See what you’re already spending and budget for monthly, irregular or one-time expenses. New: Create a plan to reach your goals and track your progress.I just signed up with Mint this week. What is Mint? Mint is an online money management tool. If you’ve not heard of it, Mint is a free online money management tool. Once you sign up, Mint allows you to link your checking, investment, and savings as well as your credit card and loan accounts to your Mint account. Once linked, all of your transactions are automatically pulled into your Mint account.
To do this, you do have to provide Mint with the username and password you use to access your various accounts. This has been a cause of concern for some. However, it is relatively safe as Mint uses Yodlee to manage the security of this information, which is the same company used by Fidelity and Bank of America. For more information on the security of your information, click here.
I love it, because it is free. Hey what can I say, free is the best price in my book. Since everything is automated, it takes a lot of the guessing out of it. It will alert you, when you overspend, and when it sees that your bank account(s) are getting to low.
I also like the goal settings though. They help figure out a realistic monthly budget and time frame for each of those goals. I have set up one for my Christmas club account, traveling/vacation, new car, new home, emergency fund and even retirement.
Over-all I can see that the suggested amounts are way over my budget, but I now have the flexibility to go in and adjust those amounts, once I have a job.
EEBA is online budgeting software based on the envelope budget method. Better than software that you have to download and install, it’s available on the web, the mobile Web and your Android device.
Unlike Mint above, I'd never heard of EEBA, until a reader brought it to my attention. I really like the envelopes that I can put cash into. Unlike Mint though, everything is done manually. The thing with EEBA, is all you can do in the free version is input your budget envelopes and the amount of income each month. When you input your income source, they do allow you to break that income up between the envelopes, which is pretty cool.
Once, you have a premium membership, you can't import data from your bank account (like you can with Mint) but you can import OFX (Microsoft Office) and QFX (Quicken) format files and then drag-and-drop matching them to transactions that you have already entered. Since, you have to enter everything manually or import them from the software that you have on your desktop, I am not sure I see the added benefit. Specifically, when it comes to paying for something, I can already do in my quicken software. The only benefit I can see is that it can be accessed from another computer or certain smart phones. I will back track a little here though, I guess it could be somewhat automated, if your Quicken software, imports your data from your bank. Still, though, it is not as fluid and easy as Mint.'s which automatically imports upon signing in.
Synopsis
Overall, I would have to give Mint an A because it is fantastic, is automated and is the perfect price. On the other hand, I would have to give EEBA a B because it has a lot of room to improve and the fact that they are charging for half the service is not good (considering you get more service for Free with Mint). Especially, when the people that needs to use the service most does not have that spendable cash in their budget. What's more appalling is that it is all manual and not automated like mint. I guess, no security issues, in that regard, but if I am going to everything manually, why not just use real envelopes? However, the one thing that kept them from getting a C grade was, that unlike Mint, they have an app for the like Android. Perhaps, they could also improve their smart phone apps, to reach out to all the various kinds of smart phones, maybe then I could overlook the pricing. After all, if a person is cutting expenses out of their budgets, why would they need a more expensive smart phone anyway?
In conclusion I think, I prefer the budget setup platform in EEBA better, then I do in Mint.com. So if a site with Mint's security and automation could be combined with EEBA's simplicity, it would be one perfect website. Overall, Mint.com walks all over EEBA, perhaps that is why Money Magazine named Mint as one of it's "Top Picks."
So what do you think? Have you used (or tried) either of these programs?
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