Mint by Intuit Inc, screenshots
Read time: 2 min

Nina G., fourth-year graduate student, University of California, San Diego

 

Overall rating: 5 out of 5 starsIf you’re looking for a better way to budget and track your spending, Mint is the app for you. Mint securely accesses all your financial accounts in one place: credit cards, bank accounts (checking and savings), loans, IRAs, insurance, etc.—and it doesn’t cost you a thing.

The app is developed by Intuit, the same group that makes TurboTax, so you can rest easy with its top-notch security. Plus, you can choose to use your fingerprint to unlock access on your phone.

I love the Mint app for the ease of tracking my spending in different categories across all my accounts. Mint automatically groups each transaction, and though it’s not perfect with its guesses (my haircut wasn’t fast food), it gets pretty close. You can set weekly and monthly budgets for each spending category, and the app will send you notifications when you’re exceeding your previously set budget for the month. Even if you don’t explicitly set up budgets, the app calculates “trends” for spending. (That way, you really know when you’re eating out too much this month.)

Bonus features of the app are bill reminders and the free monthly credit score update, which I love! It’s not something I’d think about without the app. It provides tips to improve your credit score as well as different factors that affect your score. There are no ads in the app (yes—it’s truly free!), though there are paid advertisers for credit card offers. This could be useful if you’re looking to open a new credit card account to boost your credit score in the future, but I wasn’t and found it mildly annoying.

Overall, Mint is fantastic! l can confidently use the app to track my budgets and spending, and I’d happily recommend it to anyone to try.

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