I got an email late last week from mint.com. I hadn’t logged into my account in the last few months and mint.com was checking in up on me. I appreciate the check in even if it’s from an automated email bot. Ioriginally signed up for mint under it’s invitation only beta program about 2 weeks before the public launch of the beta. I like mint. I think they have a nifty interface, and enjoy many of the automatic reporting features. While I think mint’s suggestions/advertising on how to save money by switching accounts can be useful, it isn’t particularly useful for me. For someone who isn’t already activelyoptimizing his or her cash/bills, I imagine the mint suggestions do offer some low hanging fruit.

If I like the mint service, why haven’t I logged in over 3 months? I’ve had no compelling reason to. I’m already an avid user of Yodlee.com. Every account I have being aggregated on mint.com I also have on Yodlee and then some. Yodlee also aggregates my investment accounts that mint does not.  While on the surface, mint and yodlee are competitors, below they are clearly more partners than competitors.  From my understanding yodlee serves as Mint’s aggregating technology back end. Yodlee’s business model is centered around selling it’s aggregation service to financial instituitions, while Mint is more interested in servicing individual clients (and selling them something else ).

Mint’s focus is on tracking spending, and it does an excellent job of that.  The most difficult part of expense tracking is categorization.  Mint’s automatic categorization of credit and debit card spending is very good.  What Mint is not particularly good at is reconciling.  I have many more accounts than the average consumer.  I have almost half a dozen bank accounts, and three credit cards I use actively.  Mint does not reconcile payments, and transfers withing those accounts to give me a good picture of how money is flowing.  I actually do a good job of getting a feel of how I’m spending my money even without account services such as mint.  What I don’t do well is balancing my checkbook.  I don’t balance it at all, and just occasionally do a spot check to make sure nothing is wrong.

Given that mint is good at tracking spending, you would think it would be also good at tracking earnings. However, an “Earnings Trend” is oddly missing. Mint promotes alternative savings accounts with higher interest rates, you would think it would at least have tab to track those earnings. My other complaint is that if it’s going to be pitching better bank accounts or credit cards, mint should at least have the terms of my current accounts correct.  It does not.  For example I have Chase Freedom card on which I get 3% cash back on my common purchases, and 1% on everything else.  Mint quotes it as 2% and then recommends the Chase Subaru Platinum card which I doubt is a good fit for me.  However what’s more egregious is that it reports my Citibank Ultimate Money Market account as earning no interest at all. That’s far from the actual case.

Given the shortcoming as related to earnings and reconcilation, I’ve started to rethink how best I can use mint.  I’m removing all my bank accounts from the register and just leaving my monthly bills and credit cards. I am curious to add depth to the way I track spending and appreciate Mint’s charting features, and comparisons to national averages. Everything else on mint is just clutter for me, and doesn’t really add value.