Quicken and Mint

Note:

This review was written last weekend prior to announcement that Mint.com would be acquired by Intuit (Quicken) .
  

I have been aware of Quicken through its software and briefly used it in 2001. Recently I used Quicken Online to reveal guts of my finances and to get accurate figure on how deep my rabbit hole (debt) went.
   

I signed up for Mint.com right after I signed up for Quicken Online. I found both of them very similar and useful. Identical categories for “Trend”, “Transaction”, and “Planning” (“Goal”) exist in both. Mint also has additional categories for “Investment”, and “Ways to Save” (aka targeted advertisement). It is difficult to compare the two because both have similar navigation and tools and only subtle differences. Some tools are more user friendly in one versus another. For example, Quicken lets you select date range and Mint displays APR of your card prominently.  Mint's design is slightly more user friendly and it also sends more pertinent email reminders. On the other hand, Quicken Online offers a possibility of easily upgrading to a more powerful software package. My suggestion is to use both since they are free.