How MyJibe Is Different Than Mint

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You’ve been asking: “How is MyJibe different from Mint or other products?”

Mint did a good thing. They built visual appeal and user experience on top of a third-party account aggregation service. Mint attractively packaged account aggregation, giving people the ability to see all of their accounts in one place and historical spending categorized in a less cumbersome way than Quicken or Microsoft Money. People were thrilled. They could easily monitor account balances and past spending.

But many people want and need more. They want a plan for the future. They want to know that they are on track to reach their savings goals. They want to know with certainty what they can afford to spend, and they want fast, easy access to their financial advisor when they need it. This is what MyJibe provides. 

While MyJibe provides the same account aggregation and expense categorization, the similarities with Mint end there. Here’s how:

1. Account Balance Alone Isn’t Enough
   Mint and others tell you your account balance. Account balance is deceiving. It only tells you how much money is in an account. It doesn’t tell you what that money is needed for. It doesn’t tell you whether there is enough to cover bills, other expenses, and savings goals. It doesn’t tell you how much is free (Currently Available) to spend on whatever you like. MyJibe does.
   
   
   

2. A Simpler, Flexible Budget You Can Actually Stick To
   Like anything else in life, if you want to get somewhere you need a plan.  With money, that plan is called a budget. A budget is important and necessary, but traditionally too complicated and rigid. MyJibe provides a flexible and simple way to create your budget. You don’t need to maintain a million budget categories, and you’re not locked into the same budgeted amounts every month. We all know you’re not going to spend the same amount on clothes every month, and your gas bill is a heck of a lot different in May than it is in January. MyJibe can handle those month to month differences.

3. Fundamentally Different Budgeting Approach:  “Envelopes style”
   For generations, the most effective budgeting approach was “envelopes style”.  This the method endorsed by experts like Dave Ramsey and Larry Burkett, where a person cashes her paycheck and splits it into envelopes, either to cover expenses that month or save up for future goals. The beauty of it is you’re giving your money a job before you spend it, and you always know how much you have to spend. While powerful, it’s not pragmatic in today’s cashless economy. MyJibe makes envelope style budgeting electronic and automated, giving you both power and ease.
   

4. Focus On the Future
   Most tools focus on past spending. While MyJibe also automatically categorizes your expenses and shows you where your money is going, the focus is on preparing you for the future. With MyJibe, savings goals are not a separate module, they are an integrated part of the budget so you can make trade-off decisions between spending now versus saving for the future. MyJibe suggests common and recommended goals and quantifies how much the user needs to save in order to reach the goal in time. Lastly, MyJibe is smart enough to monitor multiple savings goals funded by a single account. With Mint and others, for every goal you set up, you need to set up a separate account. That’s a lot of accounts to manage.
   

5. Real-time Financial Advice From a Real Person
   MyJibe is the only personal finance software where a financial advisor can log in with you real-time. In order for an advisor, banker, or CPA to give you good investment, tax, or money management advice, they need to understand your situation: your assets and debts, your spending, and your goals. MyJibe eliminates the meetings and completion of forms needed to obtain this information. When working with a participating advisor, banker, or CPA, you can invite him to see a summary of your financial situation so he can immediately offer the advice you need more quickly and inexpensively than traditionally possible.
   

6. MyJibe Is Not Free.
   MyJibe is not a free service. There is always a trade-off with free software that pays for itself through credit card offers and advertising. We are focused on providing a great value for those who want control of their finances and for the financial professionals who want an innovative way to serve them.