Mint.com vs Excel

Kaiene

I've been thinking about more closely tracking our budget.

I've seen many people talk about mint.com and excel for this purpose.

What made you choose either of those? Does mint.com cost anything? How much time do you think you spend tracking your budget?

TIA

blndsnbrdr

I vote Excel.

Mainly because my bank does not work with mint.com because of its security features. Also because I can completely personalize everything - I don't have to go in depth with areas I don't care about and I can get really detailed in other areas.

Once you get Excel set up for you it works really nicely.

ktdid235

I used Mint for a while (it's free) but it didn't work for me like I wanted.  It just tracks debit purchases and can't split them up.  For example, if I spent $100 at the grocery store, but $70 was on food and $30 was on household supplies, it will still just track $100 at the grocery store.  I like to keep a more detailed budget, so excel is better for me.

ash.flea

ktdid235:

I used Mint for a while (it's free) but it didn't work for me like I wanted.  It just tracks debit purchases and can't split them up.  For example, if I spent $100 at the grocery store, but $70 was on food and $30 was on household supplies, it will still just track $100 at the grocery store.  I like to keep a more detailed budget, so excel is better for me.

Actually, you can split purchases.  You just click on it and click "split."

I use mint.com.  I really like it, and I think I'm too lazy to keep an excel spreadsheet up to date.  I like that mint does all of the work for me.

Mashara

Actually, I use both mint.com and an Excel spreadsheet. Mint makes it easy for me to get monthly running totals of what we've spent each month without having to enter each receipt anywhere.The only purchases I ever need to split are from Target, and Mint makes that easy too.

But Excel allows me to see the whole year at one glance with year-to-date stuff like monthly average and totals. I just take the end of month numbers from Mint and put them in Excel.

Mint keeps me on track during the month, and Excel helps me with the annual budget.

ETA: Mint doesn't cost anything, but it also doesn't work for everyone because some smaller banks and financial institutions aren't accessible. Also, some people still have trouble getting ING to work properly with Mint.

swankbride

You can always use mint.com and then export your information into Excel.  Mint allows you to do that.  Also, you can split transactions in Mint.

acy31

My husband used Quicken for years before we met, and then we used it together for our joint finances when we got married. Then, when Mint.com became popular, we gave it a try ... but it was too limiting compared to what we could do with Quicken; especially with savings goals. For budgeting, we kept a separate Google spreadsheet because both Mint and Quicken seemed pretty limited in this area.

About a month ago, however, we started using something called Mojito. My husband found it as a "template" on Google Docs. Mojito is a Google spreadsheet that lets us import our transactions from mint (I don't mean "export from mint, then import into the spreadsheet", I mean it actually imports everything directly from mint!). So now we can use mint to collect all of our bank data, see the cool pie charts and stuff. But when we want to get down to business, we have all of our transactions in Mojito so we can slice and dice our finances however we want. Really neat. Oh, I almost forgot the best part!! You can create budgets in Mojito based on multiple categories and tags! My husband nearly flipped when he saw it could do tags. Now we can use tags to track our savings goals in one money market account (without having to use one account per savings goal -- stupid mint). So flexible. Very cool. So ladies (and gents), if you want to OWN your finances, this thing rocks. You can find Mojito by googling for "mint mojito spreadsheet", or here's the direct link: http://b3devs.blogspot.com/p/about-mojito.html

CuriousKiddosMama

We use excel for the simple fact that we use cash for almost everything. Using mint for us would only track our gas, electric, cable and a couple other bills each month.

Ducktale

Excel, mainly because when we started tracking our budget years ago our credit card wouldn't link. Now I have tweaked and changed things in my excel so I have everything just how I want it so its easy and clear for me, so I would not change. I like the control I have with my excel file.

Xan84

I actually use both.  I use Mint for my personal finances, because it makes it really easy to track my investments, how much I spend at certain stores for personal shopping, etc, and make graphs and pie charts.  To track joint purchases for me and my husband, we have an excel file that we keep on Google drive, so we can both edit it from anywhere with an internet connection.  We have a worksheet for each month, and columns for each of us to track what we spent on for joint purchases - gas, groceries, utilities, vacation tickets, etc.  We like being able to flip back to prior months and see what we spent on certain items in the past.  We also like the ability to make more detailed notes on the worksheet of what certain expenses were for, because it's easy to forget later on.

MommyLiberty5013

We use Excel. I tried Mint but I felt like it was too much work when I could more easily craft my own spreadsheet. Excel is just faster for me.

Mom987

I prefer Excel. I did sign up for Mint but it was too much effort since I have everything already set up on an Excel sheet.

pamperedgirl83

excel...i am paranoid about having financial information on line except for the banks site.

Ginlyn0

I love Mint. When I first started using it, I didn't know all it could do. It doesn't just track debits like someone mentioned, you can manually add transactions for checks, ect until they clear your bank and it will match them up and merge them together.

Wulfgar

I track mine through excel since when Quicken came out in the late 1990's I tried it but it kept doing double entry of my bills.  I would put in when I paid it then it would enter in the same amount when it came out of my checking account.  Ever since then I haven't trusted any site that has access directly to my accounts since I like doing my accounting a little different also.

mana8503

Both.  I love the mint for budget tracking and seeing everything in a snapshot.

I use an excel sheet I made to keep track of checking more closely, and what's coming out and when.  I also have a tab I estimated our debt snowball and can put in what we're actually paying off each month, it's pretty close to acurate and encouraging to look at!

HoneyBee973

I use excel. It's simple and easy to use

anssett

Mint categorized all my purchases automatically. Why not start there. Export to excel if you need more options.

takmjs

I love Excel, and I've never tried Mint.com. Like others have said, you can personalize your categories on Excel and use it to work for you. Rather than putting things in categories and figuring things out like "baby items, toiletries, cleaning supplies," I just write the store name and keep track of what I spent there. So at Walmart, I might get a pair of shoes for my daughter, some bandaids, and a few bananas. I'm not going to take the time to sort what I spent in each category, so I just put it under "Walmart." That's what works for me.

Excel does have templates for budgets. I took one and added and deleted rows/categories as I needed to. It's changed a little every year, but it's worked for me. I like looking at each of the last few years and seeing when the big chunks of money are spent--property taxes, insurances, Christmas, etc. That's mostly what I did the Excel spreadsheet for--so I could see when these things were and be ready for them.

I know it's not totally consistent with my online shopping and payments, but I don't like the idea of having a website that has all of my financial information stored in it.

I spend maybe an hour each month (around the 4th or 5th, since everything's cleared by then for last month) putting in my purchases for last month, analyzing what I spent and comparing it to other months, and looking ahead at any regular bigger payments will be due in the next month or two.

grumbledore

Looks like this a crazy old thread, but another vote for mint.com here - I use it and it really helps.  The vast majority of banks work well with Mint.

You can set budgets, goals, view your trends and spending history.  It's awesome.

You can also get some great recommendations for no fee accounts at different banks that you might not know about otherwise.  I have a bunch of accounts with Ally now because it saved me money over my regular bank.

a6a14173

I've just started using mint.  The jury is still out on it, although it may have to do with the weird wedding related expenses that are throwing everything off.