn’t be able to find your SSN. You can transfer money between accounts, but it’d be pretty tough to transfer money to a completely new bank account without the owner knowing it, given the hoops we all have to jump through to set up a new transfer account.
I’m not saying I’d like it if someone hacked into my accounts, I’m just saying I find it highly unlikely. And if a person did, I don’t expect much damage would occur.
As a reminder, many people were distrustful of ATMs when they first came out, to say nothing of online banking and (horrors!) online BANKS themselves. But I suspect most people who frequent this site got over it.
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I happen to love Mint. Not sure where I found it but I’m glad I did. It’s been great to see how my finances are laid out in graphical format. I use BofA but the My Portfolio is kinda cheesy. I still prefer Mint.
Regarding the ING accounts, they do not allow external services to connect to them. I was trying to add my Electric Savings and Electric Orange accounts and they always failed. A quick call to ING yielded a security related response. This is not Mint’s fault.
If you’re interested in a site that provides high security and allows for a nice overview of your accounts, then try Mint and see if you like it.
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It’d be great to keep track of all my finances like this, but no way I’m giving out my passwords, accounts, cc’s, etc to an online site. It’s bad enough when Ebay or Paypal get hacked. I don’t want to find out someone hacked into Mint and has ALL of my financial information.
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While this sounds like a useful site, it just really makes me uneasy. Why would anyone create a site like this without a subscription fee? I haven’t researched how long they’ve been around, so perhaps they’re new and just looking for customers.
Personally, I’d look at their privacy statement very, very closely. I’d be concerned they were mining my finance data and then selling it (and whether or not they did it with or without my name is irrelevant to me — I would expect any site with personal finance information to not say “Oh, Restaurant Advertiser: SR over in Seattle spent $xx at restaurants in October”).
Personally, if I wanted to use a tool like this, I’d buy some software, so that my personal information wasn’t potentially being mined and distributed to marketers.
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Another Bank of America customer here. I also use their branded Yodlee service (My Portfolio). I like it a lot so far. As others have mentioned, the budgeting portion of it is kind of weak. For instance, the seperation of restaurant and grocery purchases is great for showing how you’ve spent your money, but in my opinion is awful for budgeting it. (I like to simply set a monthly food budget, and if I blow it I know I’m eating out too much.)
Mvelopes seems like a nice solution to this, but I refuse to pay $7/month for something I can do myself! (Albeit with a little more work, since I doubt I’ll be able to automatically pull purchases. Maybe I’ll teach myself how to parse Quicken files…)
My favorite view in Yodlee is the cash flow. I love being able to see, both in hard numbers and graphically, how I’m spending compared to my income. The graph gets a little shaky when I go to a weekly instead of monthly view though, since my paychecks are biweekly and my biggest expenses are piled up at the beginning of the month. (Thus I end up with a nice alternating XXX pattern of the red and green lines!) It’s nice to see that I net on average about $100 per week though.
And for those concerned with your safety: I’m happy that you all are concerned. You should be. Just be careful not to misplace it. I think Aaron addressed your concerns very well. Especially relevant is the fact that 90% of identity theft is not online! Media exposure would have you think those numbers are reversed. You have a problem giving your account information to an automated aggregation site (so that no person is actually looking at your information!), but you have no problem handing your physical card to the random waiter/-ess that is serving you, and allowing them to take it out of your sight!
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Whoa.. security paranoia to the max. cms said what I was about to.
Also, Ariston: My Electric Orange account works fine on Mint..
I use mint. I used to use wesabe but then i got into mint beta and it’s so..much.. *prettier*. Yeah, big fancy reason that is.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to improvements (i really wish they would hurry and put student loans on there!), I absolutely love all the graphs and such. It’s always nice to go through, tag all the purchases my boyfriend weasles out of me, then point it out to him on the graphs later. It helps… sometimes. Even the suggestions, I’ve found much more informative than not. Everything they’ve shown (nearly) is much better than what i’m using now.
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Watch out for those waiters as mentioned in an earlier post. One in my area was fired. He would take the customer’s charge card at the cash register when they were paying for a take-out, then hold it underneath the counter and take a pic. of the front and back w/his cell phone!
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Mint.com is a good tool from everything I have seen, however in inherits the same flaws as every other financial aggregator on the web. There are several security concerns, and their admins seem not to like addressing them. Also keep in mind that Mint.com has 0 liability if anything happens to your data. I wrote about some of the concerns at my blog
http://think-smarter.blogspot.com/2007/10/mintcom-great-concept-bad-execution.html
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I’m sure other people will/have said the reason i don’t like this service, FOR ME:
Identity theft. I’m sorry, but i don’t want to hand over ALL of my financial numbers, and passwords, &c over to a stranger, let alone a stranger on the inter-web!
I hope people who can’t afford Quicken/Money can find this useful, but i would have a Better Suggestion, if you use this because of money: Gnucash. It’s open source, free, and available on both Linux and Windows (and they just released a portable version for Windows)
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Is Yodlee free?
Which one is better: Yodlee or Mint?
thanks,
Vic
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@VicfromATL
Mint is actually using Yodlee to provide the service, they just provide a front end to Yodlee to make it a little more user friendly according to them.
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This is a very good way to keep organized with financial matters. Although this program is interesting, I don’t think I would have the time to try it
As for this post, you spelled “CAPITAL” one wrong as “CAPITOL” at the top
-Mike
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FYI, if you have an account with Fidelity, they have a Yodlee-powered interface called “Full View”. I’ve used it to consolidate all investment accounts and Rewards Points accounts into a single picture. Good or bad, I trust Fidelity to ensure the security of access to my accounts.
I still use Microsoft Money for checking & credit accounts, primarily because I rely heavily on the scheduling of bills for planning purposes.
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I *like* Mint. My finances had been in shambles and – at least for the budgeting-challenged such as myself – it really helps me keep track of everything in one easy-to-use place.
For instance, it flagged a grocery store as my ‘most-frequented’ store. Well I was using that store as a ‘free’ ATM by buying items I didn’t really need so I could get cash (for parking). When I saw that store flagged I immediately started going to a real ATM instead.
It does seem a little buggy, but I’m sure that’ll get worked out soon and personally I just don’t mind giving out my passwords to them.
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I agree with everyone who’s talking about Yodlee — Yodlee is amazing! And they’ve been in business for a while and are trusted to be the portfolio backend management site for many different banks (like Bank of America), so I’m more likely to trust them than some random startup. Also, the interface for Mint absolutely sucks. It’s so hard to change the category, and it often gets categorization wrong.
I don’t understand why more people don’t recognize yodlee.
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“Why would anyone create a site like this without a subscription fee?’
Hi SR,
Because that isn’t our business model. Our business model is to make money off of referrals (see link: http://forums.mint.com/showthread.php?t=867)
As people have pointed to security a great deal, I thought I would share the following links that explain things in detail:
http://forums.mint.com/showthread.php?t=703
http://mint.com/privacy.html
Note: Having worked at PayPal, I can also state that most online fraud occurs because of spoofing/phishing activity. You’re also still far more likely to have your id/card information stolen in your local area.
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I’ve been using Yodlee’s money center for quite a while now just because it does a cool calculation of what my Net Worth is and tracks it with a fancy graph, Mint is definitely a step up!
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I’ve been using Mint for a few months now and I love it. It’s an incredibly easy way for me to see exactly where my money is going.
I had some problems at first – my bank is pretty local and at first it wouldn’t sync up, and then it randomly stopped syncing up for a week – but it’s back on track now. It doesn’t show transactions that are still pending, but it still accurately reflects my balance. I imagine this will be improved over time.
Overall I’ve been pretty impressed with Mint. I heard all the arguments about security and it seems solid to me. And they never asked for my bank account number… just the username and password I use to log into my online banking. I can change those, and my security questions, really easily if I need to.
It is a really useful tool and I plan on using it to my advantage.
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I was pretty impressed with Mint’s capabilities (I’m an avid user of Wesabe) but the problem I had was it simply would not log into my Franklin Mint account. It kept telling me there was an error and it was reported to Mint, but still nothing. I did set up my other accounts no problem..
Maybe next time!
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“On Mint.com security, I’ll make a bold statement: You’re safer on Mint than with online banking.”
Disregarding comparison of any serurity measures, let me think about that: One account in one system I have to worry about vs. ALL of my accounts in ONE system I have to worry about.
As a software engineer, I am shocked that people would so easily hand over their bank account information (including passwords!) to a single system. Have any of you done any analysis on security failures over the last few years?!?
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Apologies in advance for the length of this post, but I have to chime in here on the security issue and in particular to folks who downplay it.
CMS: Not to cast a damper on what you are saying, because in some ways I agree with you, but…
The difference is when you aggregate all of your banking and financial information into a single spot, hidden behind a single login, you create a _single point of failure_ for your entire financial identity. One break in to that single point and your entire set of financial information is compromised. I don’t know what kind of logic Mint uses in their interface to mitigate this; but unless you have to log into each account every time you want to see that account info via Mint, I am skeptical that truly less than that single point of failure.
On bank account info online, bank accounts also provide vast amounts of “passive” information about your spending habits; they tell potential thieves about expenses that you regularly incur that could easily be replicated to make it seem as though what they are stealing is a normal expense that you are less likely to notice/question.
It also makes it incredibly trivial to perform social engineering hacks using this information; Credit card companies often use banking history to determine the identity of the person on the other end of a phone call – so if a thief can say, to another human being on the phone, “Uh yeah, I spent 354.00 on concert tickets last month”, the card company is much more likely to be phone scammed.
Using information from an open online banking session, thieves can also quite easily and quickly set up things like fraudulent PayPal accounts that can be tied to your banking information. And if they’re set up in various countries and locations (think Bahamas, Cayman Islands, etc.), there is actually very little (and often, no) international law that says what they are doing is strictly illegal.
Further, a single point of failure is not like an ATM machine; a stolen debit card with the PIN will compromise at most a handful of accounts at one bank; A site that gathers ALL of your financial data behind a single fence is an entirely different matter.
That said, you do have a greater chance of a restaurant server stealing a card number and CVE. Absolutely. But at least with a credit card you have some recourse if the worst happens. With a service like this, their liability is $0, so if your account is compromised via this service, I would bet that card companies and banks would say, “sorry, you gave your info to a third party – we don’t cover that,” which means you are SOL.
So yes, Internet security involves a degree of paranoia; but don’t underestimate the danger of having all of your financial information under one veil.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
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