Mint has been one of the most popular personal finance tools on the market since it was released in 2006. It’s got some great features, and it’s free (bonus!), but every time I talk to my readers about Mint, I hear some complaints. While many people like the app, for the most part, just as many people are looking for Mint alternatives.
The problems I hear most often with Mint are: it doesn’t sync well, there are too many ads, and the offers don’t align with my financial needs or goals.
So if Mint isn’t feeling as fresh as it did before… see what I did there?… here are 10 Mint alternatives to try in 2024:
1. Personal Capital
I’m starting this list out with my personal #1 – this is what my wife and I use to track our investments and prepare for retirement. And, it’s free!
Personal Capital is a great Mint alternative if you want more comprehensive retirement planning and investment tracking tools. For retirement planning, Personal Capital pulls information from all of your connected accounts and then asks about your projected savings information and several other factors. They generate a graph for you that shows your portfolio projection, markers for your retirement age, and several other factors.
For investments, you can see them all on your dashboard, use their asset allocation tool, and Personal Capital pulls all of that in with the rest of your assets and liabilities to show your net worth.
The cash flow tool will help you keep your spending in check and to keep you focused and working towards your long-term goals.
To learn more about Personal Capital, the optional advisory fees for high net worth individuals, and how they stack up against Mint, read Personal Capital vs. Mint: Which One is Right For You?
Sign up for Personal Capital using my exclusive M$M link and start preparing for retirement today!
2. EveryDollar
Dave Ramsey is one of the most well known names in the personal finance community. He’s helped countless people get out of debt and working towards a better financial future. To help even more, Ramsey created EveryDollar, one of the best Mint alternatives on the market today.
EveryDollar teaches you how to use zero-based budgeting to help you build a budget that keeps you focused on paying down your debt and not adding to it. Zero-based budgeting works by taking your income and subtracting out expenses (mortgage/rent, utilities, debt payments, savings, etc) until you’re down to $0.
EveryDollar also integrates the Dave Ramsey Baby Steps to help you create healthy financial habits, but if you aren’t familiar with them, the Baby Steps are:
- $1,000 emergency fund
- Pay off all debt using the debt snowball method
- Save 3-6 months worth of expenses
- Save 15% for retirement
- College fund for the kids
- Pay off your house
- Build wealth and give
EveryDollar helps you work through steps 1-3 and gives you information to help you with the rest. And whether you completely agree with each of his steps or not, the point is to get your finances right for the future.
There are ads in EveryDollar (ways to save and ads for Ramsey’s Financial Peace University), but EveryDollar is free. If you want to upgrade to EveryDollar plus (allowing you to automatically pull your transactions instead of manually entering them), you’ll pay $129 a year. An EveryDollar Plus subscription now includes access to Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University
3. GoodBudget
As far as Mint alternatives go, Goodbudget is great for anyone who wants to try a completely different budgeting method. GoodBudget uses technology to help you with the envelope method. The envelope method works by categorizing your expenses into different budgeting areas. Each area gets its own envelope, and you put a budgeted amount of cash in each one, only using what’s in there. If you run out of cash in one envelope, you borrow from another. If you have money leftover in one, you can add it to your savings or debt payoff envelope.
To use GoodBudget, you start by linking your accounts, and then track your spending to make sure each envelope is used as it should be.
GoodBudget lets you sync and share household budgets, it’s available as a desktop or mobile app, and has two different pricing models.
- GoodBudget Free includes 20 total envelopes, one account, two devices, and stores one year of history.
- GoodBudget Plus gives you unlimited envelopes and accounts, seven devices, seven years of history, and email support. It costs $6 per month or $50 per year.
4. YNAB
On this list of Mint alternatives, none of these have the same cult-like following that YNAB has. My readers tell me that once you get a feel for using YNAB, you’ll never use anything else – that’s a strong recommendation!
Like EveryDollar, YNAB is one of the Mint alternatives that uses the zero-based budgeting model. It also runs on four principles:
- Rule 1: Give every dollar a job. You take the amount of money coming into your accounts, which you will link after signing up, and allocate every dollar until you’re back down to $0
- Rule 2: Embrace your true expenses. This is setting goals to help you with large upcoming expenses, like holiday spending, an emergency fund, etc. You set an amount you want to reach and put a certain amount of money in each category.
- Rule 3: Roll with the punches. This means flexibility and being able to move money around if you overspend in an area. Spend less on groceries than you thought, then move that over to savings.
- Rule 4: Age your money. The idea here is that you aren’t spending everything the minute it goes into your account. Ideally, they’d like you to get to the point where you are spending what you earned last month – the goal being to get out of a paycheck to paycheck lifestyle.
M$M tip: To read more about how YNAB compares to Mint, check out YNAB vs. Mint: Which Budgeting App is Best?
YNAB claims that you’ll save an average of $6,000 in your first year. But, it isn’t free… YNAB runs $84 per year, and comes with a 34-day free trial.
5. Banktivity
If you love the look and feel of Apple products, Banktivity is a great Mint alternative. It’s built just for Mac users, and syncs to your iPhone, iPad, and even Apple Watch, meaning you can easily take this budgeting app anywhere you go.
For a one time $69 fee, you can download the Banktivity app to your desktop and connect it to all of your Apple devices.
With Banktivity you can you link your accounts, track your spending, pay your bills, see your investments, and create budgets using the envelope method. You can also generate reports to give you a better break down of your spending in certain areas, like in specific time frames or from certain companies. You can also easily search for things with Banktivity’s “Find” feature.
Sign up for Banktivity and receive a 30-day free trial, no credit card required!
6. Dollarbird
Dollarbird calls itself “Calendar based personal finance management for real life.” It’s also a great budgeting app that lets you collaborate with others in your household so that everyone can be spending and saving with the same goals in mind.
The collaborative budget, however, is only available in the Pro version which runs $39.99 per year or $3.33 per month. It also includes 20 calendars and three team members. With the free version, you can access one calendar.
In addition to using calendar based budgeting, Dollarbird helps you create a 5-year plan to map out larger expenditures and financial goals.
7. Countabout
If you want to keep your progress with Mint and transition smoothly to one of the Mint alternatives, Countabout makes it easy by letting you import your data from Mint (or Quicken).
When you sign up for Countabout, you can link and sync data from your bank, credit card, and investment accounts, including your 401(k). You can track your spending, create a budget, run register balances, split transactions, and see graphs for income and spending.
The features you get with Countabout will depend on which level you choose – Basic at $9.99 per year or Premium at $39.99 per year. Both come with a 15-day free trial. Basic comes with all of the Countabout features, except automatic downloading of your transactions. With both options, you can pay $60 a year to add on small business invoicing, making it a great alternative to Mint if you are a side hustler who wants to keep track of your business finances.
8. PocketGuard
Have you ever found yourself about to buy something, then start second guessing yourself, wondering if you actually have the money to spend in the first place? If that sounds familiar, the mobile app PocketGuard is the only one on this list of Mint alternatives that tells you what’s actually safe to spend.
PocketGuard calls that amount “In My Pocket,” and they calculate that number by looking at all of your upcoming expenses, including bills, savings, debt payments, etc. Each of those amounts is put into its own “Pocket” so you know exactly where all of your money is going.
M$M tip: Read my full PocketGuard review to learn more.
You also get a “big picture” view with PocketGuard as they show you the amounts in all of your accounts and any upcoming bills (with minimum payment and due date).
PocketGuard is also very millennial-friendly, letting you use hashtags to categorize your transactions in more specific ways. You can create hashtags for what you’ve spent on your vacation (#mexicoinmarch2019), for you pet (#foodandtoysforstrider), etc.
PocketGuard has two options, free and Plus. PocketGuard Plus is $3.99 per month or $34.99 when billed annually. Plus lets you track cash purchases, plan cash payments, record ATM withdrawals, and create even more Pockets.
9. Status
Next to hashtags, the other thing millennials love is knowing how they stack up against their peers… alright, people of all age are interested in this kind of thing. And, unlike many of the Mint alternatives on this list, Status is a completely free personal finance tool and credit score tracker.
After signing up for Status, it works by first linking your accounts. It then takes your age, income range, location, credit score, and housing status to build peer groups to give you a more accurate comparison. Their goal is to keep you working to be better than average.
Because it’s free, Status does have ads, so be prepared for that. They don’t have the most comprehensive financial planning tools, but you can track your spending to manage your budget.
10. Tiller
For a long time, I was under the impression that millennials had moved away from using spreadsheets to manage their money, but I was wrong. The reason so many millennials still love spreadsheets is because they work by giving you a hands on approach to managing your finances.
Tiller is the only one on this list of Mint alternatives that makes spreadsheets easy to use by connecting your bank, credit card, investments, loans, and rewards, and then putting all of that on Google Sheets and Excel. All of your information is updated daily so you can see an accurate picture of where you stand.
M$M tip: If you love spreadsheets as much as Tiller does, clickover to grab some of my readers’ favorite Excel spreadsheets and budget templates.
Tiller also makes tax time easier with reports for annualized spending, itemized deductions, and more. They even offer tools to help you with the debt snowball method of debt payoff. Self-employed people will love how Tiller helps estimate quarterly taxes, and they offer tons of customizations for any type of budgeter.
Tiller is $79 a year, with a 30-day free trial, and is free for students.
The bottom line on Mint alternatives
I’ve admitted my love for Personal Capital, but the reality is that using any of these Mint alternatives (or Mint itself) is going to be better than using nothing at all. Personal finances tools and budgeting apps like the ones on this list mean you are taking control of your finances.
No matter what your goal is – creating and implementing functional budgets, tracking your spending, paying off your debt, or planning for retirement – these apps are meant to help. While they give you the tools you need to succeed, it takes using them on a regular basis to see real progress and success.
Zac
I’ve been enjoying ClarityMoney. Mint still gives me late or random emails about certain things but Clarity has been more on point to me.
Millennial Money Man
Nice – I might have to review that one 🙂
Greg @ RetireBy36.com
Every dollar is my go-to. I love how it forces you to drag each purchase from your credit card or checking account into a budget item. It’s a fantastic tool for figuring out exactly where your money is going each month.
Millennial Money Man
EveryDollar is awesome! We did a review of that one a while back and I thought it was very impressive.
Mads Johan
Nothing beats Mint.com, to be honest. I have tried some alternatives along the way, but Mint.com is just the best one (as well as free, which is fantastic) 🙂
Millennial Money Man
That’s kinda how I feel tbh. There are some things that could be better (like customer service), but overall I think it’s a solid free tool.
Jason
I’ve tried everything on the list. I prefer ynab classic but they no longer support it and I HATE the new online subscription based ynab as they changed 3 major features of the classic version that makes it harder to see what’s going on and requires more work on my end. It’s also slow.
So the replacement i’m going with is Tiller. I have to go with envelope budgeting and everydollar and goodbudget and banktivity go about that in a weird way that requires more work than ynab classic or tiller does.
Millennial Money Man
Oh interesting – I’ll make sure to get a Tiller review on the docket!
Lisa Myers
I’ve been using Mint for a decade, but since their new connection method with Chase makes it impossible for me to see all my various Chase credit cards, I’m looking for an alternative. But my concern is that if I switch to another tool I will lose the data from the past several years, which I want to preserve. Can you tell me if there is another service (either paid or free) that can import transactions from past years? If you add a new account in Mint, for example, I believe it only imports 90 days of transactions. I would really appreciate any suggestions!!