Mint: New Personal Finance Site Competes With Wesabe
Wesabe, the online money management service, has some new competition in the form of the recently launched Mint. No, not the popular traffic tracking software, Mint.com is a new personal finance manager which just launched at the TechCrunch40 conference. Mint is still in beta (I don’t think you can be part of the Techcrunch40 if you aren’t a beta), but we didn’t have any problems using the site.
In terms of features and use, Mint more or less mimics Wesabe, which we looked at last year. To use Mint you’ll need to sign up for an account and then set the site up to connect with your bank. Mint can automatically connect to most banks, it was even able to connect to my credit union, which requires a custom recorded script on Wesabe.
On the downside, Mint grabs all your accounts from a given institution whereas Wesabe has more fine-grained control, meaning you can ignore certain accounts that you don’t want to track.
Once your data is in the site you can tag (categorize in Mint’s parlance) transactions and view some nice charts that show when and where you’re spending your income.
Mint also has a nice looking feature called “Ways to Save” which attempts to show you ways you can save money — whether by switching to an account with a higher interest or changing service providers. Essentially Mint compares what you’re spending to what other users are spending in the same categories and offers suggestions on how you can save more.
So how does Mint stack up against Wesabe?
Both have attractive interfaces and are easy to use, though Wesabe has much faster page loads (some that is likely do to the fact that Mint just launched).
Mint’s importing process is smoother, though less customizable than Wesabe.
Wesabe has a whole community of people sharing tips and suggestions for managing your money. In its current incarnation Mint doesn’t offer a direct social component.
On the other hand, Mint can auto-suggest savings tips, something Wesabe doesn’t offer.
Wesabe has a Firefox toolbar button for automatically updating your account. I couldn’t find any information on how often Mint updates, but there’s no toolbar.
In the end, it’s a toss up, both sites are good and the features are pretty close. I’ve got a fair bit of data already enter into Wesabe so I plan to stick with it, but if you haven’t used either, it’s worth giving them both a try to see which better suits your needs.
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