Mint Personal Finance Tools Review

Breadth of Services

The Mint app creates a financial home base for users by integrating a number of financial features in one convenient place. Users can link as many accounts as they wish to the app. How detailed a picture Mint gives you of your finances is up to you. The more you link, the clearer a snapshot Mint can provide. To get full value out of the app, users will want to connect Mint to their bank accounts, credit accounts including auto loans and mortgages, IRAs or other retirement vehicles, and any investment portfolios they may have. 

Once you’ve linked your accounts, Mint will help you manage them. Its bill payment tracking option helps you remember to pay your bills on time, which is a boon to anyone seeking to raise their credit score or avoid unnecessary late payment penalties. You can check your credit score for free any time you want through the Mint app, as well.

Mint will help you create a customized budget through which you can set spending limits by categories like travel, entertainment, education, everyday expenses, and bank fees. Some of the categories get pretty granular, which may be helpful for people who find themselves at the end of the month wondering, “Where did the money go?” Mint will send you updates to let you know how you’re tracking with the monthly budget parameters you set. The app will also alert you if any unusually large debits are processed through your accounts. Sometimes that’s the first inkling consumers get that their accounts may have been hacked. 

Screenshot from mint.com August, 2020

One unique but important category Mint allows you to track is taxes. As the saying goes, that’s one thing that’s for certain in life, and yet other apps we’ve investigated don’t specifically track them. 

Mint is not an investment application in and of itself. You can’t purchase stocks and bonds through Mint, for example. However, the app provides insight into the brokerage and other investment accounts you have in place and integrates this information with your finances outside your investment accounts to help you to make holistic financial decisions.

Pricing

Mint is a completely ad-supported application. Users have free access to all of its features without restriction. That’s a trade-off that users will certainly want to consider before opening an account with Mint, since some similar services charge very modest fees while giving you an ad-free experience.

Educational Resources

Mint offers an extensive blog that covers both timeless and timely topics, from buying a home and IRA investing to finding extra sources of income and helpful budgeting tips. The company’s website has separate sections for topics like budgeting, personal finance, and goal setting, which are important concepts for people who are trying to get a firm hold on their finances. Some of the information Mint provides is presented in expert interview format and some via video. 

Customer Experience

We found the Mint website very informative and easy to navigate. We appreciated its live chat option and were impressed that the chat app quickly connected us with a live person and not a chatbot. Talking to chatbots about complicated financial ideas can be a real challenge. The representative we spoke to was direct and answered our questions quickly without subjecting us to a lot of sales talk first. Mint gets quite a few points for that.

Unlike some personal finance apps, Mint does not offer or require you to use a proprietary checking account service. Customers who are happy with their own banking services may see this as an advantage. However, Mint also serves as a marketplace for a wide range of financial services. You’ll find recommendations and comparisons of such financial products as checking accounts, life insurance, student loans, and credit cards. That’s how Mint makes money—by advertising other businesses’ products and directing customers to where they may purchase them. Some people may find the advertising on Mint intrusive, but it’s also a convenience for users trying to rein in their expenses, shop for complicated products like mortgages, or venture into new product categories to enhance their financial positions.  

Mint is ad-supported. Its privacy policy states that the company may share your personal information with its affiliates in the context of joint promotions. Some users may feel like they’re getting more than enough ads in-app with Mint and prefer a company that offers a stricter privacy policy. Mint uses secure encryption and two-factor authentication to safeguard customers’ sensitive data. You can also opt to use your biometric data for identification purposes to further secure your Mint account.

Reputation

Mint itself is not rated by the BBB, but the app’s parent corporation Intuit earns an A+ BBB rating. Mint earns just 2.5 out of 5 stars on Trust Pilot, but that score is based on just five reviews. The app is very favorably reviewed by users on Google Play with a 4.5 out of 5 stars rating. iOs users give the app 4.7 out of 5 stars. There are no complaints registered with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau relating to the app.