Mint - Managing My Finances

September 20th, 2007

 

Mint 

Is Mint right for me? Mint won the TechCrunch40, and I certainly would love to have better control over my finances… Quicken & MS Money just take too much effort.

Mint looks cool - check out Scoble’s video for a quick overview.

There are a few problems I have though…

  1. The obvious - they have my secret information.  That makes me a bit nervous.
  2. The not so obvious - the service is free.  Sounds good, but wait a sec… how do they plan to make money?  Will they be providing me the best advice when suggesting cost savings? From their site,  “Mint identifies products having the best price or interest rate.”  … or the highest bidder?  Also, one’s purchase stream has a very high value.  Will this be in jeopardy?

I am gonna give Mint a go… Aaron Patzer, the CEO, seems genuine and the product’s value prop looks really good.  Mint has a great personality!  It looks like Aaron went out in old-school entrepreneur style and built an elegant thingie that solved a real pain that he was having.  That’s cool!

Entry Filed under: Mobile

6 Responses to “Mint - Managing My Finances”

  1. David Cohen Says:
    September 20th, 2007 at 6:25 pm

    i’ve been using mint for 3 months or so, and so far it hasn’t stolen my shit! ;-)

  2. Cap Says:
    September 21st, 2007 at 5:37 am

    Kevin, thanks for considering Mint and the kind words for our CEO. If you’re concern about privacy, I encourage you to read our Privacy and Security Policy. Couple of things to note: Your data is yours and only you have access to your data on Mint. Your privacy is also not for sale. We do not and will not sell or rent your personal information to anyone, for any reason, at any time.

    In regards to the saving offers, they are shown objectively 0 we only show offers that are calculated to save users the most money. Sometimes we earn a fee from that company, sometimes we don’t. Sponsored offers and non-sponsored offers are clearly labeled as such.

    Hope those information help clear some things up.

    David: Thanks for beta testing Mint for the past 3 months :)

  3. Kevin Says:
    September 21st, 2007 at 12:34 pm

    There you have it… from the fine folks at Mint… not only do they have a passionate CEO, a great product, but they also are clearly listening and participating in the conversation. That just rocks!

    If I didn’t have such a great situation now, I would be beating down Mint’s door to try to jump on that bus.

  4. Jason E Says:
    October 8th, 2007 at 11:34 am

    Hey Kevin,
    So how is the mint trial going? Would you recommend it?

  5. Kevin Says:
    October 26th, 2007 at 12:29 pm

    I got Holly all setup on Mint and she loves it… fortunately she handles all the finances in the house. If it were up to me, the house would be littered with lots of electronic equipment that only I would adore and the garage would be loaded with outdoor gear that only I would appreciate.

    Holly rules!

  6. Lateef X Says:
    November 1st, 2007 at 10:27 am

    I closed my Mint account two weeks ago - I loved the interface, it was very very slick and intuitive. Great integration with my online banking and Quicken…nevertheless, it was Aaron’s (the CEO of Mint) comments on TechCrunch that made me reconsider.

    His replies to user concern’s about security/privacy were canned and he dug himself a DEEP HOLE in the Comments thread HERE:

    http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/07/mint-rakes-it-in/#comments

    He insists that Mint only requires your e-mail address and zip code - and did not address concerns regarding the misleading claims made by Mint’s advertisers (i.e. Verizon, Comcast, etc.) that suggest switching service providers.

    Sorry…but if he didn’t know how to defend his product he really should not have engaged in conversation with TechCrunch readers.

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