EveryDollar Review – EveryDollar vs. Mint

EveryDollar is a brand new web-based tool for budgeting. It was created by Dave Ramsey’s company and released on March 23, 2015.

I’ll give you my detailed EveryDollar review comparing EveryDollar to Mint. You’ll be able to decide which solution is best for you, even if you are already using budgeting software. You will be surprised by what I have to say.

History

EveryDollar is a brand new budget tool.  According to the EveryDollar website:

Budgeting should be easy and—dare we say it—FUN! Focus your money on what matters: day-to-day spending, knocking out those pesky debts, and building wealth.

Mint has been around for a long time. A loooooong time.

I’ve been a Mint user for eight years, but I’m always open to something better. Have you heard of or used Mint?

My biggest complaint about Mint is ever since Intuit purchased Mint in 2009 there has been virtually no new features or upgrades to the product.

Budgeting ease of use

Budgeting with EveryDollar

Right on the home page of EveryDollar it says:

Create your first budget in less than 10 minutes

Let’s test that statement.

Once you login you’re presented with the screen below to setup your budget:

The page is clean and easy to understand. I can see immediately that I can just start typing in values to get my budget going.

10 minutes? It’s true!

Everything is categorized and easy to find. I like how this budgeting works.

Budgeting with Mint

To be honest, I’m ready to throw in the towel with Mint and start a new account. I’ve had a problem with their budgeting software for four months that they still haven’t resolved. I made a YouTube video for their technical no-support team to look at, and they still haven’t fixed it.

Abysmal.

But their budget software does work for most people. I’m just the unlucky one I guess.

In Mint to create a budget, you set up every budget item yourself. There are no preset budget items like in EveryDollar. Mint allows you to set budget items that carry over leftovers from the previous month.

While Mint has categories for budgets, they just list them all in alphabetical order. A green bar means you are under budget.  A yellow bar means you are on budget.  A red bar means you are over budget.

Budgeting in EveryDollar is easier than in Mint and faster. There is just less clicking to do because you can edit your entire budget on one screen without the browser having to refresh constantly.

And as I stated – I can’t get Mint’s budgeting to work anymore even and haven’t had the issue resolved in 4 months.

Winner: EveryDollar

Reporting

EveryDollar

EveryDollar doesn’t have a lot of reporting features as of its initial release. I would expect that in a first version. As users provide feedback, and new releases occur, more reporting options will probably become available.

Mint

Mint has amazing reporting features. It’s one of the best aspects of it. See the nice pie chart here which shows a breakdown in every category of spending. You can create a report for any period you like.

Then – you can drill down into any piece of the pie to see additional breakdowns. For example, if I click the Home pie slice it will show me all of the sub-categories of home, such as home insurance, home upkeep, property taxes, etc.

Then – I can click on a single sub-category to see every transaction in the report.

Sub-category views provide you with an incredibly powerful amount of information. When you ask – ‘what am I spending the most money on?’ – drilling down into these reports gives you the information quickly. You can go back in time for years to see where the big expenses were.  It can help you set plans and goals for the future.

Winner: Mint

Eye appeal

The EveryDollar website is new, updated, and fresh. It’s simple. It’s pretty. It’s easy to read. You’re comparing a 1970’s warehouse to a newly completed start-of-the-art office building.

As I mentioned, Mint hasn’t upgraded anything since 2009. It’s looked the same ever since with minimal improvements.

Winner: EveryDollar

Support

EveryDollar Plus ($99/year) gives you an option to receive a phone call from a real person. The free version comes with email support.

Mint provides email support. Remember when I said I’ve been waiting four months for an issue to be fixed? That’s great support for ya. And when I say four months, that’s me emailing them every two weeks asking for an update and then replying back with some lame response.

Winner: EveryDollar

Planning

Below is from the EveryDollar website:

Don’t be fooled by the other so-called budget tools out there. A budget is not looking back at how you spent your money last month and thinking, Whoops, looks like I spent too much money eating out!

However, it’s not accurate when it comes to Mint.

Both EveryDollar and Mint allow you to plan ahead.

Winner: Tie

This doesn’t add up

I’m a fan of most of Dave Ramsey’s teaching. He is adamant about not using credit cards and not even owning credit cards.

He preaches this every day. It’s a core part of Financial Peace University.

Does EveryDollar let you connect your account to credit cards?

Yes.

As soon as I signed up and viewed the 4-page welcome screen it shows the Plus (paid) version of EveryDollar will allow you to connect your account with both bank accounts and credit cards.

Can you pay for EveryDollar Plus with a credit card?

Yes.

This is the exact opposite of Dave Ramsey’s website where you can only buy with a debit card.

Dave preaches about staying away from credit cards to get out of debt.  However, the paid version of the tool his company created allows you to track credit card transactions, and you can buy the service with a credit card.

Product access

If you want to be successful at budgeting it has to be easy to do. Any budgeting tool without access from any computer or any phone isn’t easy.

Both EveryDollar and Mint run from a browser and have smartphone apps.

Winner: Tie

Account balances

EveryDollar

The EveryDollar Pro version ($99/year) allows you to connect to your credit card accounts and banks. It also provides you with your account balances.

However, it’s not on the main screen, and it’s not in the free version.

Mint

When you login to Mint on the main screen is a snapshot of every account you have connected. The screen shows the balance of the accounts on the main summary screen.

It’s a nice quick snapshot of your overall financial picture.

Winner: Mint

Reconciliation

Neither product has a reconciliation feature that allows you to mark transactions as matching your statements.

Winner: Not you

Advertisements

EveryDollar

When I entered a sample mortgage payment into the budget, immediately I get the following ad in EveryDollar:

It’s an advertisement for one of Dave Ramsey’s Endorsed Local Providers.

Mint

Mint is full of advertising too. With Mint, you’ll see ads for better insurance, saving money on banking, investment companies, etc.

No matter your choice you’ll see advertisements. The ads just look prettier in EveryDollar.

Winner: Not you

Seven Baby Steps

EveryDollar was designed to help you follow Dave Ramsey’s Seven Baby Steps.

Of course Mint can’t do that.

Winner: EveryDollar

Cost

EveryDollar

EveryDollar Basic is FREE.

To connect it to your bank and credit card accounts to automatically import transactions costs $99 PER YEAR.

Mint

Mint is and has always been 100% FREE.

I don’t know about you, but for me I want my budgeting to be both easy AND fast. I pay 20–30 bills per month and use my debit and credit card for 50–100 other transactions.

Manually entering 100+ transactions per month using a laptop and/or smartphone is anything but easy.

It’s horribly time-consuming.

It’s painful.

It ain’t easy.

And if it isn’t easy, you aren’t going to do it, right?

Winner: Mint

Overall scorecard

EveryDollar Basic

Pros

• Awesome interface
• Super easy budget creating
• User friendly

Cons

• Manual transaction entry

EveryDollar Plus

Pros

• Automatic transaction entry from your accounts
• Account balances

Cons

• Price – $99/year

Mint

Pros

• FREE
• Automatic importing of transactions
• Account balances
• Superior reporting

Cons

• Ugly
• Hasn’t been upgraded since 2009
• Budgets take much longer to create
• Budgets are not as intuitive or simple
• Budgets are buggy (my personal experience)

Summary

EveryDollar Basic (the free version) is a great product. The budgeting feature is much simpler and easier to use than Mint, especially for the first time user of budgeting software. It’s a great choice if you have the time and discipline to enter manually your spending transactions every month. It’s the manual transaction entry you may find painstaking.

EveryDollar Plus ($99/year) adds the additional feature of automatically importing transactions from your bank accounts and credit cards. This is a huge time-saver and will make it much easier for you to track your spending easily and keep your budget up-to-date.

I’ll be sticking with Mint for now. I’ve already got my budget created, and it’s free.  But since my Mint budget is broken I’m either going to start with a new Mint account or just switch to EveryDollar.

The bottom line is EveryDollar is a much better product. But for automatic transaction importing it’s going to cost you $99/year.

Have you tried out EveryDollar or Mint? What do you think? Please leave a comment below.