Today, were comparing the two to make it find out who can benefit most from each.

), investment accounts (Fidelity,Personal Capital,Betterment, etc.

), credit cards, and more all to get a big picture view of your financial life.

This helps you stay disciplined and keep focused on your spending, and stick to your budget.

However, you could read about howMint protects your information here, andhow YNAB does it here.

During your initial setup, youll need to specify your monthly budget categories.

Rent doesnt change month to month, but you could probably use help tracking how much you eat out.

For example, you could set aside $150 every month for restaurants.

Every transaction thats tagged as dining out will automatically fill your budget bar, as seen above.

Mint will send you notifications when you approach or exceed your monthly budgets.

YNAB takes a broader approach.

From that day forward, you canimport your transactionsat the end of every day and manually categorize them.

The app wont automatically import and tag your transactions unless you ask it to.

Then you might schedule recurring transactions that you know will occur (like rent or utilities).

More importantly, it only deals with money you have right now.

However, thats largely in the details.

The broader distinction between the two is how much effort you want to spend managing your budget.

Another tool creates a month-by-month plan to pay off your credit card debt.

YNAB takes a much simpler, but also less intuitive approach to setting goals.

There are three main goals it’s possible for you to create.

They have pretty opaque names and it took me a minute to figure out what they do.

So, for example, say you want to save up $1,000 for a new TV.

Each month, you’re able to set aside however much you want to go towards that goal.

It will automatically calculate how much you gotta save each month to meet a specific goal.

Because YNABs goal features are so bare bones, youll need to do the mathematical legwork yourself.

Mint is a lot better in this area.

With YNAB, youll still need to hunt down things like interest calculators somewhere on the internet anyway.

Mint also offersfree periodic credit score checks.

By comparison, YNAB offers virtually nothing outside of managing your monthly budget.

If you want to know your net worth, youll need to calculate it yourself.

This is by design.

The less automation, the better.

Betterment allows you tointegrate your accounts to see your net worthjust like Mint, but without the budget tracking.

The two compliment each other without overlapping too much.

Whichever way you decide to go, both are powerful budgeting apps.

Theyre just forverydifferent people.

Think of Mint like a personal finance advisor.

YNAB, on the other hand, is like a notebook and a pen.