Mint: Online money managementI finally got around to checking out mint.com - a new(ish)comer to the world of money management websites. Just so you know where I’m coming from I use Yodlee.com. I really like Yodlee.com. I also took a spin around Wesabe and think it’s pretty interesting and probably better for some people than Yodlee. (check out my previous review of Wesabe and Yodlee) For my needs, which are pretty much just keeping track of all the various accounts I have, Yodlee is the best. The social networking parts are something I wouldn’t say no to, but definitely not anything I’d sacrifice tracking functionality for, which I believe you do with Wesabe. It’s simply targeted at a different type of user than me.

So, now you know what sort of guy I am. Right? Good. So I was interested to see what all the fuss was about with Mint.com, signed me up a free account and started the investigation. I think the first thing you see is that it’s a beautiful site. I mean, you come to it and they’ve gone to the not very subtle, but very nice anyway, green tones - it just puts you in that money lovin’ mood. Very web2.0 feel, very well done, all curvy corners, gradients and translucency. It just feels good to use, pie charts are 3D and shaded, I mean, a lot of this has been thought through. The color palette is well chosen, everything works together visually.

In terms of functionality I’d say that Mint lies somewhere between Wesabe and Yodlee, offering more account management/tracking than Wesabe (but less than Yodlee) and more supplemental functionality than Yodlee (but less than Wesabe).

For money management it works like Yodlee in that it automatically pulls the data for you on a regular basis (and you can manually tell it to update any or all accounts). Now, in order to do this you need to give mint.com your names and passwords (and security questions) to any accounts you want it to track - this is a world of trust to give to a website, so it’s something you need to evaluate yourself. I’ll talk a little more about this later, for now, let’s assume implicit trust. Having the website do the pulling is very, very convenient - you don’t even have to think about anything - it’s always up to date. Wesabe, on the other hand, does not do this automatically you provide the updates (although they work hard to make it convenient to do) - what you lose in convenience you easily gain in not needing to hand over all your logins and passwords to a random corporation.

It does a pretty good job automatically categorizing your transactions automatically, but like Yodlee it allows you to create your own categories and organize everything yourself. Yodlee, though, has added the ability to split a single transaction into partial bits, so an individual transaction can actually flow into two or more categories if necessary. I don’t really need this, but I can see how if you were really needing to keep track of spending this feature would be pretty indispensable.

The main area, though, that Yodlee tops mint on is the variety of accounts it keeps track of. mint.com can manage your bank accounts and your credit cards, certainly the two most important ones. Yodlee, though, literally keeps track of everything - banks, credit cards, investments (stocks, 401k, etc…), frequent flier/loyalty accounts and very, very usefully billing accounts - that is, companies that you need to pay off like utilities, cable and cellphone companies. It shows you all in one convenient place all the bills that you need to pay, how much you owe and when it’s due. It even has a billpay system, although I don’t use it and can’t speak to how good it is. This feature by itself would keep me loyal to Yodlee - it is unbelievably nice to have all the bills you have to pay identified in one place.

On that front, Yodlee just trumps mint and Wesabe. It’s also the main functionality I’m looking for so I’m sticking with them. However, mint and Wesabe provide significant utility that Yodlee does not. Mint provides a ways to save tab that notices your accounts and spending habits and offers you alternate vendors that could give you some savings. For instance, it noticed that I was a Time Warner customer paying way to much for my cable service, waaaay to much, and suggested I try out Verizon FIOS. Not really an option, but an interesting idea. Or it notices you’ve got money in a low interest account and could be earning more elsewhere. I think it’s a little optimistic in telling you exactly how much money it found you, but you know, that’s marketing. It gives you a pretty detailed breakdown of how it came to suggest what it’s suggesting.

It doesn’t provide the social networking that Wesabe provides - which really distinguishes Wesabe. As a service, I believe mint.com competes much more with Yodlee than Wesabe. And on that score, I don’t feel that it comes close to Yodlee’s breadth of services. It trades a wealth of different account types for the interesting, but probably marginal utility of finding alternate vendors for you. Whereas Wesabe trades a lot of convenience but replaces it with a rich social network that offers tons of interesting tips and encouragement for fiscal discipline. You know… if you’re the type that needs to be fiscally disciplined.

There is another significant barrier for mint - that is trusting them, trusting them enough to hand them all the keys to your financial kingdom. The problem is, who the hell are they and why should you trust them? They provide you a laundry list of reasons, but none of them seem really compelling. In fact one of the lists is that they actually use Yodlee to handle the grabbing of data for your accounts!

Yodlee, on the other hand, is used by many big banks. By extension I presume that the banks have vetted things out and a breach in Yodlee would cause problems for all these clients. So, I’m more inclined to trust them because the big boys already do. They’ve added to their security recently, forcing you to choose a picture and phrase (for anti-phishing behaviour), they’re really paying attention. None of this makes one more secure than the next, you need to find your own comfort level and your own reasons for trust - Yodlee’s hit mine, mint hasn’t - your views may be significantly different.

I think mint is off to a good start. The functionality that it has is top notch and the site is beautiful (Yodlee could crib a design direction off these guys!) and it could certainly and easily grow to match Yodlee’s lead. It could put more effort into reassuring users that it was here to stay and provide solid reasons as to why one should trust them to keep their data secure, both from outside and inside attacks. But for now, it definitely hasn’t convinced me to switch.

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Oct 1st, 2007 · Comments RSS · · · · · Tags: finance · review · web2.0