Okay friends, I’ll admit it: I feel like I’ve dropped the ball on this one. I was in the process of testing out some other budgeting apps in case Mint (which I’ve reviewed before) didn’t quite meet your needs. I just hadn’t gotten much past testing out Every Dollar by Ramsey Solutions because well… I wanted to write food stuff and not spend all my time working on the same budget. Mea culpa.
So yeah, apparently, Mint is closing up shop in January. Word on the street is that it’s a move by Intuit to shuffle their users to Credit Karma. I haven’t talked to anyone there for a confirmation, but frankly? I am not thrilled. It’s as annoying to me as the calls from the car dealership that “Hey JimBob retired so now I’m your salesperson! Nice to meet you customer!” Ugh. No. Don’t pass me along like that, y’all. The whole point of using Mint was being very very broke and needing a very very free way to budget without losing my everloving mind doing it all on paper. What really annoys me in all this, however, is that there is exactly zero information on the Mint website telling you that you’re about to be out of a budgeting home.
Fortunately, I had started checking out Every Dollar as a potential budgeting app. I’d only used the free version because I wanted to have a good feel for it before I reviewed it. I had intended to use the trial version of their premium app in a couple of months to test out the differences between the two versions and determine if a paid budgeting app was worth the money. That changed over this weekend. However, I can only give you some first impressions of the premium option.
Every Dollar (Free Version)
So I both love and hate in equal measure the free version of Every Dollar. Why? Because I am lazy. Part of the benefit of my dear old granny Mint was that when I connected my accounts, all my transactions appeared. It helped me keep track of those small bits and bobs I’d forgotten about. (It also helped me catch a few subscriptions that needed to be canceled.) With the free version of Every Dollar, you gotta manually input those transactions. Every one of them. The downside? You really have to stay on top of those transaction inputs or you’ll find yourself with a huge pile to process at one time. Bleh. The upside? You have to manually input every. single. transaction. and seeing those numbers going in works as an intense pause before you silly splurge. I developed a sense of dread anytime I had to buy anything, including groceries and gas. Because I knew I was gonna have to plug those numbers in and lemme tell you, there was some heavy-duty “Do I really need this?” happening in my life.
So. If you are on a super tight budget because your debt is overwhelming or your pay just barely covers your expenses, this version of Every Dollar could be great for you. Because you’ll be in the weeds with every cent going out and coming in. By taking a day by day approach to tending your budget, you will find yourself extremely informed about how your money is being deployed.
Another nice feature of this app is that it has three tabs for your budget. Something that Mint ehhhh kind of had but in a different format. There is the Planned tab where you can plan out your monthly budget. (Incidentally once you set the budget, it will roll over from month to month. Nice!) The next tab is the Spent tab, where you can see exactly what all you’ve spent thus far, assuming you’re recording those transactions. The third tab is the Remaining tab, so you can see just how much of your grocery budget you have left for the month. I found this very handy when it came to end of the month and I needed to do a little shopping. I opted for the necessities only and waited on the pantry building items.
Overall, the free version of Every Dollar is good for keeping you attentive while also being free. The easiest way to handle transaction input was to make it part of my morning routine, before poking at my mobile games, after starting the morning caffeine. It’s less hands off than Mint, but the budget rollover is fantastic and the interface is pretty intuitive. Not hard to learn how to use, but if you want the benefit from it, you will have to use it.
Every Dollar Plus (Paid Version)
Gonna throw this out first thing, that I only found out my budget app was closing up shop because I follow some of the Ramsey personalities on social media. Seriously Mint, it’s like sending your kid brother over to break up with me… via text. Rude. This is also how I found out that as a response, Every Dollar is offering a free 60-day trial of the premium version to Mint Refugees. There’s no referral bonus or kickback going on here. I just want to give you something you might be able to work with while recovering from the Break-Up Blues.
The premium edition can only be paid for with a debit card. It’s Ramsey policy not to use credit cards, therefore charging the premium service is not an option. Once the free trial has ended, the annual cost is $79. Which may be doable for some, or possibly not for the extremely broke. I remember the days when that amount exceeded my grocery budget and I opted to feed my kids instead of having a budgeting convenience. If this is you, there is absolutely no shame in that.
Fortunately in the premium version, you can connect your bank/debit card to the app and have all those transactions load in. The app does a pretty decent job of sorting out the transactions into the correct places like gas and groceries. You might have to fiddle with the categories if you shop groceries at Target but it wants to roll up as Shopping instead. I was already having to go through all my transactions in Mint doing this because my ex-budgeting app could not remember that I set a rule that paychecks were income not transfers. I suspect category fine tuning is going to be necessary with any automatic budgeting app, so I’m not fussed about this.
After a couple days delay, the credit card transactions did appear in Every Dollar. (My initial reaction was that they don’t. But surprise! There they are!) Which vastly increases my probability of using it as my Mint replacement. You do still have to slot those transactions into which budget category they apply to, but you have to with any bank-sourced transactions as well. Although after you’ve tagged a merchant as going to Groceries once, a button appears to add the next transaction there to that same budget category. So helpful!
The premium version has some other great features. The one I looked at the most was the Financial Roadmap that lets you project how much money you’ll have at retirement, based on your current financials. The roadmap also helps you plan out when you’ll have those pesky student loans paid off, and when you’ll finally be debt free. It’s encouraging because you can see a path forward.
There is also a Paycheck Planning feature that lets you see how your bills will fall in relation to when your paychecks are due to come in. I didn’t poke at this too much because I like to keep a buffer in my bank account so I’m not overly worried about paying a bill too soon. However, if this is something of concern for you personally, I’d say it’s definitely worth looking at.
Both Versions
Something true for the free and premium versions is that Categories for spending are already loaded and the list is pretty comprehensive. It’s good for a beginning budgeter who might have forgotten to include the car insurance payment. This is an improvement over Mint who had none (that I remember) and you had to manually go in and create a new budget for each line item. I’m sure it will take a month or three to get your categorical spending worked out so nothing’s falling by the wayside, but having that general list to work from in Every Dollar was incredibly helpful.
Conclusion
Will I miss the pie charts and graphs from Mint where I can see my spending over time? Mmm no. The premium version of Every Dollar does have Insights that provides that graphical information for those who need the visuals. Am I annoyed that my years and years of tracking are about to be flushed down the commode? Yep. Absolutely. I know wherever I land in the end, I can start building up that body of data again. But it’s still irritating to have to do so. Will I stick with Every Dollar full time going forward? I’m undecided. I still intend to look at some of the other budgeting options before I make a final decision. Though, I’ll be honest, the Ramsey promise that they’re not going anywhere is incredibly appealing.
Visit everydollar.com/mint to look into the free trial and decide if it’s right for you.
Good luck! Momma
