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When it comes to budgeting apps, Mint has held the top spot for a long time. It started in 2006, boasts over 15 million users, and is owned by the tech giant Intuit.
But how does it stack up as a budgeting tool? Can it really help you save money and hit your goals?
I have used Mint on and off over the past 10 years, and recently jumped back in to give a complete review and see how it stacks up.
What Is Mint.com?
Mint.com is a FREE money management tool that helps you create a budget, track your spending, track your bills, set money goals and see a full snapshot of your finances. It is owned by Intuit, the same company that brought you Quicken and Turbotax. It is ad-supported, so there is no monthly cost to use it.
With over 20 million users, it is one of the most popular budgeting and money management tools on the planet!
It has a HUGE amount of features, especially for a FREE tool:
- Automatically pulls in a categorizes your financial accounts and transactions
- Customizable budgeting tool
- Mobile friendly (iOS and Android App)
- Your Money Trends (Charts & Graphs included!)
- Credit Score Tracking (TransUnion Vantage Score)
- Bill Tracking
- Goal Tracking
- Alerts for almost EVERYTHING! (Email and Push Notifications)
With all these features for FREE, it's easy to see why it's the leader in the industry.
But I want to know if it can ACTUALLY help you get on a budget that works, and improve your finances??
Let's find out!
How Does It Work?
Mint.com connects securely to your financial accounts, and pulls in your account details and transactions. It aggregates all the data into their tool and helps give you a clear picture of where all your money is going.
It takes all your account transactions and shows you spending trends, suggested budgets, and even things like upcoming bills and investment performance.
It a one-stop-shop for all your money details, and though it's not a perfect tool, it's a great way to QUICKLY see what the heck is going on with your finances!
Mint.com Features
Overview
This is your Mint Homepage, and shows you an overview of your finances. I recommend customizing this page (in the settings) so you can see the most important details first. Seeing the Accounts, Trends, Budget, and Goals first will help you quickly see what's going on with your money.
Transactions
This is where you can see all your transactions across all accounts, or click into each account to see them individually. This is also a great place to edit your transactions in bulk.
I like taking a quick look at this to make sure nothing is out of place, and then updating any transactions that were categorized incorrectly.
A quick way to do this is to check all the boxes next to transactions that need to change, click “Edit Multiple” and then select the appropriate category.
For examples, the below transactions need to change to “Christmas”, so I checked all the boxes and updated the category. SIMPLE!
Credit Score
Keeping an eye on your credit score is a valuable tool, and Mint partners with Transunion Vantagescore to give you a great basic gauge on how you are doing. Note: This is not necessarily the number lenders use for housing, cars, etc.
To get your score, simply fill out the form with the required details. No, it will not ding your credit. Yes, it's secure (see Is Mint Safe).
Bills
Mint used to have a “Bill Pay” feature, but with most bills allowing auto-pay and online bill pay, they did away with that feature. Instead, Mint can track your bills, and alert you when a bill is coming up. This is a great way to track your monthly bills in one place, and see what is coming up.
After adding all your financial accounts, Mint will looks for bills that are recurring.
If it doesn't find any, you can add them in manually as well.
Simply add your billing account login info, and you will be able to see what's coming up. You can even add “Offline Bills” to track things like Lawn service, or babysitting.
This feature is SUPER helpful to keep track of things like Cell phone, utilities, and credit card bills.
Budgets
I will go into more detail on how I recommend setting up the budget later in this review, but here's a quick overview of how it works.
Once you connect your accounts, Mint pulls previous transaction data (past 3-4 months). This is actually great for the “Past Spending” exercise that I recommend for setting up a proper budget. (note: categories may not be accurate, may need to update manually)
Then go to the “Budgets” tab, and you can start adding the details of your budget. Select “+ Create A Budget” and start with your income. Then add categories for each of your expenses.
You can choose if it's a monthly expense, infrequent expense, or a one-time expense.
It will let you quickly build a budget, and show your bottom line on the right side.
Goals
Goals in Mint are pretty simple. Under the GOALS tab, you select “Add A Goal”, and you can choose from their list, or create your own.
Their pre-built goals have some great features built in, auto-calculating HOW much you need to save monthly, and automatically putting that into your budget.
For example, if I select “Emergency Fund”, it asks me what my Average Monthly Spending is, and how many months of expenses I want to save. If I put in $4,000, and want to save 3 months of expenses, is totals $12,000, and asks when I want to save this by. I select 12 months from now, so it adds the goal to my budget, requiring I save $1,000 per month to reach it in time.
This follows the SMART Goals principles I outline, and is a great way to see REAL numbers attached to your budget.
You can also create a custom goal, and add in your total amount needed, and a finish date, and it will calculate the monthly savings needed.
Mint did add in the ability to add Tasks to each goal as well, though I'm not sure I can find a real use for it.
Investments
After you plug in your investment accounts, Mint will show you some basic details on them. It does NOT retrieve your investment performance history, and only starts tracking once it is added.
I mostly use this section to see to total value of all my investment accounts, and how the market has been doing. But it's very limited and doesn't have many useful investment features. Things like 401k fee analysis, retirement planning and asset allocation are available in Personal Capital, and is my free tool of choice to get a more accurate picture of my investments (and make sure I'm all set for retirement).
Trends
Trends is an AWESOME feature (<- yes, all caps!), and allows you to QUICKLY see where all your money is going.
My personal favorite section is looking at the “Spending By Category” graph.
It's a quick snapshot of you spending, and a GREAT way to take a look at where ALL your money is actually going.
If you've never looked at your spending before, this can be EYE OPENING. I recommend selecting “Last 3 Months” to get an accurate picture of where your money has been going.
And if you want a deeper dive into a category, simply click on the section of the pie chart, and it will break it down further.
For example, if I click on “Food & Dining”, it breaks down into more categories.
Use these trends to review your spending, and see areas you can cut out waste. It's a MIGHTY budgeting tool, and will help you get your spending in line with your Goals.
Note: If you haven't gone through your transactions and properly categorized everything, this graph won't be entirely accurate.
Reminders, Alerts, and Advice
Mint has many alerts and reminders, and can keep you aware of what's going on with your money. Setting them up can help you stay on top of things like going overbudget, unusual spending, and large purchases.
You can access them under “Settings > Notifications“. Here's the notifications I recommend setting up.
Low Balance
Alert if your account balance drops below a certain amount (say, $500)
Unusual Spending
Will notify you if any category is massively overspent.
**Overbudget
This one is important. Get an alert when you overspend in any category. This means you should move money from one budget category to the overspent category.
Interest Rate
If any interest rate changes.
Trade Commissions
If you are charged trade commissions (keeps an eye on investment fees)
Bank Fees
Let's you know if you have any bank fees
**Large Purchases
Get notified when you spend over a single amount in one transaction. This one if good to keep an eye on your accounts.
Large Deposit
Get notified when you get paid. Set this amount just below your typical paycheck amount.
Goal Notifications
Updates on the goals you set.
How Does The Mint App Work?
Mint has a mobile app for iOS and Android, and is how I recommend using this tool on the daily. You can bring your budget on the go, and always have a quick snapshot of your money in your pocket.
There are 4 sections to the mobile app:
- Overview
- Alerts
- Offers (ads)
- Settings
Overview Section
The app homepage shows a nice, concise overview of your money. The overview pages shows:
- A few of your most recent transactions
- A snapshot total of all your financial accounts (Cash, Credit Cards, Investments)
- Upcoming bills
- You credit score
- A graph of your budget (kinda worthless)
- A pie chart of your spending
- A bar graph of your Cash Flow (very useful)
You can customize this in the “Settings” section, so you only see what you want. There are a few things (suggested offers, blog, feedback) that you can't remove, but here's how I would set it up:
- Budgets
- Bills
- Transactions
- Cashflow
- Accounts
- Credit Score
- Trends
I mostly take a quick look at the recent transactions, the financial snapshot, and then click on the budget bar to get the ACTUAL details of the budget.
(p.s. the reason I HATE the budget bar is that is show your current spending vs. today's date……but spending is NOT linear…..just because it's the 15th of the month does not mean you still have half your money left…..that's not how bills and spending work. So the graph is worthless to me)
The Budget section is nicely laid out, and even color-coded, to quickly let you know if you are on track or overspending.
You can do some basic editing to your budget here, but I recommend getting your first budget setup using the website on your computer first.
Alerts Section
The “Alerts” section shows you alerts based on how you set up your account alerts. It will show if there are any account sync issues, and for me, I set it up to see when I go “Overbudget” or have “High Spending” in any specific category.
This is a way to get quick updates on anything you may want to take action on.
You can't change any of the Alert settings in the App, but need to use the web version.
Offers Section
This is where Mint places the ads in the app. It's actually nice that it doesn't clutter up the rest of the app, as it does on the web version.
They offer Credit Cards, Loans, and Investment options. Once nice thing is that they use your REAL money data to customize the offers, so at least most of the offers are relevant.
Settings Section
The last section allows you to customize your App experience. I recommend customizing your “Overview Settings” to make your homepage look how you want, and setup your Notifications to ping your phone (turn on “push notifications”).
You can also add or remove accounts, and update the App security. I recommend setting up a Pin Code for access, for en extra layer of security.
App Summary
The phone app is limited in some sections, but overall, it's a quick way to see how things are going with your money, which is NEVER a bad thing!
The ability to automatically see where all your money is going, and having the app sync you and your spouse will go a LONG way to getting your money right!
How To Budget With Mint – 6 Easy Steps
STEP 1: CREATE A MINT ACCOUNT
First things first, you need to sign up for a Mint.com account. Use your email address, create a password, and you’re connected!
Once you are signed in, Mint will walk you through a basic user profile setup.
Fill in the details to get the most accurate recommendations from Mint, and it will even show how your spending compares to others in your same demographic. And if you’re competitive like me, that’s some quick motivation to get your spending below the national average!
STEP 2: ADD YOUR FINANCIAL ACCOUNTS
Once you fill out the profile, it’s time to start adding accounts. Mint partners with thousands of banks, bills and other financial accounts, so if your account has an online login option, Mint mostly likely has it.
To connect your accounts, select the “+ ADD ACCOUNT” option in the top menu, and then you simply find your financial institutions in their search bar.
Mint will then walk you through signing in to your online account. Different institutions connect in different ways, so just follow the on-screen prompts to connect.
Once the accounts are connected, Mint will pull in the transaction history and account balance, and will even pull that data into your “Budget” section as well.
And possibly my favorite feature of Mint, it totals all your assets minus your debts, and will show you your Net Worth!
This is why I recommend connecting EVERY money account you have for the clearest picture of where you stand financially. Connect your banks accounts, credit cards, investment accounts, loans, mortgage, house, cars, etc. to make sure you are 100% IN THE KNOW about your money.
STEP 3: START WITH INCOME
Navigate over to the “Budgets” tab. This is where you will start building your Mint.com budget.
Related -> If you haven’t already, read through my Ultimate Guide on How To Budget. It walks through the EXACT process I use when coach people to get on a budget.
Click on “+ Create A Budget” to add your income first.
Mint will show you your AVERAGE income for the past few months, which is especially helpful if you have a variable income.
Input the total amount you will be earning this month, as Mint only allows you to budget for money earned in the current month.
STEP 4: ADD YOUR BILLS
Now it’s time to add in your expenses. I recommend starting with your Bills first, as those are usually the same month-to-month.
Click on “+ Create A Budget” and start by adding in your housing, utilities, and transportation. Then add in any subscriptions or monthly bills (internet, cell phone) next. Don’t forget to add in any debt payments, such as car payment, student loans, and credit cards.
Make sure to select “Every Month” for your monthly bills, or “Every Few Months” for infrequent bills. When selecting “Every Few Months“, you can tell Mint exactly how often, and how much. Mint will then set aside those dollars in the budget so you have the money available when the bill arrives.
Now your budget might look something like this:
Note: You can add/edit your categories. Simply select “Add/Edit Categories” when looking in the drop-down of categories, and add whatever you want. For example, I added the category “Netflix” to the Entertainment budget section.