A Review of Mint and Wesabe

Mint and Wesabe are two web sites that offer free financial services. The rising cost of living lately has been causing almost everyone to take a second look at their spending habits. Financial experts from all over the world are touting the benefits of creating a budget, but are providing little to no useful information on how to correctly create one. Recently I signed up for both sites to compare them. Both sites offer similar services with a few key differences.

Both Mint and Wesabe allow users to create an account and upload their financial information. Once the information has been uploaded Wesabe and Mint analyze all of the user's transactions and then provide a summary of spending habits. Everything from your morning cup of coffee to your child's dental bills are scrutinized. While this may seem slightly invasive, the purpose is to shed light on all of those everyday expenses so that you can see where you're spending smartly or splurging unnecessarily. Choosing which site will best fit you is simply a matter of preference. Here is a rundown of the pros and cons of Mint.com and Wesabe.com.

Wesabe.com

Wesabe.com describes itself as, "an innovative new way to manage your money and make good financial decisions."

Pros:

The biggest credit to Wesabe.com is that the site allows new users to try the web site out anonymously. The site allows new users to do a web upload of their financial information. This allows users to upload bank or credit data and then remove it at any time. If users enjoy their experience they can download the desktop application that automatically updates their financial information.

Another positive feature on Wesabe.com is the "Tips" section of the site. This is a user updated section that provides suggestions to save you money based on your transaction history. For example, Wesabe noticed that I had a transaction for $5.00 at Starbucks coffee, based on its database, Wesabe suggested that I get the same cup of coffee at another retailer for $2.25. Not all of the suggestions are national retailers however, as was the case with my coffee transaction, which can render the suggestions moot.

Wesabe also gives users the opportunity to set savings and spending goals. The site then tracks your spending and saving and tells you if you are on track to meeting your goals.

Wesabe's best feature, in my opinion, was the emphasis that they put on their security. Admittedly when I started doing research for this article I was a little reticent about submitting my financial data to a web site. But after reading over all of Wesabe's security information I felt much better about everything.

Cons:

The only negative thing I found about Wesabe was actually one of its touted features. Wesabe boasts that it changes your transaction names into the actual retailer names. This feature is supposed to be in place to make tracking everything easier; however I found that it was somewhat confusing when I was comparing all of my spending.

Mint.com

Mint.com was by the far the more impressive of the two web sites. Mint.com was rated as the, "top rated online financial service," by PC World with good reason. Everything on this site flows well and looks extremely professional.

Pros:

Before users even create an account at Mint.com there is a special screen dedicated to financial education. Here users can learn budgeting, saving and spending tips without ever using Mint's extensive services.

Transaction data upload is fast, safe and easy. However, unlike Wesabe, there is no trial upload, so some users may be a little hesitant to provide their bank passwords. But, just like Wesabe, Mint.com boasts about its security credentials.

Mint.com allows you to upload all of your financial data if you choose. This includes banks, credit cards, loans, and even your credit score. All of these accounts add up to a very impressive feature, the "Ways to Save" feature.

This feature allows Mint.com users to see what areas they can save more money on, better credit card rates, better loan rates, cheaper gas and groceries. It takes the tips feature from Wesabe.com and makes it better.

Cons:

I did run into some trouble when I was trying to upload one of my banks. Mint.com kept telling me the password was invalid, but I just reset the password to that specific account, waited a few minutes and then it worked fine.

Another minor problem I found with Mint.com was that I had to categorize some of my transactions because Mint didn't understand what they were. This was only slightly irritating and time consuming because even I was unsure of what they were supposed to be.

When I compared both web sites I was extremely impressed. With similar services, user interfaces and security features choosing one over the other simply comes down to user preference.