Mint makes your finances fun

Mint.com is launching a new tool on Tuesday that's makes tracking personal finances more fun. The service now rewards you for things you're doing to keep your "financial fitness" in check in the same way gamers get achievements in Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games.

Each time you save more money than you spend, avoid bank fees, or come in under budget, it nets you a certain number of Mint points that go toward your total financial score. The goal is to realize the things you're doing right or wrong, and use that information to attain the most points possible each month and compete with others on the service. While it won't show you specific user data it will give you a general idea of how you stack up.

Mint.com will be attributing points to user actions and putting them toward monthly goals.

(Credit: Mint.com )

Along with each goal, the service explains the benefits and follow-through of each action, and in some cases the means to get it done. For instance, if it thinks you can save more money by switching to a specific credit card or savings account it will tell you how to do it and let you make that switch right on the site. The service did this before, but now it's tied to an actionable item where the user will receive an immediate benefit. Users are also rewarded for continuing to do certain goals month over month with collectible badges.

Thrive, another competing personal finance site, also does this tracking method and tells you how "healthy" your finances are on a scale of 1-10. However it doesn't have a points system, or a long-term track of your achievements--something Mint is hoping users will get instantly thanks to experiencing the same thing in modern day games.

Each month Mint will break down points by goal and let you see how far along you are.

(Credit: Mint.com)

The new program is a limited, invite-only beta, but we've got 500 invites set aside for CNET readers. If you're a Mint.com user who is interested in trying it out you can send an e-mail to [e-mail] with the e-mail address you have registered with Mint.com in the e-mail's body.

[DJfontana]

Josh...I am surprised at you. While I am a Mint customer (and like using their service), this latest "update" is little more than a way to upsell you to banking products. Except for the budget piece, this is about getting you into credit cards. I don't know about you, but my goal is NOT have debt. Seems like what Mint wants to do is have you just move your debt to one of their participating banks.

Mint's big issue is how it will make money. As beautiful and useful as its basic features are, let's not lose fact that they need to make money. That's what this is.

[Josh.Lowensohn]

So do you think a better way to do it is to make the bank account and credit card switches into "bonus" points instead of the total number of points?

[wccrowley]

wow, no it's not. have you even tried it?

in my first three months using mint i changed my credit cards, savings and checking accounts because it told me to, and instead of 50k useless united miles i got $1000 cash back this year from blue cash. then when HSBC dropped its interest rates from 3.25% to 1.75% after the bailout, mint told me to switch again. if that's how they make money, fine with me. they are helping me hang on to my own money at the same time.

[r_anstett]

I agree with DJfontana that Mint needs a way to make money. As far as I can tell the only way is for them to either A - sell subscriptions or B - make money off of the referals to banks that they currently use at their income model.

I prefer B because it does encourage people to actually look at what the various fees are on their own current cards and hopefully move to a lower rate, or at least better terms. You are right that people could fall prey to just cycling debt rather than actually paying it off but at least they get a tool here to see what is happening.

I can see where if the number of users reaches a high enough point a company like Lending tree or other mortgage companies could offer of competing rates like the credit card companies currently do.

I have enjoyed using Mint to keep track of the expenses and show my wife exactly where every dollar is going.

BOB

[matt_at_Thrive]

While I appreciate the coverage, Josh, what Mint is doing and we do is actually slightly different. There is a reason we don't have people competing on FH scores or making the system game-like: because we're actually in this to help people build better financial behaviors.

Mint's feature is what psychologists call a "token economy". Basically, people start taking actions so that they can gain "points", or whatever the token is, instead of because the action itself is enjoyable or worthwhile. This actually works tremendously well at getting people to do things...until you take away the tokens. The moment you stop "paying" people for their behavior, they stop engaging in the behavior, because the tokens were the reasons they started behaving in the first place.

Thrive (www.justthrive.com) displays your financial health score as a way of helping you track how you are doing, and to help users understand how various financial health elements can affect their lives. We're doing more to expand it and make it a better educational tool that helps you sum-up at a glance how your behaviors are affecting your life, but it isn't used extensively as a motivator.

People already have the motivation: they have dreams, wants, and desires, and many of those require money to accomplish. What they need is not simply temporary reinforcement that works only as long as they stay with the program, but rather practical, quality advice that helps them achieve those goals. And that is what Thrive seeks to provide.

[wccrowley]

Thanks for the armchair analysis but i like Mint a lot better than thrive, and this feature is pretty awesome. Thrive was neat until i realized i don't care about 1/2 the info it was telling me every week. This mint thing is interesting and not at all a shill for marketing financial services. It's stuff like "set up your budgets" and "review your transactions weekly." I'm guessing the people complaining haven't even seen it yet.

bTW do you guys at thrive actually have an official marketing plan that involves comparing yourself to your competitors in every article about them, or is it just desperation?

[jtara]

The Mint "token economy" is completely unnecessary. We already have a token economy. The tokens are called "dollars". You can easily track your financial performance using these "dollar" tokens. And, instead of just having points that you can display, you can convert these token into goods and services.

This aspect of Mint seems to me just a retread of what RealAge does with health. It's marketing of financial services thinly disguised as "advice".

I'm not sure why people are so willing to give all their financial details to an online service, to begin with. Their users must have lost their minds, IMO. If you want a free alternative to Quicken (the OFFline version), look into GnuCash.

[jbcahill]

I give Mint an EPIC FAIL because it can't don't a basic accounting function: TRACK CASH ACCOUNTS

I operate almost entirely with cash...why? Be

Hi all,

Fitness was developed because we felt people needed more of a step-by-step guide to improving their financial life. Mint.com has been a great reporting tool from day one? you get all your balances, transactions, trends, etc. But I felt strongly that when people logged in and got started, there was a lack of direction on what you really need to do to to improve your finances. Knowing how much you spend is great, but there's a lot more to feeling financially secure and building wealth than kicking your caffeine habit. Budgets were always there, but no advice on how best to employ them in the product.

I don't agree with the comments likening Fitness to a token economy. If our fitness feature disappeared next year, I don't think people would all of a sudden spend like crazy because Mint.com isn't giving them points anymore. After a year they would hopefully have more money, feel more secure, have less debt, etc. Similarly I would play PS3 without a trophy system, it just makes it a bit more fun, which is part of what we're going for. The reason why people abandon financial management is because it's a chore, it piles up on you, etc. If it's a little more engaging and rewarding, then more people will do it, and we've furthered our mission statement and brand promise.

Thanks all,
Jason Putorti
Lead Designer, mint.com

[matt_at_Thrive]

Jason-

I entirely agree with your first paragraph and please, let me be perfectly clear: I think it is great that you guys are integrating Financial Health components and changing your brand promise to one where you start to offer advice. That is how real change begins, not as a tracking-only tool but as one that offers genuine guidance in the financial space. I am nothing but glad that Mint is finally starting to talk about financial education, as it is clearly something that matters in the world today.

I do still have concerns about a token economy, however, if for no other reason than abundant research has suggested that this sort of reward program is problematic when it discontinues. The PS3 example isn't really a natural comparison (since PS3 is designed from the ground up to be fun, not to deal with something that most people find unpleasant), precisely because as you point out, management is a chore. One happens when it isn't fun, when it really is a drag and no amount of score-keeping will make it fun: will people keep doing it because they have learned the skills needed to cope with that change, or will they abandon it because they've come to expect the reward?

Again, please don't take this as flaming in any way - I mean it is as open, honest discussion. I'm glad that Mint has learned from Thrive and moved towards giving advice, and worries about the repercussions of a token economy aside, let me say again how pleased we are that Mint is starting to do more around financial education. People need all the help they can get right now and I hope that Mint can join Thrive in providing it.

Take it easy-
Matt Wallaert
Behavioral Psychologist, justthrive.com

[pjhenry1216]

I'm guessing they ran out of the 500 beta invites? I sent an email yesterday but got nothing in reply.

[pjhenry1216]

Ooo, nevermind, I just logged in and its there. I just figured I would have gotten some sort of response as well.

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