I am a huge fan of money management software. Believe it or not, one of the highlights of my day is coming home from work and updating my finances in Quicken. Unfortunately, Quicken has not improved much over the years, and still leaves a bit to be desired. It’s somewhat bloated and can run a bit slow, especially with online updates, and the reporting features are not as intuitive as they should be. One of the most annoying changes to Quicken recently was how they started charging banks for the direct connect feature, meaning that for most banks you have to log in and download your recent transactions manually.

So not surprisingly, I was excited when I was invited to the beta for Mint, a new online money management site in a similar vein to Yodlee and Wesabe. I have been using it for a few weeks now, and with the public launch yesterday am excited to publish my review for it.

Mint isn’t necessarily a competitor to Quicken, but instead tries to approach money management from a different angle. The basic premise of Mint is getting a handle on your current money situation, whether it be your bank balance or recent spending habits, all from a single internet portal. By just doing that, it already has a huge leg up on actual software in that it’s accessible from anywhere. It does not attempt to act as the be all and end all of money management, so don’t expect it to necessarily replace the current juggernauts Quicken and Money so much as to serve as a supplement to them.

Overview
So let’s get down to the details. When you log into Mint, you are taken to an overview screen that lists your “financial health” on the left (your cash accounts versus your debt accounts), with alerts, spending trends, and ways to save on the right. This screen alone is a good way to get a quick snapshot of your finances. One of the greatest benefits of Mint is consolidating all of your financial information, so that you can spend ten seconds logging into Mint instead of ten minutes visiting all your banks and credit cards to get the same information.

Mint’s Alerts function takes advantage of the fact that this is indeed online money management, in that it constantly monitors your accounts for low balances or credit limits. My favorite feature was alerting me whenever a transaction over a certain amount occurred (either for a single transactions or for the day), which is a great way to get an instant notice if anything suspicious is occurring to your accounts.

Transactions
The next page in Mint is the Transactions page. This page, not surprisingly, lists recent transactions from all of your accounts. You can also tell it to display transactions from only specific accounts. Each transaction is automatically assigned a category, based on either a guess by Mint itself (which is usually fairly accurate), or on what you last categorized that transaction as. Categories are very important to accurately assess your spending habits, so it’s also important that Mint provides easy means to categorize transactions.

Mint has a list of about 100 categories to choose from. While the categories and subcategories make sense for the most part, it’s a bit frustrating to not be able to create new categories. If you do need to mark something in a way that you can’t through categories, Mint does provide the means to label transactions anything you want. This is also the closest Mint comes to providing classes. For instance, you may have a category for meals, but want to label some meals as business expenses.

Spending Trends
The Spending Trends page starts by showing a pie graph of your recent expenses, for which you can change the date range easily. It also shows bar graphs on your spending in select categories, such as entertainment and shopping. The simplicity of this page is its strength, as it gives you a very good overall view of your spending habits. On the other hand, it is the extent of Mint’s reporting features, but to be fair I don’t know if I could expect much more out of online money management.

Ways To Save
The next tab is Ways to Save. I like the idea behind this, and I understand it being a great way to draw people in to use the system, but after spending thirty seconds looking it over the first time I used Mint, I haven’t gone back. It did give some solid advice, such as saving money by using DSL instead of Cable, but I already knew everything it was suggesting. It also incorrectly reported that I was getting 0 interest in my online checking, and 0 rewards from my credit card, but those just may be kinks that are being worked out.

Accounts
The last tab, Accounts, is where you can add, remove, and configure your checking, savings, and credit card accounts. This is a very straightforward process, as adding an account simply requires you to enter your current login information. You never have to input your credit card number or checking account number.

Mint supports more than 3,000 banks and credit cards. In other words, if you use a major national chain chances are they are supported, while it may be more of a flip of a coin for local branches. I had no trouble adding my accounts for HSBC Direct and American Express. Citizens Bank and Chase were different matters though. One of the challenges online money management sites have faced recently is the increased security implemented at banks. Citizens Bank has a multi-step login process which includes image verification, and sites like Yodlee and now Mint seem to have trouble stepping through that. I also had trouble getting my most recent transactions from my Chase credit card, though according to their help forum they were working on that.

The site as a whole functions fairly well. The interface is very well done in that it is intuitive to use and looks beautiful. However, the delay switching between tabs can be very frustrating at times, with it taking five to ten seconds to load a new tab (the site is extremely slow at the moment due to the public launch, but this was an issue during all of the beta).

Security
Most people are worried about the security, and that’s understandable as your entire financial life is now accessible from one site. However, the main security issue is the password you use to log in with, which is a concern at any site. Even if a hacker does gain access to your account, all they can do is view only the same information you see at Mint. None of your financial information is stored at Mint, but is instead sent to online banking powerhouse Yodlee. Yodlee is used by a huge number of financial institutions, so it is possible some of your banking information is stored there even if you don’t use Mint. Overall, I feel comfortable with the security methods Mint uses.

Wish List
Mint has been in development for a long time now, and has a very good number of features built in. However, there is a very long wish list of features, some of which you could argue are essential to money management. The first, I would say, are personalized alerts. Mint does a good job of telling you when your bank account is low, or when a credit card is due. However, it can’t remind you of bills to pay. As I have nearly a dozen bills each month, my main use of Quicken is for it to keep me updated on which bills are paid and which are coming up. This sole missing feature alone would prevent me from using Mint as my main source of money management.

I also would require some type of export utility before I ever replaced Quicken with Mint. I backup Quicken daily, and feel secure knowing I have a categorized history of my finances for the past seven years. All I would need is some sort of standardized backup option (such as a comma separated) for my peace of mind.

Other wanted features include splitting transaction categories, renaming accounts, manual transactions (such as cash), importing data (such as old Quicken accounts), and most notably budgeting. It is somewhat odd that they decided to not include budgeting into a product features ways to save and spending habits.

Conclusion
Will I use Mint? Assuming they fix Chase credit cards, and are able to keep page loads under five seconds, then yes. Unlike Quicken, it requires minimal upkeep, and even if I completely ignore the categories I can at least get a quick overall view of my finances and transactions. However, like I mentioned above, I will have to use it as a supplement to Quicken until, and if, they add in some additional features. For some people, Mint may do all they need. Other people may already be using Yodlee or Wesabe, and continue to. I’ll be checking Mint during lunch at work, updating Quicken after dinner, and still looking for the quintessential piece of money management software that will make that part of my life easier.

All screenshots are from Mint’s feature page, not my actual accounts