Reviews: Online Money Mgmt Tools: Mint, Quicken, and Rudder

A couple weeks ago I reviewed Mint.com, but I’ve recently been trying out two other free online money management tools, Rudder and Quicken.

Here’s the rundown:

Of the three sites, Rudder loads and updates the quickest, and it’s also the fastest at adding new accounts. (Mint is the slowest–it’s kind of a pain.)

Account support
As I mentioned in my review of Mint, I can’t for the life of me add my Dollar Savings account, even though their support team says it’s been fixed. It must be something with the DS login system because Quicken doesn’t support it either. Rudder technically does support it, much like Mint, and it even found and added my account. The problem? None of the info loads. Obviously, not very helpful.

As for types of accounts supported, Mint still comes out on top. Mint and Quicken both support various types of bank accounts, credit cards, and even PayPal! Very cool. But Mint is the only one that supports my Nelnet student loans. Rudder again, falls short as it only supports bank and credit card accounts. I did manage to add my Nelnet account, but it shows up all wacky because Rudder categorizes it as a credit card.

Interface
Rudder’s interface is the least intuitive, and incidentally, the least functional. It offers no budgeting capabilities, which is my favorite thing about Mint. Quicken has good budgeting features, but they don’t display as nicely as Mint–you can’t see all your categories at the same time. Also, the Trends section of Quicken seems to be off–at least in my case, the graphs are highly inaccurate.

My verdict: I’m sticking with Mint, at least for now. It’s definitely the most functional. And I like the interface a lot more than Quicken.

To see this article in its natural habitat, visit True Adventures in Money Hacking

-Wren from TiredofBeingPoor.net