

Mint sucks, so why aren't there any real competitors in that space? - antonpug
http://antonpug.com/mint-sucks-so-why-arent-there-any-real-competitors-in-that-space/

======
EdgarVerona
Note that this is just my gut opinion on it, imagining the nightmares I've
seen in healthcare integration and contrasting that with what I see as an end
user of Bank integration. I've not actually seen the business deals and effort
in the backend as a developer in the latter case, but as an end user of Mint
I've seen missing integrations that hint strongly at the difficulties they
must experience.

I think the reason why is because it's a pretty large integration undertaking.
To compete with Mint at this point, you'd have to offer similar levels of
integration with banks, credit card companies, investment companies etc...

The problem is that there are literally tens of thousands of these companies,
each exposing their own APIs and each with their own unique caveats as to data
they require, throttling limits, back-room deals for access, hesitation to
even let people access their systems etc.

For an anecdotal end-user example, I have an account with one provider who
refuses to cooperate with Mint in integrating - ECSI. This is a small lending
company for student loans, one of thousands of such companies. They decided
for reasons that are not publicly available to not even allow Mint to
integrate with them anymore, after having let them do so for the first couple
of years. What sorts of negotiations were occurring in the back end between
these companies, and what caused it to fall apart? The public doesn't know,
but needless to say there was _some_ level of custom integration effort for
them, _some_ level of business negotiation, and then finally something fell
apart and made customers mad as a result. Now, all of this integration work
and business negotiation had to happen between Mint and ECSI - and that is
just one of the tens of thousands of companies out there. It is a very tall
order to ask a new company to come forward and make that much upfront work in
order to get on par with Mint so that it can start competing.

The real fight that would make more innovation in the field would probably
have to start with getting companies to standardize and expose their APIs
without (or with common and well understood) strings attached. If this
happened - as has been struggling but slowly improving in the Healthcare field
- it'll become more feasible for a company to realistically compete with Mint.
And _then_ you can get to those enhanced features that Mint suffers for want
of. (however, at that point Mint's significant engineering force could be
redirected from integration efforts to these same features, and then you'll
find yourself fighting against a much larger machine now bent on feature
improvement)

~~~
AsymetricCom
So in effect, by cornering the market and developing many layers of cruft
internally to deal with the various APIS, they've effectively stopped
technology advancement in the personal finance space. Meanwhile, quantum
networks and computing is being rolled out to big institutional investors.

The only way for people to regain any semblance of control (and transparency)
of their financial situation, there has to be an FOSS initiative to build
these tools openly, and to keep them on a license that prevents huge financial
institutions from coopting public commons software. The fact that Mint can't
seem to tally a month is indicative of deeply failed architecture, probably
governed by business instead of engineers. If that doesn't scare you, well,
perhaps you are already in debt up to your eyeballs, and as they say, if I owe
you $1,000 it's my problem, if I owe you $1,000,000 it's your problem.

There is NO WAY for a startup to tackle the problem and make meaningful
advancements in any metric except maybe a nice zero-sum race with Mint. At
least not that I can see. No one is going to fund a startup deving under GPL2
and no startup staying private with their technology will be able to out-
compete Mint's headstart, because any advancement you have with the banks is
Mint's for free. With a open technology is everyone's (including mints) and
any advancement they make is also yours. You've effectively changed the game
from managing information logistics/frameworks to customer support.

You are playing a high-level game when you write financial software for
profit. The only way to win the game this old, is to not play inside its
rules. FOSS. The quickest and most assured way to guarantee your failure would
be to accept startup funds with any strings attached, because as soon as you
do, you're now subject to the rules of the game.

~~~
btown
It's not just that the APIs are hard to deal with. The problem is that I'd
imagine that many of these financial institutions will only allow API access
and implementation details under an NDA or some equally FOSS-incompatible
legal constraint. You'd think that "it's just an API, how close-minded can
they get?" The answer is very. I've dealt with these types of integrations
before as part of a large corporation, and I've seen API documentation from a
partner prefixed by 2 full pages of legalese regarding its use - and that
doesn't include the separate document about data retention and caching
restrictions. And it's even more of a pipe dream to think that any party could
convince these institutions to simplify or standardize their APIs - the legal
fees alone for them to make sure that everything's compatible with EACH
company's practices/bylaws would probably strike fear into even the most
generous donor. I love the FOSS mindset, but as an engineer I have to
recognize that it's not the perfect approach for every domain.

~~~
AsymetricCom
The issue with banks like that is the complexity is lying outside their
ability to enforce it, so they have to rely on government/law to enforce that
complexity instead of software. Such banks move slowly. Are there any banks
with open APIs? Yes, not many though, there probably aren't enough to start a
network effect.

Just because some APIS are "hard" and exist outside of an electronic network,
doesn't mean that they cannot be automated in software to some extent.

Makes me wonder if Obama is trying to automate the government and military so
Laws and enforcement can be automated so inter-banking can be automated.
Didn't follow our NDA and are using our API to lander cash? Automated drone
missile at your IP interface.

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SEJeff
I've been a mint user for over 5 years and actually _love_ it. The web ui
isn't amazing, but it is pretty good. The IOS app is excellent and let's me
quickly get a grip on my financials. I couldn't disagree more with the author
of this post. I've often had mint send me alerts when I mix up something
stupid and get low balances or forget to pay credit card bills. To me, mint is
simply a life saver. It isn't something I use every day, but when I need it,
it really helps. I'm about as big of a mint fanboi that there could be.

~~~
antonpug
Just curious, how many accounts do you have linked to it?

~~~
SEJeff
Me? Perhaps 10 total between certificates of deposits, IRAs, my work 401k, a
credit card, and some savings accounts, along with my regular "main" checking
account.

It is really invaluable to figure out where I'm wasting money and can improve
my spending habits.

------
robbfitzsimmons
I think actually the basic problem with Mint isn't those mentioned in the
article (UI is meh, miscategorized transactions, data import customization).

It's actually as mentioned in Wesabe's postmortem
([http://blog.precipice.org/why-wesabe-lost-to-
mint/);](http://blog.precipice.org/why-wesabe-lost-to-mint/\);) for most
people Mint doesn't actually get you to change your behavior. It just provides
twentysomethings with some feeling that they're managing their finances, in
return for getting pitched credit cards.

Harder and more worthwhile than UI or functionality fixes are changing
twentysomethings' behavior, or doing something interesting for older people
with more complicated financial situations. [Mint's useless for my parents,
with multiple bank accounts, investments, retirement, education and health
savings accounts, etc.]

One problem (and barrier to good competitors) are that aggregating finance
data _sucks_. Mint started with Yodlee, which is nothing but a scraper for
bank sites, and now runs on something Intuit built internally. It's hard to
imagine many startups meaningfully tackling the problem.

~~~
DLarsen
> Mint doesn't actually get you to change your behavior...

Bingo! If you're spending more money than you should, it does you no good to
see colorful graphs indicating you spent too much. If you get budget alerts
but still blow through your budget, it really does you no good. Maybe it even
makes you more resolute in your careless spending.

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nilkn
This isn't a direct answer to the stated question, but personally I use Mint
just to keep watch on my transactions and You Need A Budget
(www.youneedabudget.com) to budget and plan future transactions.

YNAB doesn't connect to any of your accounts. You have to enter in
transactions manually. That limits its audience and makes it not really a
direct competitor to Mint. But I find manually entering your past transactions
really, really forces you to think about how you're spending money.

~~~
nathos
I started using YNAB in May of this year, and I can say without exaggeration
that is has changed my life. Great method, instruction, and support.

I have personally convinced several other people to start using it, and
happily evangelize the product whenever the topic of personal finance or
budgeting comes up.

Also, with all the focus on web apps, it is interesting to see (and use)
software that is sold as a proper download.

------
WesleyJohnson
Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I loved Microsoft Money. Yes, it was bloated
and had tons of features I'd never use, but it did everything I needed it to.
My biggest issue with Mint is the lack of proper Bill Payments. I don't
necessarily need to be able to pay bills from Mint, but when it tells me a
bill is due tomorrow and I don't pay it tomorrow, I want it to keep telling me
it's past due until I mark it as reconciled or something of that nature.
Instead, Mint just assumes I pay everything on time and stops reminding me.
There again, perhaps I'm in the minority, but I'd imagine it's a pretty large
minority in this economy that doesn't always have the luxury of paying
everything right when it's due. I know they're more geared towards analyzing
what you've spent, but I wish they'd consider adding more features outside of
that specialization.

------
jaxn
Mint was the competitor. Then Intuit (Quicken) bought them.

~~~
antonpug
I think Simple would get a lot more attention then they are getting if they
offered a paid service for people who wanted to link their accounts and use
their platform as a money tracking tool.

~~~
ryanSrich
Or if simple had any competitive advantage; UX isn't enough. Yes they are a
simple to use online bank but the their rates are pretty much non-existent.

~~~
antonpug
I agree. Hence why I didn't join them. I told them I'd sign up if I could get
Ally-like rates, or if they offered a credit card option with 5% cash back
categories like the competitors.

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ktcoupon
Every budgeting application is going to have some problems with missed or
incorrect data. And they've been consistently working on improving their
connections with most of the major banks.

The other stuff that the author talks about are simple website changes that
the Mint team could make if he just send them suggestions and ideas for
improvement. I don't think they're anything serious that would warrant the
claim that Mint 'sucks'.

~~~
antonpug
There is serious feature deficiency going on there. If you look at support and
feature forums, there are basic features that users have been asking for
years, that are still not implemented. Connection and sync issues aside,
Mint's math isn't always right either. I don't think Mint is completely
useless, nonetheless, it sucks compared to what customers expect. Simple
appears to have much more robust budgeting tools - too bad they are stuck with
their "use our debit card crap"

~~~
busterarm
I would say that I found Mint pretty close to useless. I was an early user and
there wasn't much good that I got out of it. I have to give it some credit
though, because just putting some effort in really helped me get control of my
finances at a time when I was really bad at it.

I can say the same for YNAB, which I've bought and since stopped using. I
simply don't need it, but it's nice to know that I have it if I ever do. I
actually think YNAB's model where you don't get to automatically sync your
accounts works better at its goal. These days I have an excellent mental model
of my finances at any given time. Eliminating debt plays a huge part in that.

Mint got me to think about my cashflow in a way that motivated me to eliminate
the burden of debt from my life. YNAB got me to think about my cashflow in a
way that motivated me to control unnecessary spending and use short-term debt
where appropriate. It probably could have done what Mint did too, but I was
already at that point when I started using it.

~~~
DLarsen
I had similar experiences. The real value for a lot of folks would be to
develop the proper mindset and decision making process for everyday spending.

I have a hobby project
([http://www.spendlight.com/](http://www.spendlight.com/)) that's growing out
of my own household's efforts to get on the same page with our mental model of
our finances. The charts in Mint or the wall of numbers coming out of a
typical bank statement wasn't directly helpful for my wife and I to truly
coordinate our spending and reach a consensus on what expenses were good vs
bad. The more we've focused on our decisions rather than the mere dollars and
sense, the more progress we've made in becoming responsible spenders.

Anyhow, I'd love to get more insights from folks such as yourself who were
able to get their finances under control. I think a tool that accounts the
behavioral realities of our spending habits would have substantial value for
at least a handful of folks. Agree? Disagree?

~~~
antonpug
I'll check it out! Looks pretty good. I'll let you know wha tI think.

~~~
DLarsen
Thanks. You can reach my gmail directly at david.larsen.

------
tekalon
My issue with Mint is that it is an OK budgeting/finance tracking app, but not
too good with debt payoff. If I could use the integration of accounts (with
all the interest and what not) and be able to show when interest is added to a
loan or how long it would take to pay off (all automatically) would be nice.
Yes I know I can do it myself (and do) but why have two+ apps/systems to do
what one can do?

~~~
awad
I'm actually juggling between Mint and ReadyForZero for this exact reason.
It's not ideal but it's the best I have come up with for now.

~~~
tekalon
Same here. ReadyForZero works for somethings, Mint works for others. Can't one
of them buy the other out?

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loupeabody
There is some noteworthy competition to Mint. I don't have any experience with
these, but they seem promising.

Level - [https://levelmoney.com/](https://levelmoney.com/)

22seven - [https://www.22seven.com/](https://www.22seven.com/)

There are likely others, but I just rarely hear about money management apps.

~~~
antonpug
Never seen these! They look good at first sight, I'll be checking them out.
Thanks.

~~~
juliancox
Also check out [http://pocketsmith.com/](http://pocketsmith.com/) it has
forecasting to tell you what you'll have in future months.

------
toddh
I think people want a quicken like tool that will track all their
finances...budgeting, tracking and stocks. mint never did that and users were
spammed with too many ads.

It's a hard thing to do. Intuit should had never bought mint and kept working
on its online offering of quicken. Now the only thing that's any good is the
desktop version of quicken.

------
colinloretz
Yodlee gave them their initial connections and I assume many of them were
built as one-offs afterwards.

I'm looking forward to seeing what companies like Standard Treasury
([http://standardtreasury.com/](http://standardtreasury.com/)) can do to
modernize this area.

------
chrsstrm
Better security because Intuit is a larger company? No one is invincible, see
Adobe's latest incident. My major complaint with Mint is I don't get email
alerts until I log into my account. Nothing gets sent to me when the event
triggering the alert occurs. That is frustrating.

~~~
antonpug
Well, arguably, if I see some startup that just started doing business, I
don't think I would feel as secure with them as I do with Mint - but like I
said, "arguably".

~~~
jggonz
The irony of this is that Mint was once a startup that simply asked you to
trust them with your bank account's credentials (or at least that was my
impression). I joined them way before they were owned by Intuit.

------
pbreit
I don't love Mint but I would never say it "sucks". Also, it is a pretty
difficult category. Being able to safeguard the data and credentials alone
severely limits the universe of people/groups who might try to do it.

------
pathikrit
I use this -
[https://www.personalcapital.com/](https://www.personalcapital.com/) \- it is
Mint minus all the ads and let's you add private equity and custom vesting
periods

~~~
antonpug
I don't like the UI. Also it feels investment-centric and I a lot of people
just need a simple, beautiful and robust app that lets them see their
transactions, budgets, set goals etc. Personal capital isn't horrid, but I
feel like it's too much investment stuff that many don't need.

------
possibilistic
I would like something like Mint that comes with a consumable personal API
that is safe to call. I want to generate my own reports, but I certainly don't
want to handle banking-level security.

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innguest
Because it's a boring problem to solve?

~~~
antonpug
Eh, but aren't they all? Fitness tracking solutions, weather information, feed
aggregators, photo apps - are they more "exciting" problems to solve? It's a
matter of perspective - to someone, making a nice photo app is boring, to
someone else, financial problems are irrelevant.

------
gburt
Wave is much better than Mint for business.

