Jake

Budget Tracking Replacements for Mint

Mint, the popular budgeting app from Intuit, will shut down on January 1, 2024. If you are one of the millions of people who tracked your personal finances using Mint, you’re probably looking for a replacement budget tracker right about now.

Intuit wants you to make the switch to one of their other products, Credit Karma, which offers to track your spending, but is also a very different kind of app. For instance, Credit Karma does not offer to set category limits the way Mint does, though it will show you where your money goes.

Monarch

One of the most interesting alternatives I’ve seen is Monarch, which is designed from the ground up for sharing a budget with other members of your household. Mint has always been a single-user app, which meant sharing an account with a spouse or partner instead of you each getting your own view of the data. Monarch also isn’t pushing other products via in-app advertisements the way Mint does, which provides more focus on you and your finances. Monarch also goes beyond budgeting to provide a more complete financial picture, including investments and loans if you choose to track those types of things.

Monarch budgeting app spending analysis screen
Monarch spending view

Monarch is available for Android, iPhone and iPad, as well as on the web. Find your favorite option here. Monarch currently runs about $100 per year if you sign up for the annual plan.

You Need a Budget (YNAB)

You Need a Budget has long been a popular budgeting solution for quite a few years now. The YNAB approach to budgeting is part tracking the details and part educational philosophy on how to think about your money. The approach is based on four rules:

  • Give Every Dollar a Job
  • Embrace Your True Expenses
  • Roll with the Punches
  • Age Your Money

You don’t need to follow the system to use the app, but they are designed to work together. From a purely financial tracking perspective, YNAB is very focused on budgeting the money you have, so it doesn’t offer investment tracking for longer term planning like Monarch does. YNAB is also missing the ability to easily track recurring payments for subscriptions, which means one of those pesky streaming services might keep billing you even if you aren’t actively using it.

you need a budget application shown on iPad screen
You Need a Budget (YNAB) iPad app

Like Monarch, YNAB is also available on the web, as well as for Android, iPhone, and iPad. Current pricing is approximately $100/year when you subscribe annually. If this sounds like the budget solution for you, try out YNAB.

Relay from SoFi

I personally find the Relay financial insights provided as part of my SoFi account to be perfect for my own budgeting needs. I created a SoFi account several years ago and was reintroduced to them more recently when I was looking at mortgage options.

I’m admittedly lazy at manually tracking individual spending categories. Instead I look at trends by comparing my spending in the current month to previous months to see if it’s in about the same place. Relay works for me to do this because it is largely automated. You can create a SoFi account for free, without any of their other products, which allows you to use Relay to track your across all banking and credit card products you use, including loans and investments.

Screen capture of an example Relay spending category in the SoFi web app.

One advantage of using Relay is that there is no cost. You can track your budget and investments without using any of SoFi’s other products, though like Mint, they will keep encouraging you to create accounts. If you do create a bank account with SoFi using this link, you can also get a $25 credit in that bank account, but that’s definitely not required. Learn more about Relay for budgeting.