Moving From MS Money to Mint.com?

Back in June 2009 MS Money was officially killed off so it is only a matter of time before I need to find a new tool to help manage our personal finances. Given I had some time it seemed like the start of the new year was the perfect time to start looking at alternatives tools.

After a quick review I thought my best potential options were Mint.com or Quicken Home & Business.

Mint.com
Pros: Free! Web based so no software required and could access on any computer. Web design seems very slick for categorizing expenses, etc.

Cons: Transactions limited to web access financial accounts. No real ability to keep up transactions in other accounts or "buckets" in your personal finances. Reporting features seem more limited to what I am use to with MS Money. No ability to import the years of data I have with MS Money.

Quicken Home & Business
Pros: More similar to MS Money. Can import MS money data (not sure how well). More reporting features. Seems more designed for those looking for spending control.

Cons: Its not free - looks like it costs around $60. Not web based so technically I can't install it on my work pc making it more inconvenient to use.

Ive decided to start by giving Mint.com a try. Given it's free to use I figured I could try to use Mint.com and if all else fails I could consider purchasing Quicken Home & Business.

Setup
Pretty simple to get up and running. Took about an hour to enter in all my web based account info. Its was a bit weird entering all my authentication information into Mint.com (usernames, passwords, secret questions), but that was quickly forgotten once I saw how much of a better job Mint.com was doing pulling my transaction data from my accounts. Very nice.

I did have a couple accounts (Emigrant Direct, ESPP) that had a lot of trouble remembering all the authentication data (especially the secret questions) and still need to resolve.

First Impressions With Mint.com
My most immediate problem is I haven't found a way to create an offline account other than create a "asset" account and assign it a value. For instance my HELOC with First Citizens doesn't have a web access account. I can create a "asset" for my HELOC account and assign it the HELOC balance, but there is now way to enter transactions associated with my HELOC, I can only update its value.

While the reporting/trend information is limited to mostly income vs spending analysis my initial impression is the reporting feature is nicer to what Im use to in MS Money. Its much easier for me to review reports/trends on our spending patterns than is was in MS Money.

Reporting Monthly Net Worth
Since I have almost all our existing accounts loaded in Mint.com I think I can just update our net worth spreadsheet to utilize the data I can export from Mint.com to report our net worth.

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Comments (10)

I have been using Yodlee for some time. It is pretty useful. I also think Yodlee controls more of its content whereas Mint is just a UI using Yodlee.

From Wikipedia: Mint.com is a free web-based personal financial management service created by entrepreneur Aaron Patzer[1]. Mint provides account aggregation through a deal with Yodlee

Posted by jGeee | January 29, 2010 5:47 PM

So Mint requires you to store your password with them and it syncs all your transactions over the web?

Any security concerns? My thoughts always are the less people with your passwords the better.

Posted by Tax Monkey | January 29, 2010 8:02 PM

I'm using yodlee and I can't recommend it enough. Mint has a pretty face, but Yodlee has more utility.

I'm not consistent in my financial effort and record keeping all year long, but Yodlee continuously scrapes about 30 accounts for me. Its all there when I finally get around to it- and so far I haven't hit a limit on transaction history. So every transaction I had anywhere from '07 is still there for me to look up and categorize.

Posted by matt | January 30, 2010 9:59 PM

Yet another vote for yodlee. Mint is just a prettier but much more limited interface for it.

My second choice would be wasabe, which also has more flexibility than mint. It also lets you choose whether you want it to store your passwords, or whether you want to store them, encrypted, locally, and just have a local utility fetch updated info and then upload just that info to their site.

Posted by T | January 31, 2010 4:00 PM

A third for yodlee. I use that and Quicken (quicken mostly to track tax information and stock sales/losses for me)

Posted by Jolly | January 31, 2010 10:41 PM

Tried both Yodlee and Mint.....found them to be way to basic for my needs. I have several equity investments and real-estate investments and a handful of accounts that do not have web access, so it was a pain to get working with Yodlee and Mint. I have also been a loyal MS Money user for many, many years and have lots of back information stored in those files. I am in the process of migrating everything to Quicken this month. Sad day, because I have always enjoyed MS Money.....hoping Quicken will be decent. Just wasn't impressed with Yodlee and Mint.com.

Posted by Ryan | February 1, 2010 10:00 AM

I'm a big Mint.com fan. It's a great tool. Yes you are right, it does not have alot of the extra features that other paid tools do, but it does make tracking expenses much easier.

Posted by Griff (Financial Freedom 5G Team) | February 9, 2010 6:18 PM

I tried Mint.com and agree that it was too basic. As another commenter stated, it was very flashy, though lacked some essential things I was looking for. I'd rather manage everything myself-maybe that's just my obsessive compulsive self talking... But I'm sure others feel the same.

Posted by MyFinancialObjectives | February 24, 2010 6:57 PM

I love Mint.com as well because it allows me to have all of my finances in one place. However, it's inability to add other accounts that aren't in it's system as frustrated me so much. They have a place where you can email them and suggest a new financial institution to add to their list, but my experience suggests that it takes months and probably several users suggesting it in order for them to add it to their list. Anyhow, I hope they continue to make improvements because it is a good idea in theory.

Kyle

Posted by Make Money | March 6, 2010 9:37 AM

i got the same problem the bank been charging me 5.95 i traid to stop it but any email i send no body answer me what should i do please how cani stop the charge

Posted by juan rios | June 9, 2010 1:51 AM