Ainsley BiltonFollowing Intuit’s recent decision to shut down Mint, many customers are left to find an alternative. Mint was one of the first personal budgeting apps on the market and has grown a loyal user base since the company launched in 2006.
In the days since the app announced its closure on January 1, 2024, users have expressed their concern over what are their alternatives for managing their money.
One feature in particular was a favorite among Mint customers and that was the net worth tracker. Mint’s net worth tracker was a valuable tool for financial planning and having a bird’s eye view of your financial situation.
What is net worth?
The term net worth is often associated with celebrities and multimillion-dollar business owners, but net worth is something that everyone has and needs to be considering.
Tracking and understanding your net worth is an incredibly important piece of your finances and one of the most important tools when it comes to achieving your financial goals.
Tracking your net worth helps you to understand your overall financial health. Your net worth is a snapshot of your financial situation at a given time. It gives you an idea of your financial standing, whether you are progressing towards your financial goals, or if you need to change your financial habits.
If you have a negative net worth, you currently owe more than you own. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; a mortgage can result in a negative net worth but this is generally regarded as good debt.
However, if your net worth is negative as the result of excessive credit card or personal loan debt then this can be an indicator that you are spending more than you should and your financial habits need to change. In comparison, a positive net worth is a good sign that you may be on track with your financial goals.
Mint’s net worth feature
Mint’s Net worth feature works by calculating your net worth by adding together all of your assets and subtracting your liabilities based on the accounts you have connected to the app. The app also has a section for annual growth where you input your assets growth percentage as well as debt decrease percentage and monthly contributions. With this, the app can tell you your current net worth, as well as predict your net worth in the future.
What is the best alternative to the Mint?
Emma can deliver the same experience for users searching for a new tool to manage their money. Just like Mint, Emma has a net worth tracker which is calculated by comparing your assets to your liabilities.
Emma can look at all of your bank accounts, credit cards, investments, and outstanding debts to provide an accurate net worth that stays up to date as you spend and save. Similar to mint Emma can estimate when you will achieve a 1 million net worth based on your current net worth growth.
What other features does Emma offer?
Although many users loved Mint’s networth feature, the app also offered a variety of financial management tools like budgeting, aggregating all your accounts to one place, and tracking spend over time. Emma offers all of the same capabilities making it a great alternative to Mint.
Budgeting
Once your accounts are linked in Emma creating budgets is extremely simple. With Emma you can select the budgeting period that works for you whether that be from the first of the month or the last working day of the month.
For those who want their budget to reset more frequently you can set it to do so each week, biweekly, every 4 weeks or twice a month. The app also permits you to select a fixed or variable monthly date when your budget will reset.
Once this is done you can create budget categories that work for you with smart suggestions based off of your past spending history. You can even set up merchant and rolling budgets to set guidelines for certain retailers or to have a budget that rolls over monthly!
Emma’s budgeting tool allows you to track what is left to spend within your designated budgeting period as Emma subtracts both your spending as well as your committed spending from your total budget.
If you set your budgeting period to start on the day you get paid, you can easily monitor what’s left from your total budget to make sure you are always on track with what you have planned to spend.
The budgeting feature will also notify you when your spending is going too fast and you need to slow down to stay within your budget and when, unfortunately, you have gone over your budget.
Emma’s true balance
Emma’s true balance feature shows customers how much money they have left to spend from each of their bank accounts. This functionality works in conjunction with the budgeting period you have chosen and shows your available balance minus all the committed spend on that account for the period.
For example, if you have $1,200 available in your account but have an upcoming bill payment in 1 week for $1000, Emma can tell you that your true balance is $200. This is particularly useful for spotting potential overdrafts and for better planning.
Comprehensive Insights
Another way Mint and Emma are similar is the personalised insights and analytics that each provides. Users can view the trends of their income, spending, and savings each month. You have the ability to compare this against previous months or select custom time frames to view. Emma has a variety of charts and diagrams built in the app to help you easily make sense of your finances. You can compare income vs spending, look at your spending over time, or view your spending in a pie chart where it is broken down categorically. Understanding your financial habits is key to success which is why Emma has so many different ways to help you track your progress.
Cashback
Emma is all about helping you save more, whether that be from our budgeting tools, or from cancelling a forgotten subscription Emma wants to help you on your quest to save. This is why we offer exclusive cashback offers within the app so you can earn money while shopping or save more with exclusive deals and discounts!
Groups
With Emma keeping track of shared expenses is easy. Emma’s groups function allows you to create a group in the app to track, split and settle any shared expenses. This makes it easy to keep track of who owes what – whether you’re on a group holiday, living with a flatmate, or simply trying to split a bill when you’re out for dinner, Emma Groups makes it easy to stay on top of shared expenses. You can even use Emma to settle a bill and it’ll help you work out exactly what needs to be paid and to who, so everyone always pays their fair share.
Conclusion
The demise of Mint marks the end of an era for the personal finance management space. The platform served as a trusted companion for countless customers, helping them gain control over their financial lives. Mint customers use the platform for its ability to connect multiple accounts in one place, manage bills and subscriptions, use the app’s analytics to gain insights across multiple categories and timeframes, as well as set budgets that fit your lifestyle.
The app also allowed customers to split transactions, transfer between accounts, create custom categories, get notifications about their balance and see their spending history. For Mint customers looking to replace the gap in their financial management Emma is the perfect alternative.
