I woke up to this friendly marketing email from Mint:
Text of email:
Come back to Mint!
We’ve noticed you haven’t logged into Mint for awhile, which means you’re missing out on some great new features. But you don’t have to take our word for it. We have over four million users, and here’s what they–and the press–are saying about Mint.
Maybe it was the lack of sleep after flying Xtra Airways back from Jamaica and not getting home until 3am the night before but I wasn’t too pleased. So I sleepily fired off a series of tweets that I’ve embedded below.
@mint got a marketing email about lack of use. I don’t visit anymore because it’s too much categorizing my purchases.
— Nik Fuller (@NiklausFuller) July 15, 2015
I spent 80% of my time on Mint categorizing and recategorizing my purchases. I know they just look at merchant codes and let that set the category but it’s often incorrect or just left blank.
@mint plus you don’t provide actionable insights into my spending. Just graphs. I can graph in excel.
— Nik Fuller (@NiklausFuller) July 15, 2015
Mint is mostly good for seeing graphs of your spending. This is great if that’s all you need but for most a chart isn’t enough to change spending habits. I expect Mint to ask me my general financial goals, review my spending habits and set budgets based around. This would truely be beneficial.
@mint also, you have all of my spending info, why do I need to login in. Can’t you just send me actionable insights. — Nik Fuller (@NiklausFuller) July 15, 2015
This is around user experience. I’m not a UX person by any means, but once I’ve connected the app to all my accounts why should I ever log back in? Just for your graphs? I get the email notifications for bills and deposits. The graphs don’t enough value for me to routinely log in.
@mint one more log in is not a great customer experience to see graphs. I like the product but you can’t expect daily use. Unrealistic — Nik Fuller (@NiklausFuller) July 15, 2015
Do they believe their app is a daily product? There’s a limited number of app that I want to log into routinely and this just isn’t one any more.
I should really proofread when texting-while-waking but you live and you learn.
How do you use Mint.com? I’d love to hear your experiences.
We login to Mint exactly twice each month to categorize transactions (painful, I agree) and check budget status. Really our primary use is for budgeting. Beyond that none of their tips/suggestions are particularly useful or on target for us.