Mint has long been revered as one of the best budgeting apps on the market. But as of Jan. 1, 2024, the platform will be shut down and users will need an alternative for their money-tracking needs.
Intuit, which owns Mint and a host of other popular money management platforms such as Quickbooks and TurboTax, suggests that current Mint users move their data to Credit Karma (also owned by Intuit). But for some users, this might not be the best course of action. CNBC Select explains the pros and cons of each to help you decide which often is best for you.
What we'll cover
- Moving your data to Credit Karma
- Signing up for a different platform
- Which is right for you?
- Bottom line
Moving your data to CreditKarma
The first option is to migrate your data over to Credit Karma, which is also owned by Intuit. This is the option Intuit encourages. Credit Karma is most known for being a credit score tracking platform. But according to their website, Credit Karma will also offer some "Mint-like" features for free.
Pros
On the one hand, simply moving your data to Credit Karma means you have access to some (but not all) of the features you loved when you were using Mint. This includes tracking your net worth and viewing your category-based spending, cash flow and transactions all in the same place.
You also can use Credit Karma's features including credit monitoring across two credit bureaus, recommendations on responsible credit use, alerts when there are changes to your credit and more. These added features could help make your money management feel a bit more well-rounded compared to being solely focused on budgeting and spending.
Mint users will also be able to transfer data on most of the account balances they already had connected on the app, their historical net worth and up to three years' worth of transactions. Assuming this process happens smoothly, users won't have to do too much of the heavy lifting to re-connect all of their accounts again.
Cons
Keep in mind that this migration won't happen completely automatically. Mint users will need to wait to receive an email and app notification from Mint when it's time for them to begin the migration and give consent to having their personal information moved. The notifications will also come as a phased rollout so Mint users won't all receive the notification at the same time. During this time, users who don't already have a Credit Karma account will be prompted to create one.
Another point to consider is that Credit Karma won't have all the same features as Mint. Namely, Credit Karma won't have the budgeting capabilities that Mint does — a potential deal breaker if that's the only reason you signed up for Mint.
You should also keep in mind that while Credit Karma provides easy access to your credit score, it isn't the FICO® score used by most lenders when approving lines of credit. Instead, Credit Karma shows you a score based on the VantageScore® 3.0 model. Both VantageScore and FICO may look at the same credit-determining factors such as payment history and credit utilization, but they weigh these factors differently, which is why your VantageScore may be different from your FICO score.
Signing up for a different platform
The other option is to sign up for a different budgeting and finance tracking service altogether. It might be a pain to start from scratch with a new platform, but it also could be your chance to find your new favorite tool for money management.
Pros
If you've been using Mint but always felt it was lacking in certain features, now's your chance to get acquainted with a different platform or even try a different way of tracking your spending that may better suit your needs.
You Need A Budget (YNAB), for instance, forces you to be thoughtful about how you use every single dollar within your budget since you'll need to assign every dollar a job. Mint, on the other hand, simply showed you how you spent your money after the transactions were already complete.
To put it another way, Mint excelled at showing you what you did with your money in the past, while YNAB is more focused on how you'll spend your money in the future.
You Need a Budget (YNAB)
Cost
34-day free trial then $99 per year or $14.99 per month (college students who provide proof of enrollment get 12 months free)
Standout features
Instead of using traditional budgeting buckets, users allocate every dollar they earn to something (known as the "zero-based budgetingsystem" where no dollar is unaccounted for). Every dollar is assigned a "job," whether it's to go toward bills, savings, investments, etc.
Categorizes your expenses
No
Links to accounts
Yes, bank and credit cards
Availability
Offered in both the App Store (for iOS) and on Google Play (for Android)
Security features
Encrypted data, accredited data centers, third-party audits and more
Terms apply.
And while Mint allowed you to connect investment accounts to track your net worth, there weren't any features to help you manage those investments. Empower is both a budgeting and investing tool. Like Mint, Empower is free to use when it comes to basic features like tracking spending and viewing your net worth. But if you want to use their investment management service, you'll pay a tiered, percentage-based fee on the funds under management (it's 0.89% on up to the first million dollars).
Empower
On Empower's secure site
Cost
App is free, but users have option to add investment management services for 0.89% of their money (for accounts under $1 million)
Standout features
A budgeting app and investment tool that tracks both your spending and your wealth
Categorizes your expenses
Yes, but users can modify
Links to accounts
Yes, bank and credit cards, as well as IRAs, 401(k)s, mortgages and loans
Availability
Offered in both the App Store (for iOS) and on Google Play (for Android)
Security features
Data encryption, fraud protection and strong user authentication
Terms apply.
Cons
While the transfer process from Mint to Credit Karma requires some work on your part, it might not feel as daunting as starting over again with a completely different platform. That's because you'll have to enter your personal info to sign up and then manually connect all your accounts, credit cards and more to the new app. While this is still relatively easy to do, it does require a couple of extra steps.
Additionally, Mint's features were free to use but this isn't the case with all of the popular alternatives. YNAB, for instance, costs $14.99 per month. Others like Goodbudget follow a "freemium" model where you can access limited capabilities for free but require you to pay for access to all the features. For Goodbudget, a platform based on the cash envelope saving method, users get 20 virtual envelopes for free but have to pay to receive unlimited envelopes.
So you may end up going from paying $0 for a budgeting app to paying a small premium for all the features you want.
Which is right for you?
When deciding between migrating to Credit Karma and switching to an entirely different product, perhaps the most important thing to consider is whether you're getting access to the features that make the biggest impact on your money management.
Credit Karma won't preserve all of Mint's features but users will be able to access credit score and credit monitoring tools all in the same place, which they may not have if they select a different budgeting app. If you feel having that data at your fingertips will let you better control your finances (and you don't care too much about the budgeting tools that came with Mint), then migrating to Credit Karma may be the best choice.
On the other hand, there's a good chance you signed up for Mint specifically for its budgeting features (that's how it advertised itself after all). If you're looking for a new app with robust budgeting capability, and you don't think Credit Karma's features will satisfy you, then it's time to look elsewhere.
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Bottom line
By Jan. 1, 2024, consumers will no longer be able to use the Mint app. Whether you choose to migrate to Credit Karma or choose a different budgeting platform altogether, the switch is going to take some getting used to. Either way, you can always decide to go in a different direction if your choice doesn't work out for you.
Why trust CNBC Select?
At CNBC Select, our mission is to provide our readers with high-quality service journalism and comprehensive consumer advice so they can make informed decisions with their money. Every article is based on rigorous reporting by our team of expert writers and editors with extensive knowledge of budgeting products. While CNBC Select earns a commission from affiliate partners on many offers and links, we create all our content without input from our commercial team or any outside third parties, and we pride ourselves on our journalistic standards and ethics.
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Editorial Note: Opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the Select editorial staff’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any third party.
