Mint
This web-based dashboard gives me an elegant overview of all my financial accounts in one screen. I've been using Mint for the past 6 months and it is marvelous. It is super friendly, quick, and illuminating. It makes me smart.
Mint will aggregate any money or spending account with online access -- which is basically all financial accounts by now. In ten minutes or less I added our bank, credit cards, mortgage, cars, 401k, credit union, checking, and Etrade accounts to Mint. That's the last input I ever had to do. From then on Mint automatically updates all the accounts, sucking in their data with the correct passwords, and integrates this diverse information into a single unified realtime snapshot of our finances. At once glance I can see where we are spending too much, or how we actually allot our income. I no longer have to hunt for my password and numbers for different accounts, say checking our bank balance, or a credit card purchase. It is much much easier, and far more pleasant, to simply log into Mint, where I can see everything. There, in clear presentation far superior to most banks, are all my accounts informing each other. One window to watch them all!
Mint is a read-only interface. There is no way to move money, or reconcile accounts, or pay bills, or calculate taxes (for now). That is also why it is safe. In fact it is probably safer than most banks because fancy algorithms at Mint similar to credit card fraud detection software will alert you when your finances show an unusual pattern. This is one of its cool features. It will gently inform you (at your choice) that say, based on your past months’ expenditures, you've overspent your grocery budget this month. It also makes a fairly good guess at categorizing your expenses on its own. It can then make comparisons of how your budget stacks up to other aggregate users in your area, and offer budget suggestions (which we have not followed). We rarely use cash for anything so Mint gives us a very complete picture.
Some people will not be convinced by any reasoning or proof that having a single window into your entire financial situation is safe. If you are of that type, don't use Mint. But for the rest, who long ago realized that using credit cards online is far safer than using one in a store, Mint is a fabulous cool tool. And it is free. Available anywhere the web lives.
There are a couple of similar sites, such as Wesabe and Geezeo, which emphasize sharing budgets, sort of like a Weight Watchers for finances, but I find their interfaces far less elegant. However this niche is evolving fast, and features expand. Mint has a good head start, a winning design (I love the pie charts!), and a sizable user base, so I think it will be around for a while. (If it did disappear, no loss because it does not store any unique data.)
Favorite (15)
Eric
Pretty cool, but what happens if the Mint database is compromised? Would a malicious user now have all my banking passwords?
mibble
Just started to sign up, but stopped very quickly when, in addition to my online banking login info, it asked for my bank card's PIN! While allowing it to access my account info online is ok, I'm pretty sure storing my PIN anywhere outside my own head is a bad idea.
Dan
Nice idea, but storing your banking passwords and PIN #'s on someone's server is not a smart thing to do. Perhaps I would use a program like this if it was a desktop app, using locally stored passwords on a computer that never leaves the house. Even then, I would be a little nervous.
Mu
I had the same thought. It's not about wether the transmission is safe with a service like that one.
Millions of banking account data in Germany have been known to be had for the asking (and paying) through illegally compiled databases. Same with telecommunication and other data files.
Most of these stem from corrupt employees of firms which accumulated data in an originally legal way.
I grant you that: it really looks like a fun and easy and integrated way to check your financial status.
Andrew
I use mint. It's probably just as likely that my own bank will gets compromised as mint itself. With that line of thinking i shouldn't do any online banking, but that isn't practical.
It's a matter of weighing a few things. I'm lazy and i don't do my finances well, mint is a VERY useful way to get a snapshot of how i'm spending, and if anyone is ripping me off. All in all the chances of compromise are low due to the type of ACH accounts that mint has (they require audits). At worst they are just as good as the banks i'm using anyway. So, chances are I will loose a lot more WITHOUT Mint that with.
Matt
"Some people will not be convinced by any reasoning or proof that having a single window into your entire financial situation is safe."
No, what isn't safe is providing sensitive information to untrusted third parties, as others have already noted here. Even if you assume Mint is perfectly benevolent, it's difficult to assume it's necessarily just as competent. This is one example of why I don't use tools like this:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/19/financial-exposure-rudder-inadvertently-shows-users-each-others-bank-account-info/
EyePulp
I recall reading a few articles about mint's backend security as related to user credentials. Nothing's 100% safe, but they do seem to avoid storing your bank credentials locally, and only store your mint login info. Can it be hacked? Sure. But it would seem a direct hack of mint wouldn't result in the immediate ability to log into your bank proper and start moving funds. Being read-only from the mint side is helpful, though that info *can* help with social engineering.
Probably worth reading their FAQs on the issue before embracing or castigating their business... http://www.mint.com/privacy/faq/
j461
Your link to www.mint.com at the bottom of your post is broken.
Kevin Kelly
Thanks, j461. Fixed it.
J Brady
I used Mint for a while and kind of liked it. But found that my main bank uses a challenge question scheme occasionally, which made it hard for Mint to always pull the data. So, I quit Mint and followed their instructions for deleting my account and presumably my login info for my banks. However, after deleting my Mint account, "someone" was still continually trying to access my bank account and would end up locking me out of my banking institution due to too many login attempts. I contacted Mint and was assured it was not them. I got my bank involved and they tracked the activity to the outfit that Mint actually uses to store the banking info (Mint does not store this info I believe). So, I contacted Mint again and had them look into this further. Although I never got direct confirmation from them, soon afterward, the attempted logons ceased. It was actually a pain in the butt and took several months to get fixed.
MAS
This will be hilarious when someone manages to steal millions of dollars from Mint users overnight, and the users then have to prove that the person who used their username and password and PIN wasn't, in fact, them.
Kevin Kelly
@MAS, Bank robbers and bad guys are always a problem.
Arvind
I love the convenience that Mint offers too. You should mention the free iPhone/iPod Touch app too!
Mint uses Yodlee for the backend and that company has been around a while. I previously used a similar service offered by my CU which also used Yodlee, so I did not hesitate too much to enter my bank information on mint.com. Mint does not appear to store any of the financial information, it is all stored on Yodlee's servers. If you see here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yodlee), Yodlee's service is used by many including Bank of America.
From http://www.mint.com/privacy/faq/
Do you store my bank login information on your servers?
We need your online banking user name and passwords so that we can help you organize and manage your accounts, that information is encrypted and transferred in a secure manner. We store only the information needed to save you the trouble of updating, syncing or uploading financial information manually. Your banking login credentials are securely stored by our online financial service providers. Your Mint login credentials are not shared with these providers.
I read "our online financial service providers" = "yodlee"
Ed James
It is worth noting that this service (and others like it) work only with U.S. banks and financial institutions. It is useless to readers of Cool Tools from other countries, unfortunately.
techrite
Not a good idea. I f the PW for this one account is compromised, then every one of your accounts is also compromised. Money can indeed be moved out of your accounts. It doesn't matter if the party is a trusted institution or not. Many, many identies are stolen at all levels in the financial world, and having all eggs in one basket definitely makes things easier for someone bent on theft.
John
Although Mint claims read-only access, this is purely a matter of trust: the access information you provide them for your bank accounts allows read-write access. To make this more secure, banks could provide a special login that only allows read access.
Techrite-- I haven't used Mint, so I can't speak to this directly, but common-sense security says that Mint should never send bank passwords back to the user. This way, even if someone does gain access to your Mint account, they can not gain complete access to your bank account. On the other hand, if the site (or perhaps their "online financial service provider") is compromised, then you are correct.
Ken
Mint is great for showing you how much money you have (or don't have) for an exact point in time.
There is no mechanism for entering hand written checks, or scheduled electronic bill pay transactions, so the financial picture that Mint provides is a bit less than accurate. For this reason, Mint is no replacement for Quicken.
christopher
Just some general clarifications about implied assumptions being made:
Mint stores hashes of your values, so compromising your Mint account doesn't get much more than a read-only view of your finances and a partial read of account numbers. The real risk here is socially-engineering the additional info based on your account numbers, but your actual login creds aren't plaintext visible here.
You probably throw away paper copies of account numbers in your regular trash, or recycle, so odds are you don't have a consistent level of paranoia here.
An attack on Mint itself may yield the hashes, which could be replayed to access your information. That would be bad, very bad indeed, but I would consider the idea that, odds are, they have better security for all that data than you have for yours. Someone will reply with their TrueCrypt/ PGP/ Password Safe setup, but so what? Even *that* isn't safe from cooled-memory attacks.
Does the reward outweigh the risk? In my case, it does, and I know a little about systems security, having written application and systems software for over fifteen years for big telecom and pharma. I just don't see my potential liability being a blocker on such amazing convergence and convenience.
-C
Kevin Kelly
Mint is as safe as an airplane. Airplanes crash every year; those who are on the plane die, and will prove to you airplanes are not safe. But those crashes don't preclude the safety of flying. If you want 100% safety from airplane crashes don't fly and don't live near an airport. Mint is safer or as safe as your bank. If you want 100% from banks, don't use a bank.
Most of the worry about Mint is based on assumptions rather than knowledge. I've heard all these assumptions for at least 20 years, starting in the 1980s:
"There's no way I'm going to use a credit card online. Hackers can steal it." "There's no way I am using Amazon, because they ask for my credit card number. Someone can hack Amazon and steal all my money." "There's no way on earth I am using PayPal. They want my credit card number AND my bank number. I'll get wiped out." "There is no way I am using my bank online, giving them my PIN. Hackers will get in and steal all my money." "There's no way I am using read-only Mint. Hackers will steal all my passwords."
All I can say is chill out. You'll get used to it.
eufreka
This is an ad, right? Have you compared the tool to others out there? Green Sherpa, Quicken Online, etc......
Please explain what makes mint *BETTER* than any or all other such services that it would rate a "Cool Tool". Otherwise, I think the point would be that *any* such service--and there are several--is a "Cool Tool."
I have followed this blog for a long time, and this is the first time I felt I had been fed an ad....
Keep it up, and you will lose your own "Cool Tool" status....or perhaps just the first half of it...
Heidi
I find that most of the time, Mint can't pull account information for many of my accounts. And I don't use obscure services either. I've put in some help requests and gotten nothing back. I am about ready to cancel my account.
Kevin Kelly
@eufreka: All cooll tool reviews are ads in some ways, since all of them are positive raves about something that the reviewer thinks you the audience should use/buy as well. But no one is paying us, so the reveiws are not advertisements proper. But they are constructed in the similar way.
I have not used all the other money sites out there, but it sounds as if you may have. Of the ones I tried, Mint is better in its interface. But perhaps you have a different experience. I'd love to hear which financial site you think is superior to Mint.
eufreka
@KK...
Well, I haven't used them all...but I have tried most.
The reality is that they are all POOR. None provide for actual reconciliation, for example. Without that, they aren't functional replacements for Money (now being discontinued) or Quicken (full version).
Most don't support *true* transaction splitting or even multiple (if any) cash accounts, etc.
Just take a stroll through any of their community forums and you will see...
georgek
@eufreka, this is not true. Mint supports transaction splitting and date changing. There is no need for reconciliation because the info is pulled your bank. This is why i ditched quicken...got tired of telling crap software that it was incorrect 2 hours every week. It's really a mentality change. Once you realize that financial management shouldn't require the work Quicken and Money have convinced you it needs, Mint is amazing.
afeman
@kk:
The security examples you give all differ from Mint. Web banking involves two parties. Credit cards have a third party, but that third party is the one on the hook for any fraud (which is why vendors have gotten so elaborate about verification). Paypal supposedly *has* cleaned out bank accounts, and other automatic withdrawal arrangements have caused similar damage -- health clubs are supposed to be a real pain this way.
In this case you have a third party sitting on your passwords. They may have all the right technology and be on the up-and-up, but that's still a lot of eggs in one basket. To extend your plane crash metaphor, a lot of companies don't allow their execs to fly together. The "read only" thing is a red herring unless your passwords access read-only websites.
Also, sharing your password is against the user agreement of some financial websites, including Mint's, ironically enough. That could leave *you* on the hook if that plane goes down.
yragentman
Pretty funny this post came right after "Hack Alert".
Call me paranoid, but I prefer to keep my phyancial data as secure as possible - including keeping on an external drive that I only connect when I am using it and not on the drive in the computer I use on the web.
false sense of security, but it matches my green visor!
EdC
The terms of service of on-line financial services require that you not disclose your password to others. In most cases, disclosing your password to others allows the service provider to disclaim any liability for unauthorized use. This is a reasonable condition because an on-line user's knowledge of the password is the only way to verify their identity.
If unauthorized activity takes place on your account, the service provider will ask if you have given your password to anyone else. Users of mint.com will have to say "yes". At this point the service provider will (should) say "Sorry, it's not our problem." You will have no recourse even if the losses appear to you to be unrelated to your use of mint.com.
There is clearly a need for an easy-to-use solution that aggregates personal financial information from different sources. But mint.com is not it.
georgek
Sorry, this is misinformation.
disclosing your password to Mint, or any other online financial aggregator, does not violate your ToS with your financial institutions. At one point PayPal said it did, but they quickly backtracked. caution is good, but be informed before spreading misinformation to others.
> At this point the service provider will (should) say
> "Sorry, it's not our problem." You will have no
> recourse even if the losses appear to
> you to be unrelated to your use of mint.com.
will? should? no, they won't say this, or quicken would have been out of business 6 years ago. i think your skepticism is good but you really need to research this before commenting with authority. just check out the mint/quicken/etc. security FAQs for a few minutes and you'll realize this is not true.
fred
I love the irony of the previous article being 'Hack Alert' and the Captcha being "typhoon Rear"... you can't make this stuff up. While I share your sentiment, KK, on the "you'll get used to it" I agree with the logic of not having all execs on a single flight. The distinction is, I think, an important one. I'm not sure how one makes a convincing mathematical argument that concentration of risk is not bad. I'm open to hearing such an argument.
Sysadmn
For me, Mint's glaring lack is printing. There's no "download this as PDF", and the css used if you try to print from a browser produces a bigger mess than the default. You're effectively limited to taking screenshots and printing those - totally worthless to me.
I do use Mint, but only because it allows me to search for transactions. It's better at that than my bank's online account statements. Even better, it will search all of your accounts - great when I've written a debit from my account in my wife's checkbook, or vice versa.
expendedlibido
Hi, I have been using Quicken, for two years now. Their online version was better than the desktop one. However, even though there was an excitement with either of those versions in the beginning like OMG it can pull my banking stuff in one place and show me different categories. There was not enough excitement to come back for more and more. The organization of things required a lot of work. It had poor capabilities to work with un similar monthly payments or checks. Maybe the lack of excitement was in me but I have been looking for a new way to track finances in one place. Is Mint it?
Any users who have used it and find it superior to Quicken.
Another
Some googling leads to several reviews by people claiming that Yodlee is superior to Mint. I don't use either but I thought others might be interested to hear about another option.