Minty, but not too fresh (yet)

mint.com is a financial management Website that's been getting a lot of attention lately. You create a login and give them your credentials for all your bank and credit card accounts. Two basic value props: 1) they consolidate your financial information so you can track your finances and 2) they find you lower rates on credit cards, bills, etc.

The first time I heard about it a couple of months ago, I passed - I already use MS Money. Then it won the TechCrunch 40, so I decided to give it a try. For me, it's not worth it. MS Money does a MUCH better job at tracking my finances and the only savings it found was a lower rate credit card and I never carry a balance (plus I like my Amazon points).

So I'll probably close my account and get them to delete my data. Leo Laporte and his TWiT buddies think I'm crazy to give away access to all my financial info. I may be naive, I suppose, but I just don't think it's that risky.

All that said, Mint will be interesting to watch. They've got a fair bit of buzz and a potentially disruptive trajectory to travel. They're doing what MS Money and Quicken do (albeit not as well) with a snazzy interface and the promise of saving you money. Offering the credit card deals makes it free to the users, so if it's good enough for people who don't use Money or Quicken, they can compete against non-consumption. Assuming MS and Intuit are willing to give up the cheap end of their market and move up-market rather than compete, Mint can continue to invest in new features and gradually eat away at the bottom-end of their market. Classic disruption story.

So, if I were the VP of Product Management at Mint, the roadmap would look something like this:

- Support for different account types (mortgages, car loans, retirement, investment, etc)
- Bill pay
- Better auto-categorization
- More sophisticated reporting
- Budget tracking
- Integration with online tax software (or maybe even build it yourself, though that's a lot to bite off)
- Investment tools (i.e. portfolio analysis)

I'll be interested to see if they can generate enough cash to fund that kind of a roadmap. It sure would be fun.