Personal Capital vs Mint: Which App Is Right For You?

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In this Personal Capital vs. Mint review, I’m going to cover what makes these apps different, where each shines, and why you might consider using one or both.

I’m Jen and I hate budgeting. Well, budgeting apps anyway.

I’ve spent the last 10 years looking for a budgeting app or software that meets my specific desires. I just can’t seem to find one. I actually detailed my struggle online when I wrote for The Penny Hoarder. 

Two budgeting apps I’ve been writing about for a long time are Personal Capital and Mint. I’ve used Mint on and off for almost 10 years and Personal Capital for four years and I’ve used almost every feature they offer. 

So I thought it was time I continue my journey into the world of fintech and compared the two in a video so you can decide what’s right for you and I’ll also share my recommendations and what I’m personally using at the end of the video.

Personal Capital 

Personal Capital is an online financial advisor, aka a robo advisor, with free wealth management tools. 

It’s owned by Empower Retirement, one of the largest providers of employer-sponsored retirement plans. It’s up there with Fidelity and Vanguard, but they only work with employer-sponsored plans.

It also has a referral program. When you use this link to sign up for Personal Capital and connect an investment account with at least $1,000 in it (401k, IRA, 529, etc) they’ll send you a $20 Amazon gift card!

Mint

Mint is a free money management tool owned by Intuit which also owns QuickBooks and TurboTax.

Personal Capital and Mint are both legit apps and I’m not going to bash either one. The reason you’d use one, both, or neither really comes down to where you are financially and what your current goals are.

Because of that, for this review, I’m looking at each app as the average millennial user. Statistics show that the average Millennial earns $47,000 per year, has around $30,000 in nonmortgage debt, and has around $32,000 currently saved for retirement across their 401k and/or IRA.

So with that in mind lets get into some features that a normal millennial would download a personal finance app for.

Security & Advertising

Both Personal Capital and Mint use all the gold standards in security, including multi factor authentication. Up until Dec 2019 Personal Capital was not using MFA but it is now, and Mint has been using it for a while. I won’t tangle your brain cells with all the jargon but if you Google the terms they use you’ll see they’re using the strongest security features available.

As far as sharing your information, Personal Capital doesn’t share your information with anyone. It doesn’t work with third parties because it wants to keep you on its platform so you’ll purchase its financial planning services. They don’t even house your information actually. It uses Yodlee to store your financial data. So not even individuals at Personal Capital have access to your information. 

Mint, on the other hand, doesn’t offer paid products so it shows ads and if you click on one of them it will share your information with the company. Mint stores its own user data through Intuit but it used to use Yodlee as well.

Budgeting

Personal Capital offers cash flow tracking to show you how much money you have coming in not just from your income but from your investments too. Great if you’re tracking net worth but not necessary when you’re just trying to budget. It also has spending pattern analysis and monthly summaries. 

Mint can set a budget for you based on your spending habits, For people who really like to compartmentalize their budget it has a robust variety of over 100 different categories. But because of that, it can misappropriate transactions into weird categories. But Mint does learn patterns so if you stick with it for a few months it’ll get the hang of it.

It allows you to roll over extra money you don’t use to next month’s budget. And you do sometimes have to delete a credit card payment as an expense but that happens with a lot of budgeting apps and again, the app learns patterns so you won’t have to do that forever if you use the same credit card long term.

Bill Alerts

Both Mint and Personal Capital offer bill reminder alerts so you can make sure you have sufficient funds. Mint takes it a step further where you can set up reminders for bills that can’t be linked like daycare or rent. It used to have a bill payment feature but that’s been discontinued.

Synchronization

For me, synchronization is an important feature in a personal finance app. Personal Capital has great synchronization, probably because it uses Yodlee. Mint is notorious for having trouble syncing to accounts. It can take a whole day for transaction to link up which isn’t great if you’re trying to do strict zero-based budgeting.

Customer Service

Personal Capital is known for it’s good customer service, I’ve used it before and I had a great experience. I’ve never used Mint’s customer service but it is a free app with a much larger userbase so try the help center first.

Retirement & Investment Tracking

Personal Capital as a product is a robo advisor but because you have to have at least $100,000 in invested assets to use it as such, its free tools get all the coverage. So when it comes to saving and investing for retirement, you would be accurate in assuming its free tools are the bomb.

It has a basic retirement planner that gives you a Retirement Readiness Score based on your savings rate and retirement goals. It also has a Recession Simulator to get perspective on how your portfolio will fare in a potential recession which is a great history-based perspective for people who aren’t super confident in investing. 

You can also see an overview of how your portfolio is diversified, great for people invested in index mutual funds, and an analyzer to help you see if you could be saving money on account fees, etc. Personal Capital is really an invaluable tool for people who are not investing nerds. It will teach you so much about what’s going on with your retirement.

Mint’s investment tools just pale in comparison. You can still see all your investments in one place including tracking your home’s estimated value on Zillow which Personal Capital also has and Mint has a fee analyzer too but that’s kinda it.

If you are just starting out with getting your finances together and aren’t ready to think about investing yet, It’s definitely good enough but once you start thinking about retirement then it’s certainly not the best tool out there.

Mobile App Access

I use Personal Capital’s mobile app pretty regularly to check my transactions and see how my portfolio’s doing during a global pandemic or what have you

If you’re using Mint to budget you’re definitely going to want to download the app. You can set up 

Final Verdict Mint vs. Personal Capital

Mint is a great option if you want a free budgeting app that tracks your transaction but you don’t need to see them immediately. It offers money management features other budgeting apps don’t have like short term savings goals, bill pay and balance notifications, and credit score monitoring. But it will take a few months to get used to the program and for the algorithm to learn your spending so hang in there.

If you’re looking for personal finance management then Personal Capital wins hands down. It’s an amazing user experience and has retirement planning tools that are unlike anything I’ve seen anywhere else. It’s what I use and I use it regularly.

An don’t forget about the free $20 Amazon gift card you get by using my referral link to sign up and connecting an investment account with at least $1,000 in it. Personal Capital isn’t available in Canada so if you’re Canadian I’m sorry.

If you’re trying to pay off debt and looking for a good budgeting app, you’re not going to find what you want in either. I like and use EveryDollar for budgeting. It’s the best zero-based budgeting app available and the free version forces you to manually enter in every transaction so you come face to face with all your spending and that’s important when you’re trying to improve your spending habits.

I hope that cleared up some confusion about the differences and similarities between Personal Capital and Mint and whatever you use, kudos to you for getting on top of your money game. You can see a few other personal finance apps I love in this video over here.