My Favorite Budgeting App Mint.com - What I Don't Like (3 of 3)

* Security - I wish I didn't have to give my bank account login credentials to Mint. That said, if I want the convenience of having all of my transactions in one place, this is the price I have to pay. Thankfully, Mint isn't some 2 bit, fly by night operation. They are owned by Intuit, who also owns TurboTax and Quicken. They have some experience in keeping data safe. Here's what Intuit says on their website about how they store this data: "Login user name and passwords are stored securely in a separate database using multi-layered hardware and software encryption." Obviously, after the Equifax breach less than a year ago, we all have reason to be squeamish, but this is an area where I've chosen to trade security for convenience.
* Budgeting:

* One thing that bothers me in the area of budgeting is that, although Mint allows you to create new budget categories, you have to do it within their conceptual paradigm -- in other words, you have to pick one of their existing categories to put your new subcategory under. Here's an example, I have a category that's just called Lara. That's kind of like my discretionary allowance -- I can spend it on books, clothes, dining, whatever. Okay -- it doesn't naturally fall into one of their default categories -- but I have to pick one anyway, so I somewhat arbitrarily pick "Financial." The annoying thing about that is that in the budget screen Mint insists on sorting your line items by their super-ordinate category "Financial" rather than "Lara", which is what I would prefer.
* But far MORE annoying is that you can't delete any of their default accounts. That isn't such a big deal in the budget screen -- after all, you only see the budgets that you create and you don't have to create a budget for every categories. But it is annoying when you are trying to apply categories to your accounts since they will all come up as options. So, if I'm looking for my category Auto All, every default category with Auto in the title comes up as well even if i only want to use 2 of them. It's not insurmountable, it's just annoying.
* The other big budgeting drawback for me is that Mint assumes that the Budget you are creating shouldn't be retroactive, so it only makes it active in the current month and beyond. As far as I can tell, there is no way to edit this. That means that if you are entering a budget in March and would like to see how you have performed against this budget since January -- you are totally out of luck. It will only show you March on. Once you get your budget more or less set, this will be less annoying, but it crops up every time I make changes to my budget (so at least annually) since I can't make them retroactive at all.
* Search - You'd think there would be a fairly robust search function with Mint. It's not terrible on the Mint website, but it drives me nuts that you can't search by note in the transaction. Remember how I put a note into a transaction that it was for Tubing? If I try to search for the keyword "Tubing", nothing comes up, because Mint doesn't search on notes at all. I put a lot of information in the notes section, so if I want to find the transaction when I bought our refrigerator, I have to search for Lowes and then open each transaction individually. This is half the reason I use the Export function since search is better in a spreadsheet. Search isn't great on the website, but it is TRULY AWFUL on their mobile app. In fact, the mobile app has quite a few limitations. Let’s talk about them
* Mobile App - I really want the mobile app to have a lot more functionality than it does. Up until recently, you could opt to use a browser like Safari on your mobile device and go to Mint's website to get full functionality, but they have started forcing you to use the app, which is problematic for me. Here are my issues with it:

[kriswiley]

This series on Mint has been extraordinarily helpful. I appreciate your clarity, brevity, and insight. Thank you!

[markoj]

Good info. I am researching options and this video let me know what I am in for on the 'down' side. I am still impressed--thanks for the honest thorough review.

[elissabell]

Thanks so much. You've done all the work for me. I will use mint now!

[strixoutdoors]

Excellent series of videos! Thank you for putting them together.

[anthonyzagelow]

Great set of videos, thanks for posting

[TiffH]

One big drawback for Mint, that was not mentioned, is that you can only build the next month's budget on the 1st of that month. Meaning if you are in September, and you want to set up your budget for October, you have to wait until October 1st. Pretty annoying. Like you, I've been using Mint for several years and have yet to find a better option, but I wish they would fix some of those kinks that other budgeting tools seem to have gotten right.

[WoutervanTiel]

I hope Intuit would come by here and take this to heart. For me the rigidity of their categories is a deal breaker. I have used quicken for three decades almost and it was great in the beginning then it got bad and now it is ok. However, not it is on a subscription basis and owning the software like in the old days was more economical and you did not feel like you were being taken hostage by the monthly subscription model.

[sandysnow]

Nice 3 video series. I'm brand new to Mint. I've used it for about a month now. I have several annual expenses, and while I understand how to budget for them in Mint, I don't know how to actually save for them. Is it a good idea to have a separate savings account called "Annual expenses" and transfer to it every pay period, and then transfer back to checking when it's time to pay it? Hmmm. Or is it assumed that as long as we stick to our monthly budget that those funds will be available in a year, when the annual payment is due?

[deewavo]

watched all three. very nicely done. anyone have experience with transfers between accounts? for example, transfer from savings to checking.

[JoyEnterprises]

I don’t like that you have to round budget line items to the dollar. I like to be precise down to the penny with my income and expenses.

[wennethephoo]

thanks for your helpful videos about mint !!

[chessmith]

Thank you for such an informing and well organized tutorial; you are an excellent teacher. I have just linked my bank accounts to Mint and really appreciated your tutorials; Do you know if Mint is the only app that can be linked to a bank account?Thanks, Lara

[strixoutdoors]

Lara, is there a way to differentiate spending by individuals within Mint? For example: My credit cards indicate who made a certain purchase (myself or my wife). I don't see that in Mint, is it hidden somewhere? Is that data exported if I export all of those CC transactions into Excel from Mint? The follow up question will obviously be if there is a way to create a budget for each individual within a "budget" group.

[aqasanu]

Thanks, helpful as ever. Keen to hear if you find YOLT or monzo a better option.

[bridgettorregrosa]

great videos thank you... i am working hard to set up my budget and don't understand why Mint applies categories and then you have to go into each one and tag it to get it into the budget. It seems if you don't do this it still leaves it in other transactions and that's not helpful to my budget

[jehuhernandez]

Thank you for all the videos.
I just sign up. Is there any way I can delete past month transactions? I want to star just whit the actual month.

[susanmccarter]

It's been almost a year. Are you still using Mint or have you found another app you like better? Thankyou Susan