If you know me, you know that I’m a huge YNAB fan. I think that YNAB is the absolute best way to budget, even if it’s a little complicated.
Yes, it’s true.
YNAB is going to take you a little longer to wrap your head around. But I think in the long term, those that stick with it are going to get a tool that is going to help them be more deliberate in their plan for success.
Now, inevitably, if you’re talking with a friend about budgeting, you’re going to hear this advice, “Oh you should check out Mint, it’s totally the way to go.”
And if you’ve heard of it, or are a user, you might be thinking, why not?
The truth is, I was a mint user back when Katie and I were first married in 2011 and starting our life together down in Houston.
What’s Great About Mint
What’s great about Mint is that it’s a free tool, it syncs up with all of your bank accounts, and has all sorts of great tracking features that help you keep up with your money.
If you’re like me when I first was checking out YNAB way back in 2012, you’re thinking, there’s no way I’m going to pay for budgeting software.
Mint really offers some value there by being a free way to get into the game.
It does do budgeting. You can set up one budget to rule them all. Meaning that you set up a budget and it’s supposed to work for you month in and month out. I don’t necessarily like this but if this gets some people to actually get on a plan with their money, then that’s a win.
My Beef With Mint
Even though Mint is free, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should use it.
First, it’s worth mentioning the way Mint uses ads. It’s like Facebook. Facebook may be free for us to use, but they have to make money somehow right? The way they make that money is by selling space to advertisers who want to get their product in front of their users.
So it should be no surprise when Mint offers you a promotion for a new credit card or bank account. Advertisers are paying to get that information in front of you, and Mint is just trying to get that information to people by making financial suggestions.
If you realize this, then maybe it’s not too big of a deal. But if you were unaware that you were being advertised to, my worry would be that you would take that advice too seriously.
Second, a glaring omission from Mint is your ability to do a zero based budget for every single month.
Even though you have the option to change how much you’d like to spend, you aren’t able to specifically assign dollars for every individual month. Therefore, you end up with a budgeting system that’s really only surface level valuable.
Lastly, Mint doesn’t have the ability to manually add transactions as you go.
It’s really important to understand the difference between a transaction that is pending and one that is cleared. It may take a pending transaction 2 or more days to clear which means that all of your spending from the weekend might not be super clear until Tuesday.
That’s a long time to be in the dark and be sure exactly how much you’ve spent.
To me, tracking how you’ve spent your money, while valuable, is not nearly as important as making a plan and then making sure that you execute according to that plan.
I would much prefer to add my transactions manually so that I can see exactly where I stand. Then, when that transaction clears, I take the 2 seconds to match it with my manually added transaction in YNAB.
Final Thoughts
So is Mint a no go? Are these deal breakers?
Well, I’m going to be honest, they are for me.
But here’s what you need to keep in mind.
Budgeting is a plan for your money. The most important thing you could be doing for your money right now is making a plan for it. If you have good habits surrounding your money, you’re spending less than you earn, and you’re saving enough, then Mint can work just fine for you.
The most important thing you can do is to make sure that you’re using your money to live on purpose.
If Mint is helping you plan how you’ll spend your money, and helping you to make sure that you spend according to that plan, then by all means, I don’t want to completely blow up the way you budget just to push software.
It’s all about habits and the plan in place that you have for your money.
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