After its acquisition of Mint, you knew that Intuit had one too many online PFM tools and Quicken Online had to go. Given that the purchase of Mint was less than two months ago, you wouldn’t have expected Inuit to throw both in the Thunderdome and have the crew chant “Two Men Enter, One Man Leave” this quick, however that is the case as Intuit announced that they are weening their users off of QOL and moving towards the new “Mint from Quicken”.
Here are some of the features we should expect to see from MfQ:
From Mint.com, we will incorporate:
• Extra money management power: from the ability to track investments, to additional budgeting functionality to help you save and do more with your money.
• Access to Mint.com’s Savings Engine, which uses a patent pending algorithm to analyze spending trends and finds ways to save money – on average at least $1,000 on the first visit – by showing you the best checking and savings accounts, optimal credit cards, the best interest rates on CDs and more, all tailored specifically to your financial situation.From Quicken Online, we’re going to continue to offer the tools you’ve grown to love:
• The ability to enter and manage cash purchases or checks that haven’t yet cleared
• The combined product will support all 14,000 financial institutions currently served by Quicken Online – up from roughly 8,000 currently supported by Mint.com.
• An upgraded iPhone application that includes the popular ATM finder.
To read more, check out the blog post by Aaron Patzer, VP and GM of Intuit’s Personal Finance Group
My one question: When will we see the fall of the desktop version of Quicken? With everyone wanting to work in the “cloud”, that application seems like it has a target on its back.
I wondered about this as soon as Intuit acquired Mint; when would they change back-ends? Makes sense though, Quicken has their own back-end, why would Mint use a different backend then its parent company? Well I stumbled upon an article at FastCompany in which Mint Founder Aaron Patzer states that a change may be on the horizon. Again it makes sense, however I’d be interested to see the fallout if such a change was made.
One decision that remains is whether Mint will stay with its backend service provider, Yodlee. Yodlee was recently lambasted by Michael Arrington at TechCrunch for not taking equity in Mint, which he said would switch to Intuit’s backend and abandon the $2 million-per-year deal. Both Mint and Yodlee say Arrington is wrong. "It would be highly unusual to ask for equity from any of our customers," said Yodlee SVP Joe Polverari. "And with startups, we’d rather have the money."
Patzer says that the backend switch isn’t a foregone conclusion, since it would mean Mint users lose some features. He says the site isn’t going to switch to Intuit’s backend until it has proven itself comparable to Yodlee, which is considered an industry leader. "When that happens, we’ll consider switching," he says. What about his plan to get all the Quicken and Mint products down to one code base? "We may actually leave Quicken running on Intuit and Mint on Yodlee, so we can compare performance between the two," he adds.
Data Mining the Mint.com Demographic | TechWatch | Fast Company
Anyone that tells you that kids do not take up much time are liars 
Sorry that the blog has been lacking posts lately, between kids and work, I have been extremely busy and the blog has been directly affected. That being said, I hope to blog around two to three posts a week going forward. That might change next year as we are expecting our second child
A lot has happened in the PFM space since I last wrote. Mint was acquired by Intuit, Thrive launched MoneyRight for parent Lending Tree, and I am trying out MoneyStrands (I like their analytics). I hope to tackle all these topics and more very soon. Until then, I am happy to be back and ready to start helping out anyone who needs it.
For all you Yodleeans out there, Yodlee has tweeted that in 30 days we will all be treated to a fresh new Yodlee UI. Hopefully they have paid attention to Mint and Thrive and the UI is a web 2.0 layout! I have requested some sample screenshots and am crossing my fingers.
Via @Yodlee:
YComing Soon: New UI coming in about 30 days… and a new way of experiencing things with “Built in Beta” to see what’s new… 903 ~9/1
Not only is ING in the process of updating the look and feel on INGDirect.com, per a recent Twitter event, the COO of ING promised that they will officially support aggregators such as Thrive, Yodlee, Mint, and Wesabe by the end of 2009. I wonder why the support personnel know nothing of this and continue to provide the standard response that all of us have recieved.
Even though I have recently changed banks and am quite happy, a mix of ING + Checkfree Billpay + Support for Aggregators might bring me right back.
Rates are coming down once again at Ally Bank, down now to 1.95% from the previous 2.00% just last week. Not a major drop, but there has been a steady decline in rates since the ABA lobbied against Ally just weeks ago.
In my continued quest for reducing our monthly fixed expenses, we have decided to 86 Vonage for ooma! After reviewing our home phone needs and how much we actually use the phone, this made perfect sense. And if you read some of the reviews on ooma (here and here), the call quality is actually better then Vonage.
Now for the additional savings! Our monthly charges for Vonage are $35 with taxes. Upfront costs for ooma were $229. That’s all I have to pay for ooma, unless I want their premium package. Also since I purchased this at Costco, they also threw in six months of free premium services from ooma, which I will more than likely cancel after six months. One cool thing about this being included is that transferring our phone number from Vonage will be free, rather than paying the $40 that ooma changes if you have their basic package.
Overall Savings? ooma has a plug and chug app on their site to show you the total savings. I’m going to save me another grand over three years!
Now what are the risks with this? Well ooma can pull a Sunrocket and just close shop leaving their customers in the dark. I was one of those users, I loved Sunrocket! Total risk though is $229 for me. I could have signed a year contract with Vonage and they would have charged me $274 or something like that, but I instead decided to take a chance on ooma.
Any other ooma users out there? What is your experience like with this VoIP company?
After deciding to change banks, I took a further look into my spending…and found some fat to trim. I took a look at my cable, gym, cell phone, and insurance bills and decided to make some phone calls! I was really amazed at how much I was over-paying on insurance and how my former insurance company (cough…state farm…cough) continually raised rates over our past seven year relationship. I never paid attention to them and I guess I should have! Live and learn.
Now what amount of effort was put into these reductions? Very little really. All it really took was a quick phone call to reduce my monthly bills for cable, cell, and gym membership. Changing insurance companies took a bit more seeing that I was comparing various companies against my current. I pitted All State, Amica, Geico, Liberty Mutual vs State Farm; a battle which will be posted by weeks end.
If you haven’t tried calling your various billers to reduce your bills, give it a whirl. For a reference on this process, Ramit Sethi has a great write-up on how to “negotiate like an Indian”. Good luck!
Comcast
Before: $175
After: $75
Savings: $1200 per year
Gym
Before: $60
After: $30
Savings: $360 per year
Cell Phone
Before: $140
After: $60
Savings: $960 per year
Homeowners Insurance
Before: $1100
After: $800 (with more coverage!)
Savings: $300 per year
Car Insurance
Before: $700
After: $450
Savings: $250 per year
Just as I started searching thru my archived files for my old excel spreadsheet that tracked mileage and auto expenses, I stubmled upon Fuelly. Fuelly is dedicated to helping you with tracking your gas mileage over time. What is cool about this site is that you are able to see the MPG of others that you can compare against your own. Fuelly also contains a forum site that allows users to discuss tips and tricks for attaining the optimate MPG for their vehicle.
Sign-up
Sign-up was a breeze! Email, password, username, and captcha. Fuelly then sends you an email for verification.
Adding your vehicle
Again, extremely easy process. Choose your vehicle, how you want to track this vehicle, and give it a name. What’s cool is that after you add your car, Fuelly actually gives you the estimated MPG for your vehicle
Adding a Car
MPG Information on Your Vehicle (as you can see, I have just signed up)
Now what I really like about this site, and where my excel spreadsheet was an epic fail, is the mobile functionality. Any browser-enabled mobile device can connect to Fuelly Mobile, where you can update your odometer settings and add your fuel purchases!
Mobile Fuel Up!
Mobile Review
Conclusion
From what I see, I’m a big fan. Now I can archive that Excel spreadsheet forever! What will be interesting is to see how Fuelly evolves. I’m hoping to see additional auto maintenance features like tracking oil changes and regular maintenance. That would make this site a must have for all!
I finally decided it was time to leave ING. Even though some aggregation sites are working NOW with ING, the bank has informed me and others that this will change very soon. With that being said, I have written a detailed guest post over at Thrive detailing my process for moving banks that I hope all of you find useful.
