Updated 01/16/2010: I’m rethinking my opinion on Intuit’s acquisition of Mint.
I have used Quicken desktop personal finance software to manage my money and budget for nearly two decades. I tried other personal finance software on my own, and writing for About.com Financial Software gave me an opportunity to try many desktop and online personal finance software titles. Quicken was always the best option for me, although my experience with using Quicken desktop software has been less positive over the last couple of years.
Image by LuMaxArt / BigStockPhoto.com
These days, I am relying more on online applications, I no longer use extensive spending categories and subcategories for budgeting in Quicken, and paying for a Quicken upgrade is not worth the probable bugs or performance issues that may come along with it given my more recent experiences with the software. After taking a number of online personal finance apps for a spin, I decided last week that I was going to give Mint.com another try. A day later, Mint announced its upcoming acquisition by Quicken’s mother ship, Intuit, and I’m feeling ambivalent about getting Mint all set up and then dealing the possibility that Intuit could decide to “tweak” Mint in a few months. Based on the comments posted in response to Why Mint.com + Intuit is a Big Idea, I’m not the only one who isn’t sure the Intuit + Mint combo is a good idea.
I’m not saying that Intuit will ruin Mint. However, Mint put out a great online personal finance app and when there were minor bugs or missing features, they acknowledged it and provided solutions for most Mint users. Intuit has put out some great versions of Quicken, but in recent years, many Quicken users experienced bugs in the software which seemed to indicate that Quicken was released before being “ready for prime time”. Another issue for me is that Intuit released Quicken Home Inventory Manager 2 (review) without a way for users to import data from Quicken Home Inventory Manager 1, potentially creating hours of duplicated data entry for customers who upgraded. That gaffe knocked Intuit down many notches on my respect-o-meter.
There are good people working in both companies, and my intent is not to slam either Mint or Intuit. This post is my opinion based on my experiences.
There are quite a few online personal finance apps available, but for my purposes, I don’t want to use those with related social networks or those that don’t download my transactions without me having to go through an export/import process. I am holding off on managing all my accounts with Mint.com for now, and I will give Yodlee MoneyCenter a try. Mint uses Yodlee to pull in and aggregate financial data anyway, so why not just try going to the source? As a Fidelity Investments customer, I will consider Fidelity Full View as well, which also depends on Yodlee for secure account aggregation. But Full View but looks kind of ugly, thus it’s currently my second choice by a long shot.
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