today we'll be putting the king of fintech in my opinion which is sofi in their sofi relay
platform head to head with by far the most popular budgeting platform for literally the past decade
and that would be mint who has over 20 million users to help you decide
which of these budgeting platforms is the best option in 2022 alright let's jump right into it
what is going on everyone i hope you were all having a fantastic day
so it's no secret that i am a huge fan of the sofa platform as a whole and i've made a number
of videos on sofa relay and a while back i also made a full review video on the incredibly popular
mint budgeting platform and this is actually a tool that i used myself for a number of years
so in today's video i'm gonna break down what each of these platforms has to offer and hopefully help
you decide which is the best financial tool for you because there are some pretty major
differences so let's start off with by far the most popular budgeting platform and that would
be mint mint was launched in 2007 and just two short years later intuit actually purchased the
platform for 170 million dollars now at that time in 2009 when it was purchased by intuit
they only had 1 million users but intuit has now grown the platform to over 20 million users making
this the most popular budgeting platform by a landslide that's great but what's all the hype
about well for starters they offer some pretty advanced budgeting tools all for completely free
and when i say free i mean that every feature of this platform costs nothing and there isn't any
kind of premium version that you have to upgrade and pay for i mean that everything across this
platform is free which i think is fantastic so obviously they're going to let you connect all
of your different financial accounts including third-party checking and savings accounts
retirement and investment accounts credit cards any loans that you might have and you can even
manually add different assets and liabilities as well and what that means is all of your financial
platforms are going to be synced under one app and you all know that i am a huge fan of that
especially as someone who has countless different financial accounts that can all be a huge headache
to keep track of on their own all of this syncing is done using the plaid system which we have all
probably become very familiar with so it's super easy to look up your financial accounts log in
with your credentials and then everything is just going to be securely connected under the
mint app once you get everything hooked up mint is then going to track your transactions
and will actually categorize them into pre-determined budgeting categories automatically
but just as we've become accustomed to they don't always get everything 100 right
so of course you are able to go back and manually adjust those transactions if you need to and you
can also add custom budgeting categories if one of the default ones does not fit into your budget so
all of this isn't anything groundbreaking but one feature that i do love about the mint app is that
not only are you able to add tags to transactions which actually helps mint even better categorize
your transactions but you can even put single transactions into multiple budgeting categories
one of their newer features that i really love is called mint bills which you guessed it allows you
to pay your bills right through the mint app which was an area that it was lacking in for a very long
time prior to this feature you were only able to set up payment reminders and you are still able
to do that but now you're actually able to use any us-based bank accounts or a visa mastercard
american express or discover credit or debit card in order to actually pay those bills as well in my
experience those different payment options should have you covered but i will mention that currently
i don't see any kind of true ach transfer bill payment feature which i know a lot of you are
looking for so if you do prefer to pay your bills that way then i don't see that for the time being
but you're still able to pay directly out of your bank account which is basically the exact same
thing the only two major drawbacks that i see with mint is number one there currently isn't
any kind of joint mint account which i think is a huge oversight on their part obviously you and
your partner would be able to each make individual mint accounts and sync all of these same financial
accounts to those but again the two mint accounts are not actually communicating with each other
meaning anytime you change your budgeting goals or anything like that they're not going to be in sync
which kind of makes it pointless for couples so i really hope that a joint mint account is
something that they add in the near future and then obviously the other huge difference which
is kind of an issue but not really the point of the mint budgeting platform is that mint
is simply a budgeting platform and nothing more they were going to sync your financial accounts
and give you a clean way of looking at everything including keeping track of your credit score and
all of that for completely free but they are not a bank account they are not an investing platform or
anything like that they are simply aggregating that financial data and are presenting it in a
clean and easy to understand way all right we'll swing back around to compare the key differences
in a second but moving on to sofi relay this is the free extension of the newly released
sofa checking and savings accounts and like i said earlier i have made several videos on sofi relay
including a step-by-step how-to guide that i'll be sure to link to it down in the description below
relay is accessed through the standard sofi app by clicking on the relay connections menu from
the home screen and this is going to work in a very similar way to mint in the sense that
you were able to link all of those third-party financial accounts as well as your sofi accounts
and that includes your bank accounts credit cards loans and of course you were able to add
manual assets and liabilities as well it is completely free just like everything else on the
sofi platform and similar to mint once you link all of those third-party accounts they're going
to track your spending and give you the ability to set up spending and savings goals including
savings vaults through your sofa savings accounts plus you can add transaction tags and pay your
bills directly from your sofi checking and savings accounts and monitor your credit score as well
they also have an investment summary tool that shows you a percentage breakdown of all of your
different investment accounts that you have linked to relay a breakdown of your spending by category
which we looked at in a previous video and it was pretty jaw-dropping for me so definitely check
that out and a summary of your monthly savings based on your total income and expenses nothing
too crazy here with relay so what are the big differences here because as you can probably tell
these two platforms are very similar in the sense that they both are a clean and simple way to get
a snapshot of your financial health without the complexity of a ton of fancy features that most
of us probably never use well the most obvious difference that does give sofi an advantage is
the fact that sofi is actually a bank well mint is simply a budgeting platform and obviously
that is not a fair comparison because the sofi checking and savings accounts are technically
separate from sofa relay but relay is the free extension of the checking and savings accounts
meaning you really can't have one without the other so if you do want to have your banking
and your budgeting under one platform then so far would be the obvious choice mint on the other hand
has a much more simplistic design in my opinion and while you do occasionally get an ad that's
kind of to be expected because this is a free platform and i have frequently heard users of
sofi complain about the sometimes cluttered feel that the sofi app can have now thankfully relay
doesn't really fall victim to that issue but other aspects of the sofi app do often get cluttered
with advertisements for different sofa products and news articles and while you are able to set
different preferences within the app in order to minimize the clutter that is an extra step that
you will have to take in order to optimize this platform for your use both platforms have a bill
pay feature that essentially works in the same way but again sofi is a bank meaning you're able
to use your routing and account number to directly make those payments right from your accounts well
mint is simply communicating with your third party bank account in order to pay those bills
obviously the end result is the same but just a minor difference that you'll want to keep in
mind and then obviously we have the joint account options which is something that sofi offers that i
absolutely love and that is a huge con of the mint platform so if you're a couple
who's looking to have not only your joint financial accounts but actually have your
budgeting perfectly synchronized then again sofi would be the obvious choice in that case in terms
of connectivity issues both of these platforms use the same plaid system in order to link those
third-party financial accounts and i will say that the plaid system is certainly not perfect
and i have run into connectivity issues not only with relay and mint but a lot of other tools that
use plaid alright so when it comes down to it either of these platforms would be a fantastic
choice but obviously the question that we want to answer in today's video is which one is right
for you well full transparency you all know that i personally use sofi relay as my budgeting platform
however that's just because i personally like having all of my financial tools under
one platform which sofi allows me to do but if you aren't already a sofi user or maybe having
everything under one platform isn't that big of a deal to you then mint is a fantastic choice that
again i did personally use for several years and it worked just fine i do also like the fact that
mint is solely focused on budgeting not to say that other apps get distracted but there
is something to be said about a company whose sole focus is making the best free budgeting
platform that they possibly can so obviously i have made my personal choice with sofa relay
and that is the better platform for me no surprise there but again this one is really neck and neck
so i'd love to know which of these platforms you prefer down in the comment section below
and why you feel that is the better platform for you as always if you did get value out of
this content and you want to help support me the easiest way to do that is actually by checking out
some of my favorite financial tools down in the description below including one offer from the
point cashback debit card that will currently give you 100 when you open your account and make your
first purchase so definitely check that out using the link down below be sure to hit the like button
and subscribe to the channel for more content like this in the future and of course thank you
so much for your time i really do appreciate it so much take it easy and i'll see you in the next one
you