On Nov. 15th, a Personal Finance headline in the WSJ read, “There’s a Reason a Killer Money-Savings App Still Doesn’t Exist.” In the last decade, the financial technology sector has exploded. Perhaps there is a killer money-saving app that people just aren’t aware of yet.
With the announcement of the closure of budgeting app Mint, the trailblazer of the personal financial management (PFM) industry will join a packed list of companies who have failed trying to help people spend less money. This has people asking what it is about the existing banking and budgeting apps that aren’t giving people what they really want. Why are people reluctant to pay for services to help them create better habits with their money?
Why Mint Closed
Like the other well known budgeting and banking apps, Mint focuses on tracking expenses instead of helping people spend better. Keeping up on categorizing transactions isn’t easy. And, by the time a transaction is categorized, most of the time people have already spent more money, so their budget still isn’t accurate. This leads to overspending, disappointment, and anxiety.
The above referenced WSJ article stated, “There is little evidence that Mint and other tracking tools make much of a difference for people who aren’t already engaged with their finances.”
Problematic Budgeting Technology
Banking apps and budgeting apps like Mint use data aggregation to track financial data and build a dashboard of your financial life, linking all your bank and credit-card accounts attempting to automate much of the spending analysis.
With data aggregation technology, all of the information tracking takes place after the purchase. The money is already spent, and therefore it’s too late to impact your decision to buy. To make things worse, aggregation technology has some critical challenges that create a lag time between your purchases and an up-to-date budget.
- Broken links. The connection between your budgeting app and your financial accounts break on a regular basis. Everytime this happens, you are required to re-link your account before transactions start showing up again.
- Miscategorized transactions. Apps have tried to automate transaction categorization, but it’s far from perfect. This means you need to manually categorize transactions to keep your budget accurate. Most people aren’t good at keeping up with the consistent effort this requires.
- Time delays. Some transactions take up to 48 hours to show up.
In short, categorizing transactions after money is spent isn’t very good at helping people stick to their budget.
What is Qube Money?
In 2019, Qube Money began building a Mint alternative that combines the convenience of digital banking with the time-proven budgeting system, cash envelopes–more recently popularized as ‘cash stuffing’–bringing your bank balance and spending plan together in one, to ensure every dollar is given a job, then spent or saved exactly as you intended!
Qube Money’s purpose was to create a technology that made it easy to follow your budget. The easiest way to follow your budget is to spend from it. Imagine purchasing your fuel from your fuel account and your groceries from your grocery account all from the convenience of one debit card. Also, imagine a banking app that enables you to divvy up your money for all your bills and only allow automatic payments for bills that fit in your plan.
Qube Money is helping thousands of people transform the way they feel and interact with money, increasing savings, and eliminating debt. A recent App Review says, “Using Qube Money makes years of using Mint seem pointless. Mint just tracks. Qube Money changes behavior.”
Another review says, “At first, I thought Qube Money was just a budgeting app. Actually, It’s a full-service digital bank that does budgeting right. In less than two months, Qube has changed the way I think and feel about money. It’s so simple. First, I plan my money. Next, I check my plan before each purchase. Because I spend from my plan, everything is real. When I spend money, it’s gone and I can see that reflected in my budget in real time.”
Next Generation Budgeting Technology
What makes Qube Money’s technology so different? Where other banking apps and budgeting apps rely on card controls to determine whether a transaction should go through or not and then attempts to accurately categorize the transaction once it has settled, Qube Money has built transaction level controls where your budget approves or declines each transaction in real time and money is literally spent from your budget.
Qube Money’s technology controls the authorization of every transaction and delegates that authorization to your budget. This means each transaction is held until your budget approves it. If the budget doesn’t approve it, the transaction will decline. You would think this would cause all sorts of declined transactions; but it doesn’t. Customers are raving about it. Transactions process like any other card if the user’s budget approves them–instantly. Since the money is spent from your budget, your category balances update in real-time and automatically. No more tracking expenses. This is a huge time saver, and a much better way to stay on track with your money.
What People Are Saying
“I have tried lots of budgeting apps, but the money isn’t “real” so I usually fall behind categorizing our spending and fail completely a few months in. There is no way to forget to keep track of where money is going with Qube Money. Total game changer!”
“I have never been able to stick to a budget, but Qube Money makes it simple and easy. Just started using it last week and was able to stick to this week’s grocery budget for the first time in my life.”
“Don’t really like budgeting. Qube Money is by far and away the best ever. I have tried just about every budgeting app there is. This makes it all so much easier.”
Although Qube Money doesn’t have features like Networth Tracking, Credit Builder, and Credit Monitoring yet, they are on the roadmap. It does have the most important feature, Proactive Spending™. It also has joint accounts, kid cards, parent view, payday two days early, subscription controls, and more.
Conclusion
Since traditional budgeting apps like Mint don’t control the transaction, they lack power to change spending behavior. Tracking transactions creates a delayed financial awareness defeating the purpose of budgeting.
Qube Money is a Mint replacement that gives people control of their money.
