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Author: Kaitlyn Short

LAST UPDATED: August 24th, 2022

Mint.com is one of the most popular personal finance sites on the internet. It’s been around since 2007. It’s owned by Intuit, which also makes TurboTax and QuickBooks. Mint is easy to learn and it automates nearly every aspect of making a budget and tracking your spending. Mint also offers Mint Bills, a free bill pay site, and a free credit score report.

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The Good

  • Free to use
  • Set up goals
  • Customize budget and alerts
Mint is free, and gets you up and running with your budget and account views within minutes thanks to their step-by-step tutorial when you sign up. After you set up your accounts, Mint imports the last 3 months of transactions. Mint's predefined categories are applied to each transaction and, based on these categories, it automatically creates a budget for you. You can add as many sub-categories as you like and Mint will remember these assignments going forward. Mint.com is one of the most popular personal finance sites on the internet. It automates nearly every aspect of making a budget and tracking your spending. Some of Mint's highlights include:
  • Free
  • Quick set up
  • Past transactions
  • Automatic budget creation
  • Customizable
  • Goal setting
  • Versatile home page
  • Free credit score
  • Triple layer security
  • Mobile access
Also, you're not stuck with the initial automatic budget; you can tinker with it to your own liking. In addition to budgeting, Mint also allows you to set up goals like paying off your credit card or saving up for a big purchase, and tracks your progress toward those goals. Since Mint can capture all of your accounts, the dashboard home page makes it simple to see your financial health at-a-glance, including:
  • Recent transactions
  • Spending by category
  • Budget tracking
  • Alerts
  • Advice and tips
  • Account balances
  • Net worth
Alerts can be customized based on your preferences. Mint will send notifications through email or text message informing you of a low balance, unusual spending, fees incurred or goals reached. The design is colorful and easy to read and you can customize it by adding or removing charts and widgets. Mint also supports mobile access, providing apps for:
  • iOS
  • Google Play
  • Windows Phone
  • Amazon
Mint is the only personal finance site to offer free credit score tracking, provided via Equifax - not even a credit card required. This feature is critical if you're saving for a big purchase like a home or a car. You can even opt to display your score on your home dashboard page so that you can keep constant tabs on it. To ensure high levels of security, Mint operates on a "triple layer security" system. Additional security authentication is required on mobile devices with a 4-digit pin for its mobile apps - or you can opt to use Touch ID fingerprint verification for iOS.
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The Bad

  • Manually add accounts
  • No demo
  • Too simplistic for some needs
While Mint gives you a detailed view of your financial past and present, it falls short on forecasting your future balances. You can't manually add accounts, which some people prefer instead of handing over their account information to automatically sync bank and credit card transactions. Mint also doesn't offer functionality to reconcile your bank statements (what we used to call "balancing your checkbook") either. Some common concerns regarding Mint include:
  • Advertising
  • Little pre-sign up info
  • Lacks forecasting
  • No reconciling
  • Few investment tools
Mint offers it's services for free, which means they have included advertising on the site.  Although it's simple to get set up Mint with the tutorials provided after you register, there is little pre-signup information offered on the website. Some people may feel uncomfortable signing up for a product they can't demo or even see in a video ahead of time. If you're a high-end user of investment and wealth management tools, Mint will probably seem too simplistic for you. It also doesn't support many financial institutions outside of the U.S. In fact, there isn't even an option to purchase an upgrade to get this type of functionality.
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The Bottom Line

Mint.com is one of the most popular online personal finance sites - and for good reason. It excels in helping you create and stick to a budget and keeps you on track with your financial goals across a wide variety of devices. Mint's free credit score tracking is a killer app which is unique among its competitors and this feature alone would be a good reason for choosing Mint. Its security pedigree, hailing from its parent company, Intuit, is solid and trustworthy. Those that use Mint can expect the following from their service:
  1. Free software
  2. Quality financial management tools
  3. Advertising on the app
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Star Rating

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4.3

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104 Reviews

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53%

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30%

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10%

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6%

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Spencer Barclay Brigham City, UT

Mint is an excellent platform for anyone to get a holistic view of their personal finances. The user interface is great and easy to use. The vast library of integrations improve the budgeting and goal setting tools. I recommend Mint to everyone that asks me a personal finance question.

8 years ago

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Cam Hall Palmyra, VA

I have multiple times tried to build my own budgeting and transaction tracking tools and methods, but I always come back to Mint. Mint helps me see what subscriptions I'm spending on (ugh streaming), how much I'm spending on helpful categories (as broad as groceries or as specific as...coffee (whoops)), and also helps me keep an eye on my credit utilization and net worth. Without Mint, I'd still be hoping I have money in my accounts at the end of the month and not understanding why I don't.

3 years ago Edited January 3, 2022

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Dee Farquharson Washington, DC

I had some issues with the link process with my PNC account. But once It finally let me sign in, i enjoyed the break down of my spending and what to look out for .It even informed me of "Foreign Transactions fees" that my bank didnt even tell me about and I may not have even caught it. It also links my credit cards so I get a full view of all of my debit AND credit cards in one location.

6 years ago

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Thomas Hullinger Pleasant Grove, UT

Mint is a good way to get started on the road to budgeting and money management. They have a great record keeping system and I like that they give you reminders of upcoming bills.

6 years ago

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Hayley Lambdin Orem, UT

Mint is a great resource to handle your budget and other expenses. My husband and I use it all the time. It can also be terrifying though....seeing what you spend your money on. That's what is great about it though!

7 years ago

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Jec Canby, OR

I only used mint for 3 or 4 months. It was handy and is a great idea. It just felt like too much repetitive work to me. Maybe it would have gotten easier over time or if I was willing to pay more or use other options, but I never got to that point.

3 years ago

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Kara Turkson Tallahassee, FL

Mint is a good app for budgeting. You can connect your cards/bank account and it has some sort of automatic detection to organize your purchases, but you can change this or split the charge if it's wrong. The only downside is making it takes a while but it's so helpful to see what you spend the most money on.

3 years ago

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erika clayton Lehi, UT

I really like the monthly budget page that shows me where I’m at each month. But I don’t like if I’m looking at a budget from a different month and want to see the individual budgets for my categories in that month to compare things, it automatically goes back to the current month

4 years ago

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Eban Beltran Arlington, TX

I used to use Mint but had a lot of problems with bank accounts staying connected to their service. I understand that’s not their fault and I hope the issue has been resolved but fair warning to users about how these personal finance services work aggregating info.

4 years ago

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Steve Ashby Portland, OR

I like the idea of Mint but I can't give it a 5 because it is just too hard to use. I wish it was just easier to manage. I like the consolidation of all my accounts in one place and I can see how the bill pay would be beneficial but I don't use that feature; almost all my bills are paid online automatically.

4 years ago

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Ryan Harpenau Fayetteville, AR

I just recently got this app and look at it often to help me budget. It gives detailed breakdowns of where your money is going each month and is definitely helpful in seeing how much money you spend and what you spend it on. It also provides free credit score checks, though I haven't used that service.

4 years ago

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Tim Berrett American Fork, UT

Have used mint for years for personal finance and budgeting. The tool is easy to use. It is simple to add accounts, create finance goals, track a budget, setup motifications, etc. The amount of advertisements and services that mint pushes is annoying and it would be nice if that was dialed back.

6 years ago

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Ryan H American Fork, UT

Mint was recommended to me from someone else. I tinkered with it here and there but didn't feel that all the set up was worth my time. It didn't have immediate access to business bank that I use, which I was a little bummed about.

6 years ago

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Hannah Cummins Gilbert, AZ

Mint is a great way to track expenses, especially for those people who struggle with being financially responsible or sticking to a budget. You don't​ have to be great at math or great at making a budget because Mint helps you do it all.

6 years ago

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Adam Crawley Pleasant Grove, UT

I've had this app for a few years now and I've been satisfied with it. I love how it syncs with my bank account and automatically updates; however, it can be difficult to use sometimes. In addition, occasionally I find some of my purchases not categorized correctly, which is really annoying.

6 years ago

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RJ Provo, UT

Mint is great in helping me keep a budget. Although I understand why they need confidential bank information and that they do their best to protect it, I would like to see if there is a way to use their services in a limited fashion without that information.

6 years ago

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David Lewis Salt Lake City, UT

I use Mint daily to keep track of my expenses. I love the convenience that it provides. I have had a couple of issues with certain accounts frequently becoming disconnected, but nothing major.

6 years ago Edited September 14, 2021

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Jared Provo, UT

I like the concept of Mint, but I stopped using it because I didn't want an entire credit card charge to be assigned to a single budget category. Good user interface though!

4 years ago

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Julianna Bateman Mont Alto, PA

Mint make it easy for us to budget, but sometimes it glitches and deleted information that I then have to re-enter time and time again.

4 years ago

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Nicole Johnson Portland, OR

I love that Mint does purchase tracking with your card and categorizes spending. It helped us see where all our money was mostly going each month.

4 years ago

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Jennifer Ashby Lehi, UT

I really like mint, but it won't work with my store credit card. It is very helpful to see where your money is actually going.

4 years ago

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Mason Allen Provo, UT

A great starter tool for budgeting and monitoring money flow. I wish you could personalize budgets a little more, however.

4 years ago

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Pcander Saint George, UT

I love this free service. My main disappointment with it is that there aren’t any check boxes to check off when you have finished checking an entry

4 years ago

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Dre35 West Valley City, UT

great tool! a little slow to upload all latest transactions, but great resource to gather all of my accounts, and investments!

4 years ago

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Kent Lehi, UT

I set up a Mint account to get a budget in place. It was a little hard to get set up and i don't love all of the features but I find it very useful.

6 years ago

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HLG American Fork, UT

Very easy to set up your accounts. However there seems to be a lot of transaction errors (i.e. the same one showing up in two different ways).

6 years ago

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Hannah Cummins Gilbert, AZ

Mint is a great tool to track personal finances and set up a budget for yourself. It also helps you to look at trends in your spending habits.

6 years ago

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Trent Provo, UT

They are great. It's easy to link all of my accounts and see where my money goes. I would use them more, but my bank has a similar service as well

6 years ago

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Pam Parry Vienna, VA

We use mint to do our monthly budgeting. It's helpful to keep track of our expenses so we don't have to do it manually.

4 years ago

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Tom Pleasant Grove, UT

Great help to me in tracking my expenses in one place. Easy to review things and help me to plan my budget.

6 years ago

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Cam McClellan Magna, UT

I love using Mint to track my finances. It really helps me stay on track.

5 years ago