Mint.com vs Wesabe.com vs buxfer.com

[Josh]

OK Folks, here is a topic that some people shy away from. Online money management.

As a long time internet user, I have grown very fond of using the web to manage my finances. As such, online banking has almost become a way of life for me. I use quicken on a daily basis but grow tired of yearly upgrades which add very little and a UI that reminds me of an old VB6 program I wrote back in 1998. As such, I am looking to move my data into the cloud, per se.

I have been experimenting with various sites like those mentioned above and for one reason or another, each one is missing that "key feature". Mint.com would be otherwise perfect if it had manual transaction entry with automatic reconciliation when it downloads new transactions from my banking sites. This is rumored to be coming at the end of the month or early next, but I am doubtful.

Mint.com has recently merged with Quicken Online by Intuit so this seems like a no brainer move for me once this feature is implemented. Now, my question. Has anyone messed with the other two sites mentioned above or have experience with another site? I did a short trial with buxfer, however, it just feels "amateurish" to me. I am not about glitz and eye candy on a site but I do expect a site to be functional. This is where buxfer turns me off.

Anyways, I open this discussion up to the community. What do you think?

[40hz]

Great topic Josh!

I'd also be very interested in hearing any insights or comments from people who are doing their personal finances with an online application.

I'm one of those people that has a real problem trusting any online service to handle that sort of information for me. I'm not even particularly comfortable accessing my own bank via their online service, although I do because it's just too bloody convenient.

Can't wait to hear what others have experienced.

[wraith808]

I use quicken because I've been handling financial business with them for a while now.  I'd probably trust an offering from fidelity also.  But I have a real problem with trusting new companies- even if they aren't fly by night companies.

[TheQwerty]

I mainly use Quicken offline and my bank/credit cards' sites online.  I did try Mint once when they were starting and had problems getting it to pull my transaction data, but I'm sure that's improved.


Something to keep in mind when trialing any of these services.. be sure to research their data retention policy and the options they provide for closing your account completely.

When I left Mint I had a number of problems and the account existed for a few months even after I had tried to delete it.  I ended up changing all my passwords (to incorrect ones in Mint and new ones for the accounts) but I never felt good about it until I couldn't log in at all, and even now I wonder what traces may remain in their databases.

[htimsnivek]

I currently use Wesabe and manually download my account activity from my bank and CC sites then upload them to my wesabe account.  No one has my passwords so I feel it is fairly secure.  I am tempted by the automagic download of new transactions but I'm satisfied for now.  The nice thing about wesabe is that they will let you download all of your transactions if you want to move to another site.  Not that I've tested that feature yet but it's supposed to be there.

The manual entry then auto reconciling of new transactions would probably convince me to switch sites.  Especially if it was via an iPhone/Android app.

[davidqxo]

I currently have accounts with both Mint and Wesabe. Both have limitations, but of the two I prefer Mint. I'm keeping Wesabe because I have a year of transaction classified there. I can export those, but Mint can't import them! One of its limitations. Also, Wesabe promises (and promises) to improve.

For evaluating any of these I recommend checking the forums. See what the current hot gripes and wish list items are. Are those things you care about? See what the communities are like. Are they anywhere near as friendly and knowledgeable as DonationCoders, for example.

Wesabe
+ Able to enter manual transactions
- Horribly slow, painful user interface. It helps if you start with a fresh browser session and restart when things get slow. Seems like they are doing something that exercises Firefox's memory leak. They've taken lots of heat on the user interface and say that they have improvements in the works, but I haven't seen the things I've been looking for.

Mint
+ Highly capable of connecting to all my financial institutions. Easy, quick set up.
+ Much more intuitive, faster user interface.
+ Better at automatically classifying transactions.
-- Can't enter manual transactions.
? Recently acquired by Quicken. Google "mint quicken".

I've barely scratched their abilities to present graphs, do budgets, make recommendations, etc. I can't stand accounting activities, so I'm looking for something stone simple that will do as much of the work as possible automatically. Nothing is quite there yet.

Good luck. --David

[davidqxo]

Haven't tried it myself yet, but I learned from a forum thread I monitor that Mint just added manual transactions. Outstanding.