Episode #29 - More, more Mint Problems
We've opened the floodgates
Intro:
First of all, thank you for being among the first 200 subscribers to Winnings! I had set a goal of 500 subscribers by the start of 2021, but 200 feels pretty sweet at this point. I would love if each of you shared this with three friends - if they sign up, we’ll have a community of 500 in no time!
Last week I decided to take a break from reviewing the useful features of Mint and analyze some of its limitations. I appear to have struck a nerve among a few readers and will sum up some of their notes in this episode. Going forward I plan to continue to dive into some more of the financial tools I’ve mentioned in previous notes as well as some theories I’ve been developing around investment in specific stocks.
Background:
As I shared in the last episode, the world of Mint has been a part of my life for nearly 8 years and tens of pages of transactions. Surprisingly, even with all of this exposure, I still feel like I’m not maximizing my usage of the app and I think some of that comes with the lack of power in the tools (at least in the way that their power appears to me). Following me down into the weeds below will show you some of the things you may not even realize you’re missing!
The Weeds:
First up is the world of budgets which seems to have driven a few people a bit batty:
Gabriel M. (not me) shared two gripes that I’ll share here:
Your previous month’s budget on the web-app will appear red or green based based on two factors: a) if you had less income than budgeted or b) more expenses than budgeted, regardless of whether or not you were net positive at the end of the month.
You can see a particular section of your budget broken down when in a particular transaction bucket, but you can’t do this from the overall transaction page. Why the gap? We’re not sure.
Adam N. noted that you don’t have the ability to keep track of a particular budget item across an annual basis. You can only track specific items on a monthly basis. Why limit that type of tracking?
Unrelated to the more typical technical problems with Mint, another reader, Jared M. pointed out a frightening story about Intuit (the company that owns Mint) allegedly perpetrated a significantly problematic practice of encouraging people to pay for a tax filing software, Quickbooks, when they were eligible for a free service from the same company. This article from ProPublica highlights these recent allegations and brings to question the overlap of ethics and the companies we choose to use.
Takeaway:
An interesting reality regarding the nature of a “free” product: it will always come with some significant drawbacks. How do you go about maximizing the tool that does so much of what you need it to do, but still has some “what on earth” features/glitches?
The related question that Tova P. raised is how do you make decisions about paying someone else to invest your money vs. just trusting your own or a robot’s intuition? We’ve covered some of that in the past, but I think some of that might reappear in a future episode.
Interact:
Please share your thoughts on how to best improve the data points you can collect/see about your financial health. What would you want to cover you when doing this type of work? What do you think is just a nuisance?
Please share those thoughts in the comments on in responding to this note directly!
Gratitude:
Thank you to the folks above who piped up about their questions/challenges with Mint - you make aggregating and preparing these notes more fun!