I got some rather unpleasant news early last week. Mint, the money management app I use personally and with all my clients is going away!
That might not seem like a big deal to you, but I have 11 clients plus myself to migrate to a new platform ASAP. Yikes!
Evidently, Mint and Credit Karma are merging, according to the company that owns both of them, Intuit (or, as a pithy member of Reddit called it, “Intuit, the place good software goes to die.”)
Here’s what Intuit said about the merger, specifically the budget feature: “While the new experience in Credit Karma does NOT offer the ability to set monthly and category budgets, it offers a simplified way for you to build awareness of your spending, and track your savings so you can feel more confident you’re on the right path towards financial progress.” (Read the full release here.)
I’m not sure of this “more simplified way to build awareness of spending.” The best way I know how to do that is to set monthly targets for your spending categories and track your progress. There’s a reason why every successful corporation on the planet has a budget.
As you might imagine, I spent the last week scouring the internet and social media for recommendations on a replacement for Mint. I signed up and tested multiple apps before landing on the winner.
Here are the features that are absolutely necessities for a personal finance app that I’m going to use with my clients:
- Ability to access on desktop and mobile, Apple and Android
- Customizable budget categories
- Net worth tracking
- Connectivity to bank, investment, and credit card companies (so NO manual data entry required)
- Goal tracking (savings goals, debt payoff, etc.)
And the winner is… Drumroll, please!
Monarch Money has everything I need as a financial coach and a consumer. Plus, there are some bonuses I didn’t have with Mint, like an advisor dashboard (for coaches and financial planners), the ability to budget several months in advance, and NO ads!
Yes, there is a cost, and I am okay with that. It’s currently $99 for the year. I’m happy to pay less than $10/ month for a robust personal finance app! I pay the cost of Monarch while my clients are coaching with me.
If you want to test it out for yourself for free, here’s the link to try it for 30 days.
Monarch has an attractive interface, and you can do everything in the app that you can do on desktop (which wasn’t the case with Mint).
You can customize the dashboard with a simple drag-and-drop so that the info you want to see is right on top.
The best part is that Monarch makes it super easy to import your information from Mint! It pulls in both your transaction history AND your budget categories, so the migration process is much easier than I anticipated. YAY!
As far as I can tell, there’s only one thing I’d like to see Monarch add and that’s credit score monitoring. I really liked having that feature in Mint. But it’s definitely not a deal-breaker!
The final thing I’m loving about Monarch is that they are customer-centric. Users get to vote on upcoming features for the app! How cool is that?
You might be wondering… when is the Mint – Credit Karma merger complete? When is Mint going away? Unfortunately, I can’t find the answer to that question.
I encourage you to be proactive and make the switch to Monarch Money or another personal finance app before your budget functionality disappears if you’re a current Mint user.
Thankfully, my Financial Dignity® Coaching isn’t dependent on any one app or tool! The principles and framework I use with my clients can be adapted to the evolution of technology and personal finance trends.
Which personal finance app are you using to manage your money? (Or your clients’ money?)