Intuit decided and announced last year that Mint (an excellent personal finance app that I’ve used since 2009) would go away. They’ve pushed CreditKarma (another Intuit acquisition) as its replacement along with putting a migration option right into Mint. You’re also given the option to download all of your transactions as a CSV file, which should come in handy for exploring prospective replacement apps. Logging into Mint again after the migration is complete gives you a link to your Net Worth page (which at least as of this writing does not appear anywhere in CreditKarma’s regular menu navigation options). This lack of menu option becomes pretty annoying pretty quickly, because the Net Worth page is also the only place you can access the Link more links that enable you to connect more accounts to CreditKarma. Unfortunately, Intuit also decided to leave Mint’s budgeting capabilities behind in 2023 as well.
I began the process of exploring Mint alternatives for managing my personal finances within the past month or so. Copilot (the personal finance app, not the generative AI chatbot developed by Microsoft) is the one I’m looking into the most closely right now. Another one of my cousins is using PocketGuard. Another is trying out Monarch. One of the co-founders of Monarch is the former project manager for Mint, so that’s probably what I will try next if Copilot doesn’t work as well as I want.
Brief impressions of Copilot so far (in no particular order):
- I hate the product name. Too much stuff already has Copilot as a name or in the name somewhere.
- I like that they have a desktop app and a mobile app. In my limited usage so far, they’ve managed to make the experience across the desktop and mobile as close to the same as possible while still taking advantage of what iOS does well with touch.
- By default, Copilot does not categorize an Uber Eats transaction as a Restaurant or Food transaction, so you have to add a name-based rule to make sure the app handles that correctly.
- The initial set of categories Copilot supports does not include gifts or charitable deductions.
- I really like the Year in Review and Month in Review features
- The transaction list views also display whatever notes you’ve added to the transaction after a colon
- I’m not sure if limiting their addressable market to iOS and macOS users is the best idea, but I think I understand why they’re doing it (Apple users = money)
I’ll continue to try the Copilot personal finance app for this month before I try Monarch and decide which to keep after that.