MINT.COM RIP 2006-2024

I used Mint for eight years and when Intuit announced they were shutting it down in 2024, it felt like all my eggs were in one basket and the bottom just fell out. I have experimented with a few other free online financial tools over the years like Empower (previously Personal Capital) and Finovera but nothing gave me the info I wanted as easily and clearly as Mint. Before Mint, I was using Quicken and when Intuit sold it, I switched to Mint. I was excited to move to a web based platform since I was hiking a fair bit and having a mobile app to review transactions and balances for all my accounts was really helpful. I was already storing all my important documents in the cloud so having my mobile access to our financial information was a real win. I really wanted Credit Karma to work for me, but after getting my invite to migrate my data from Mint in November, it didn't take long to figure out the features I wanted were nowhere to be found. Very disappointing indeed.

I decided I would give Quicken a try again...and it was not a good decision. I had problems getting my accounts connected and experienced frequent syncing issues between my desktop application and cloud apps on my iPad and iPhone. It felt old, clunkey, and boring. I spent more time on the phone with support than actually using the software and after about six weeks I knew it was time to start looking again. After spending several more hours online reading reviews and watching YouTube videos, I signed up for Monarch Money.

After the horrible experience I had with Quicken, I was relieved to find that Monarch Money works! In less than an hour I had 24 accounts connected, 800+ transactions downloaded and the iPad and iPhone apps linked to my account. I've spent several hours customizing the application: naming institutions, merchant accounts, income and expense categories, identifying subscriptions and recurring transactions, and creating rules (51 and counting) to automatically name, categorize, and tag transactions and identify when a transaction needs to be reviewed. There are some cool features I am still exploring and am excited to see how the application evolves. It doesn't do everything I want, but I am enjoying Monarch Money and I am excited again to manage our family finances. 

If you're looking for a financial management application, I recommend you check out Monarch Money. I still have a Empower account (it's free) and appreciate the retirement planning tools, but Monarch Money has most of the features I need to manage our finances and Monarch makes it fun too! Click the link to sign up and get a 30 day free trial! And if you have any questions, feel free to ask! 

Thanks for following along!

Loren