A personal budgeting app based on the envelope budget system. The app allows users to go from physical envelopes to virtual envelopes, as well as track a few extra things.
Mint vs. Other Money Management Apps
What should you do with your paycheck? With so many ways to save and spend, it can be hard to know where to start. If you are looking for an excellent way to manage your money, consider a money management app. Before selecting, ask yourself if it has appealing visuals that make sense? Can you view charts of past activities? What is its budgeting system like? How easy is it to navigate?
Of all the money management apps, Mint might be one of the most popular – if not the best – available. So what’s the hype about?
What Is Mint?
The Mint app was established in 2006 and has become popular since acquired by Intuit. Mint is free due to the advertisements for financial products based on user activity. The app helps with budget, debt, and investment management and tracking financial goals.
At its core, Mint is a budgeting system that lets you set budgets for different spending categories like groceries, eating out, entertainment, and gas. You can set monthly or weekly budgets for each type. You can also choose what percentage of your total income should be spent in each category. With this information, Mint can automatically track all of your purchases and give you real-time feedback on how much is left in each category.
Mint also helps you with investing and planning for the future by providing useful information about your finances. If you provide the age at which you’d like to retire, it can offer helpful tips to help you achieve that goal. For example, Mint might tell you that for you to retire comfortably at age 60, you need $1.5 million in assets with a minimum monthly income of $4,500.
Which App Is Better?
Mint vs. EveryDollar
Though not as complete or straightforward as Mint, EveryDollar, which offers a free one-month trial, is easy to sign up with and get started. After choosing your bank account or manually entering your transactions, EveryDollar’s budgeting tools are similar to Mint, with the addition of “envelopes” that let you control your spending. However, it does not include charts or graphs as Mint does.
Mint vs. Personal Capital
Personal Capital is another popular app that’s similar to Mint in many ways. Like Mint, it provides budgeting tools and charts that track your spending trends. It differs from Mint in that you can consolidate accounts and also invest with Personal Capital, but if you don’t want to invest money, Mint might be a better fit for you.
Mint vs. Quicken
Quicken is a personal finance manager with helpful budgeting tools, including target spending and home currency support. It lets you track your income and expenses (similar to Mint) but does not include charts like Mint’s trend-tracking graphs. However, Quicken enables you to set up monthly or yearly recurring transactions (like Mint), which is free.
Mint vs. Ubuntu
UBUNTU Finance is a free, personal finance manager with many good features, such as customizable charts and graphs and support for multiple accounts. It can even function offline if you download the entire database and sync when you get online again (similar to Mint). One drawback of this app is its steep learning curve; it’s not super beginner-friendly.
Mint vs. Pocketbook
Pocketbook is a mobile app that tracks your spending on the go. Like Mint, it provides charts and graphs but does not support recurring transactions or cost tracking (you must enter an expense every time you use something). Pocketbook’s monthly spend limit feature does, however, let you set a budget for each month. In addition, the app is free to download, but you can pay $3 per month if you want to use the full version of the app.
Mint vs. YNAB
YNAB (short for “You Need a Budget”) is a mobile app like Mint and Quicken, but it only works on smartphones. Also, it provides a unique way of budgeting. It follows the four rules of effective money management:
- Give Every Dollar a Job
- Embrace Your True Expenses
- Roll with the Punches
- Age Your Money
Mint vs. Sage Accounting
Formerly known as Peachtree, Sage Accounting is a budgeting system that allows you to keep track of your spending by writing down each purchase in a notebook. You tally up all of these purchases at the end of the week and enter them into Sage’s budgeting tool. This may be appealing for some people because it can help you build personal connections to your spending. Mint’s budgeting system is more automated and does not require you to type every transaction into the app; however, Mint does provide visual aids that can help you visualize your spending.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Mint is a trustworthy app that lets you manage your money and keep track of the different accounts you have. It’s a free, easy-to-use app that can be accessed on any device with an internet connection. Of all the apps, we strongly recommend using Mint for your budgeting needs, especially if you don’t want your finances spread out across multiple apps or websites
Blogs You May Like:
