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What happened to Mint?

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Re: What happened to Mint?

#311

Post by throw_14JAS »

roywiggins wrote: post #189
throw_14JAS wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm super interested in this solution, can you expand a bit on your motivations and help me better understand the problem? I see a lot of times, people export to Excel to do their own analysis. I think there is something about doing it "my way" that helps me connect with the data, whether it's budgeting or (my current project) fantasy sports. Specifically, what value do you get from exporting and creating your own gr…

Specifically I wanted a stacked bar chart so I could see spending over time broken out by category. So if I had a spike, I could see "oh, I bought a plane ticket that week" and I could toggle categories on and off, and just have a graph with, say, groceries and fast food over time. Excel makes this reasonably easy to do, but you can't do it at all in Mint. One day I will throw it into an instance of http://redash.io…

You and I sound very familiar! I also have plans for personal dashboards using redash for everything from weather to a shared calendar. Also plan on putting it in a display in a Magic Mirror for aesthetics... but who has the time!

Couple questions, if you don't mind taking the time:

1) What makes you want to use Redash, instead of a spreadsheet?

2) If you had a service that (securely) sync'd data into your spreadsheet, would that provide all of the value of Redashing it?

Re: What happened to Mint?

#312

Post by bananamerica »

wyclif wrote: post #272
ASinclair wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you could run a reasonable lifestyle business here if you don’t take VC, but I’m skeptical this can ever be truly mass-market. You Need a Budget (YNAB) is proof of this. I don't believe they've taken any VC funding and are a pretty successful lifestyle business in the Budgeting/Finance space.

I hate the phrase "lifestyle business." Look: it's a business. No, it's not going to make VCs billionaires. But it's a perfectly respectable business nonetheless. Nothing wrong with that.

So I went to Wikipedia and found this definition:

"A lifestyle business is a business set up and run by its founders primarily with the aim of sustaining a particular level of income and no more; or to provide a foundation from which to enjoy a particular lifestyle."

Seems like a useful concept. What's wrong with it?

Re: What happened to Mint?

#313

Post by mendelk »

archildress wrote: post #146

Does anyone have suggestions on an alternative to Mint that simply aggregates data into a CSV / XLSX export across all of my accounts? I understand that Plaid's technology is designed to do this; I just wasn't sure if anyone had implemented it. For the record, I'd pay probably $10 - $20 per month for a service that does this with no privacy implications.

Tiller (https://www.tillerhq.com/) does exactly this. You can dump the data into Google Sheets or into Excel.

Re: What happened to Mint?

#314

Post by jngreenlee »

Dig1t wrote: post #212
sshumaker wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This space is really difficult to crack for a few non-obvious reasons. The first is that the total TAM is less than you think; for most people, tracking their spending to manage budgets just doesn’t appeal to them. For many consumers, just seeing all of their finances is incredibly depressing. I suspect the 13mm Mint users are a large portion of the addressable market for this kind of product. So without a strong mon…

I'm sorry, what is TAM?

Good baiting to gauge how many MBA/VC types are lurking....they can't resist!

Re: What happened to Mint?

#315

Post by 93po »

creade wrote: post #216

One of my longest standing mint mysteries is how I alone was A/B tested into them trying to bum pizza off me: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CSg_ZxLU8AAF96d?format=png&name=... I haven't been able to find any other confirmation that this was a thing outside the one time I saw it.

Yikes, for-profit companies begging their customers for handouts to pay their employees? What a shit show.

Re: What happened to Mint?

#317

Post by InitialLastName »

metalliqaz wrote: post #152

I use mint and it's so very helpful. I also have noticed some of the issues raised in this article. It's sad, but then again I've also marveled that the free service has lasted this long because I know I'm never going to click on any of the ads. Most people who are intelligent enough to budget with Mint are not going to pick a mortgage from a banner ad.

You still give them plenty of data to sell.

Re: What happened to Mint?

#318

Post by avarun »

wyclif wrote: post #272
ASinclair wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you could run a reasonable lifestyle business here if you don’t take VC, but I’m skeptical this can ever be truly mass-market. You Need a Budget (YNAB) is proof of this. I don't believe they've taken any VC funding and are a pretty successful lifestyle business in the Budgeting/Finance space.

I hate the phrase "lifestyle business." Look: it's a business. No, it's not going to make VCs billionaires. But it's a perfectly respectable business nonetheless. Nothing wrong with that.

It's a positive term....

Re: What happened to Mint?

#319

Post by HatchedLake721 »

briffle wrote: post #200
dangus wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re great, but they aren’t super quick with features and I wish the product had more, especially when it comes to the graphical reports. It’s also an expensive product for most people. But we do need more of these sustainable low-growth non-VC style SaaS companies out there.

I just wish their imports were a bit more reliable. Although some of that comes down to the fact they use 3rd parties that scrape the screen of your bank, so any time something changes, it breaks the imports. (it would be great to get an API standard, with proper authentication, etc) Also, there is a plugin that gives you more reports: https://www.toolkitforynab.com/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_banking

Re: What happened to Mint?

#320

Post by InitialLastName »

tempsy wrote: post #115

I’ve never found these account aggregators to be that useful for me. Most people have one bank account and maybe 1-3 credit cards. Often at the same bank. To me the digital experience for the big US banks like Chase and Amex are good enough that I don’t find something like Mint would add anything for me, and worse I can’t actually do anything with my account in an aggregator so what’s the point?

Quick: in the last year, what % of your discretionary income did you spend on dining out? Across multiple payment methods?

That's the kind of question that my bank's statements don't let me readily answer, but something like Mint does (I use YNAB because its flow works better for me, but YMMV).

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