Mint and Quicken

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John wrote: Intuit bought Mint.com and I was wondering if anyone here has used Mint and what the advantages and such might be with the merger?

As somebody who has given up on Quicken and embraced Mint (and now banks pretty much with his bank's web site exclusively) I think Mint is just great! It basically does most of what Quicken does from a reporting perspective that most people will need. Now surely people will chime in and say "But Mint doesn't do X, Y or Z" to you I say "So what! Most people don't need that". Mint is more Web 2.0 than Quicken can hope to be. I now enjoy freedom from many things because all my stuff is truly centralized better with much less demand of me micro managing my finances while still keeping a good enough hold on them. Quicken can be an addiction - going with a more Web 2.0 approach can be very freeing.

It's obviously not for everybody but my opinion is that it's for most people, which pretty much excludes most people posting to a Usenet newsgroup like this one. IOW for most normal people, this'll be great!

IMHO, Mint will teach Intuit to move past it's model and into more exciting web models.

Just keep Mint free or I'm going elsewhere...

The good news is that the Gent who started Mint.com just three years ago is now the CEO in charge of all Intuit's retail products including Quicken. So, hopefully things maybe change for the better for both products.

john

John wrote: Intuit bought Mint.com and I was wondering if anyone here has used Mint and what the advantages and such might be with the merger?

As somebody who has given up on Quicken and embraced Mint (and now banks pretty much with his bank's web site exclusively) I think Mint is just great! It basically does most of what Quicken does from a reporting perspective that most people will need. Now surely people will chime in and say "But Mint doesn't do X, Y or Z" to you I say "So what! Most people don't need that". Mint is more Web 2.0 than Quicken can hope to be. I now enjoy freedom from many things because all my stuff is truly centralized better with much less demand of me micro managing my finances while still keeping a good enough hold on them. Quicken can be an addiction - going with a more Web 2.0 approach can be very freeing.

It's obviously not for everybody but my opinion is that it's for most people, which pretty much excludes most people posting to a Usenet newsgroup like this one. IOW for most normal people, this'll be great!

IMHO, Mint will teach Intuit to move past it's model and into more exciting web models.

Just keep Mint free or I'm going elsewhere...

-- Andrew DeFaria Funny, I don't remember being absent minded.

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Andrew wrote:

Does Mint allow you to somehow write checks and post them so that you see ahead of time what you're real balance is rather than seeing what has cleared?

No. Mint is "read-only". You write checks from your bank's web site (or from Quicken - or *shudders* actually pen and checks - the horrors! ;-) )

In other words, if I have a balance of $1,000 'online', but I wrote checks of $600 that just haven't cleared yet so I really only have $400, does Mint know that?

No, not unless your bank reports it as pending (I'm not sure if pending even works). Mint shows you what it knows about, info that it gets from your bank(s).

In other words, does it have a concept of a register?

Sure - it just doesn't have a concept of the future. It merely reports, in nice forms, what your bank knows about - not what you may know about your register regarding future transactions. IOW it's the bank's point of view.

Of course, you could answer all of this yourself simply by signing up and trying it for yourself. IOW there is nothing stopping you from using Mint while still using Quicken.

Andrew wrote: Does Mint allow you to somehow write checks and post them so that you see ahead of time what you're real balance is rather than seeing what has cleared? No. Mint is "read-only". You write checks from your bank's web site (or from Quicken - or *shudders* actually pen and checks - the horrors! ;-) )

In other words, if I have a balance of $1,000 'online', but I wrote checks of $600 that just haven't cleared yet so I really only have $400, does Mint know that? No, not unless your bank reports it as pending (I'm not sure if pending even works). Mint shows you what it knows about, info that it gets from your bank(s).

In other words, does it have a concept of a register? Sure - it just doesn't have a concept of the future. It merely reports, in nice forms, what your bank knows about - not what you may know about your register regarding future transactions. IOW it's the bank's point of view.

Of course, you could answer all of this yourself simply by signing up and trying it for yourself. IOW there is nothing stopping you from using Mint while still using Quicken.

-- Andrew DeFaria SENILE.COM found . . . Out Of Memory . . .

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Andrew wrote:

#mid_4ab0d099_0_5001_607ed4bc_cv_net { } #mid_4ab0d099_0_5001_607ed4bc_cv_net p { } #mid_4ab0d099_0_5001_607ed4bc_cv_net .standout { line-height: 13px; font-family: verdana,arial,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 10px; color: rgb(153, 51, 51); font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; } #mid_4ab0d099_0_5001_607ed4bc_cv_net .code { border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(221, 221, 221) rgb(0, 0, 0) rgb(0, 0, 0) rgb(221, 221, 221); border-width: 1px 2px 2px 1px; padding: 10px; background: rgb(255, 255, 234) none repeat scroll 0%; margin-top: 5px; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; color: black; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; -moz-border-radius-topleft: 10px; -moz-border-radius-topright: 10px; -moz-border-radius-bottomright: 10px; -moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 10px; } #mid_4ab0d099_0_5001_607ed4bc_cv_net .codedark { border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(0, 51, 255) grey grey rgb(221, 221, 221); border-width: 10px 2px 2px 1px; padding: 10px; background: black none repeat scroll 0%; margin-top: 5px; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; color: yellow; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; -moz-border-radius-topleft: 10px; -moz-border-radius-topright: 10px; -moz-border-radius-bottomright: 10px; -moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 10px; } #mid_4ab0d099_0_5001_607ed4bc_cv_net #code { padding-left: 5px; font-family: courier; color: black; font-size: 14px; } #mid_4ab0d099_0_5001_607ed4bc_cv_net #line-number { border-right: 1px dotted rgb(128, 64, 0); padding-right: 5px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(128, 64, 0); font-size: 14px; } #mid_4ab0d099_0_5001_607ed4bc_cv_net blockquote[type="cite"] { border-left: 2px solid blue; border-right: 2px solid blue; padding: 0em 0.5em 0.5em ! important; } #mid_4ab0d099_0_5001_607ed4bc_cv_net blockquote[type="cite"] blockquote[type="cite"] { border-left: 2px solid maroon; border-right: 2px solid maroon; } #mid_4ab0d099_0_5001_607ed4bc_cv_net blockquote[type="cite"] blockquote[type="cite"] blockquote[type="cite"] { border-left: 2px solid teal; border-right: 2px solid teal; } #mid_4ab0d099_0_5001_607ed4bc_cv_net blockquote[type="cite"] blockquote[type="cite"] blockquote[type="cite"] blockquote[type="cite"] { border-left: 2px solid purple; border-right: 2px solid purple; } #mid_4ab0d099_0_5001_607ed4bc_cv_net blockquote[type="cite"] blockquote[type="cite"] blockquote[type="cite"] blockquote[type="cite"] blockquote[type="cite"] { border-left: 2px solid green; border-right: 2px solid green; } Thanks Andrew.  I looked for screen images or descriptions for the answers to these questions.

I see a lot of info under Features and Solutions. You can also probably get a lot more info by visiting their forums.

As I've said here in the past, I use Q quite a bit for its ability to let me track what I have coming up for bills and future transactions - I usually have all my entries for the next month pre-loaded in the registers (I use the PRINT action field as the indicator that actually need to remember to either schedule the transactions electronically or write a check).

Hmmm... Me personally I used to set all those transactions up as actual scheduled transactions instead of putting print in there. I stopped printing checks at least a decade ago and I strove to have everything automated.

Remember that Mint is currently only a reporting tool. It replicates many of Quicken's reporting features from a Web 2.0 perspective. What it relieves you of is any data entry at all as it doesn't do any nor does it support any. You do that elsewhere (i.e. your bank's web site). And it tries to auto categorize it in useful ways.

I know each to their own, but this would be a severe roadblock for me if I couldn't do this easily in some new system.  I fear sooner or later Q will end up dropping the PC-boxed version of their software; I just hope they get it right when we all need to move on to the next paradigm!

You are complaining about Mint's like of planning tools. Yes, it's not a planning tool - it doesn't have tax planing, savings goals, etc.  - but this is not to say that it couldn't. I could see it easily adding on projections of future resources based on past transactions and even adding the ability to put in planned transactions, etc. Perhaps you should suggest this in their forums or perhaps you should ask your bank to make their web site better at planning tools.

Personally I don't care about such things as much any more. I have consciously simplified my financial life reducing my literally hundred or so accounts to a handful. I've become debt free and now concentrate on investing my money and how to make money rather than on budgeting which I've always views as a methodical system for understanding exactly how broke you are!

Yes to each his own and IMHO to many Mint, with a combination of their bank's web site, will supplant the need for Quicken.

And remember there is nothing stopping you from using Quicken and Mint at the same time.