I use Mint.com to track all of my spending habits, insurance, car payment, credit cards, and other monthly bills. It’s a genuinely great free tool. When Mint announced they were shutting down In December 2023 I couldn’t believe it. It was by far the best free tool on the market for automating and segmenting your finances. I’ve spent the past few weeks looking for free and cheap alternatives and have complied a list below that I hope other will find useful.
Empower is a personal finance management platform that offers a wide range of features to help you monitor your financial health. Formerly known as Personal Capital, Empower provides budgeting tools, investment tracking, retirement planning, and much more.
With Empower, you can sync all your financial accounts in one place, giving you a comprehensive view of your financial situation. It offers detailed insights into your cash flow, spending by category, savings rate, debt, net worth, and other important metrics.
One of the standout features of Empower is its Retirement Planner tool, which allows you to estimate how much you'll need to retire under various scenarios and develop a plan to reach your retirement goals.
Empower is free to use and is available on both iOS and Android platforms, which is why it is my top pick (although I would still set it up on a desktop). It's an excellent alternative to Mint.com for those who want a powerful personal finance dashboard.
If you’re a real finance nerd and have your own spreadsheets you keep track of then Tiller is the perfect alternative to Mint.com for you. Tiller allows you to connect your financial accounts, including banks, credit cards, and investments, to Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel and further customize your reporting.
Once connected, Tiller automatically imports your transactions and categorizes them, making it easy to track your expenses and budget effectively. It provides a range of templates and tools to analyze your monthly budget, track your spending, and even manage your business expenses.
One of the unique features of Tiller is its emailed budget summaries, which provide a quick overview of your monthly expenses and help you identify areas where you've overspent. It also organizes your monthly expenses into easy-to-read graphs, allowing you to visualize your spending patterns.
Tiller offers a 30-day free trial, after which it costs $79 annually. Although this option doesn’t make sense for casual users it’s great for people who like to dig into the data
Monarch Money is my top pick for couples who are looking for a centralized place to track their spending. Monarch also offers a mobile app and the ability to connect all your brokerage, checking, and credit card accounts all in one place.
One of the standout features of Monarch Money is its bill negotiation feature, which helps you save money on recurring bills. The app analyzes your bills and suggests potential savings opportunities, helping you cut down on unnecessary expenses.
Monarch Money offers a free version with limited features and a paid version for $7.99 per month. The $7.99 version has pretty much everything Mint users will need but it’s difficult to rationalize paying over $100 a year for something that was free.
Simplifi is a budgeting app developed by Quicken, a well-known name in personal finance management. Simplifi is designed specifically for mobile devices, making it a convenient alternative to Mint.com for those who prefer managing their finances on the go.
With Simplifi, you can connect all your financial accounts, including banks, credit cards, loans, and investments, in one place. It provides a streamlined dashboard that gives you a clear overview of your financial health, allowing you to track your spending, savings, and investments effectively.
One of the standout features of Simplifi is its ability to create a personalized spending plan based on your income and expenses. It automatically categorizes your transactions and helps you identify areas where you can save money. I found this particularly helpful for showing me how much I spent when going out to eat.
Simplifi offers a 30-day free trial, after which it costs $2.39 per month.
CountAbout is my top pick for anyone looking for an ad-free experience. However, to use the platform there will be a monthly charge which is why it’s fifth on the list.
The best part about CountAbout is that it offers a seamless data migration feature that allows you to import your entire Mint.com history into their platform. CountAbout doesn't bombard you with advertisements like Mint.com does, providing a clean and ad-free user experience. It allows you to download transactions from your bank and customize income and expense categories to fit your needs. So if you have a lot of transactions on mint and are willing to spend a bit of money you should save yourself time with CountAbout.
CountAbout offers two pricing plans: a basic plan for $9.99 per year and a premium plan for $39.99 per year, which includes automatic downloading of bank transactions.
For those who prefer the envelope budgeting system, Goodbudget is an excellent alternative to Mint.com. Goodbudget allows you to allocate your income into different virtual envelopes, such as groceries, utilities, and entertainment. You can allocate a specific amount to each envelope and track your spending accordingly. Goodbudget also allows you to sync your budget information with other family members, making it a great choice for family budgeting.
Goodbudget offers a free version with limited envelopes and devices, and a plus version for $8 per month, which provides additional features and unlimited envelopes and devices.
If you're looking for a budgeting alternative to Mint.com that follows the envelope system, Goodbudget is my top choice.
PocketGuard provides a clear snapshot of your finances, allowing you to see your income, expenses, and savings in one place.
With PocketGuard, you can link your bank accounts and credit cards, and the app automatically categorizes your transactions. It provides a clear overview of your spending patterns and alerts you when bills are due. If you like constant emails alerting you about spending you will love Pocket Guard, if you hate getting emails you may want to consder another alternative.
PocketGuard also offers a unique bill negotiation feature, which helps you save money by negotiating lower bills on your behalf. I haven’t seen this part in action but set up an account and am looking forward to seeing if it can help me save on any recurring subscriptions
PocketGuard offers a free version with limited features and a paid version for $7.99 per month.
Had to include at least one “AI powered” app in this write up. Wally is a global budgeting app that offers enhanced features for managing your finances.
The coolest part about this app is that you can “talk” with the AI about your spending habits. For someone looking to learn about AI and budgeting this is great but for the spreadsheet nerds this is not going to tell you anything you didn’t already know. Having said that I bet this app is more likely to roll out cool features over the next year than anything else in this post.
Wally offers a free version with basic features and an upgraded version, Wally Gold, for $74.99, which includes additional features such as currency conversion and advanced insights. If you have bank accounts in multiple countries, Wally is an excellent alternative to Mint.com.
Honeydue is a personal finance app designed specifically for couples. It allows you to connect your accounts and manage your finances together. It’s very similar to Monarch if you are looking to compare.
With Honeydue, you can easily track your joint and individual accounts, set budgets, and receive bill reminders. The app also offers a joint checking account feature, which instantly notifies your partner of any financial transactions.
Although I genuinely believe most of these apps are better than Mint overall, it’s still a hassle to switch, and even more annoying to begin paying for something that was free. You have until the end of December 2023 to switch off of Mint so make sure you export all your necessary files and play around with a few of these platforms to see which is the best fit for you.