Do you successfully use Mint as a budgeting software?

Question

I've signed up for mint two or three times in the past, and I've never stuck to it because I feel like there are some very basic things that I am just not allowed to do. I'm giving it another go since I've heard others here recommend it, and I want to know the thoughts of people who successfully use Mint to budget.

The main issue I have is with my investment accounts. For example, in one investment account I have my stock portfolio, a Roth IRA, and a pile of emergency cash. I put 20% of my paycheck into that account each month, but I haven't found a good way to represent that on my Mint budget. It also mislabels one of those accounts as "unknown."

At this point, I'm leaning towards using Mint to track and categorize my transactions, since it seems pretty good at that task. Then I can just punch the numbers into a monthly paper budget by hand. Any opinions or tips are appreciated!

Stephanie Bureau · Answer

I like mint for determining net worth and see where I'm spending money and to see if there's any weird transactions. It's not that good for budgeting. I use a excel spreadsheet for my budget and its flexible enough for what I need.

Kevin Phu · Answer

For those who use excel to track their personal money, could you provide a screenshot of your layout? I have an excel sheet that started to make for budgeting and I think it'd be great for others to be able to see how others track their money in excel.

Daniel Chang · Answer

I've been using Mint since 2009.  It works great as a budgeting tool.  It works horribly as an investment / networth tracking tool.

As for the categorization, Mint is going to mess up...a lot, but as is any software.  What's important is that it captures each transaction.  Once a week, I go through and recategorize what is incorrect. For instance, a "transfer" is not categorized as an expense.  But an "investment" is.  So if I categorize a IRA contribution was an "investment", it will seem like I expensed $5500.  I need to categorize it as a "transfer" to leave it off my expenses summary.

From a net worth standpoint, this is where it fails horribly.  I had several accounts that properly inputted and updating.  Yet the "net worth" section just doesn't capture these accounts.  It also is extremely poor as tracking cost basis, gains, etc.

The feature I like the most is the "search" feature.  If I wanted to find out how much I paid for a car payment several years ago, I can find out instantaneously through mint.

I've heard good things about Personal Capital, but since I've been with Mint so long and have all my history on there, it doesn't make sense to switch.

It just depends on how complicated your personal finances are.  Nothing is ever going to be more accurate then manually keeping track in Excel.  However, I have more banks, brokerages, credit card accounts than fingers and toes combined.  Definitely worth it to give up some accuracy for convenience.

Tom Smith · Answer

I just started using Mint for operating accounts (checking accounts, credit cards, income).

I use Personal Capital for my net worth (Properties, Mortgages, Savings, other loans).  I like Personal Capital a lot better.

Matt Marino · Answer

Hahaha sorry @Mike Landry but if you spend that much eating out every month, you may want to give Mint another look.

But in all seriousness, if you haven't been there in a while there have been some updates. When you categorize a transaction (like marking a check as "bill pay") you can select to mark all future checks as "bill pay." But still, I don't think that outweighs the flaws. I know it does A LOT of work for a free program, but it seems like in their efforts to make budgeting foolproof, they've over-complicated it.

Mike Landry · Answer

I tried. Every time i would write a check it would categorize it as restaurants. We where spending thousands a month eating at Landry's restaurant I guess.

I didn't really like mint. I find it was truly easier to just do the dave ramsey envelope system.

Trevor Ewen · Answer

@Matt Marino

For personal (household, not business) budgets, I tend to think it's a very nice tool. We use it for everything at my house. My wife is very fond of using the 'Trends' view to properly categorize everything.

We have accounts that are exempt from tracking (business credit card, investment accounts) and other expenses that are outside the norm, we can easily add an 'Exempt' tag to them so they stay off the budget trends view.

It takes a good bit of curation, but once you get it working well, it'll be hard to understand how you went without it.

Matt Marino · Answer

Thanks @Trevor Ewen for the clarification. After doing some fiddling with Personal Capital, I think I will be tracking my investments and net worth there, and saving spending and budgeting for mint.

Trevor Ewen · Answer

@Matt Marino

For some more context. We really don't use Mint for goal or investment management. It's not quite sophisticated enough for the kind of investments we run.

For monthly budgets, it's gold. Use the right tool for the right job, good luck.