Comments on: Mint.com Will Provide Personalized Financial Advice: Beta Test the New Features

By: Matt @ Thrive

Matt @ Thrive — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:28:07 +0000

There is a reason we don’t do this sort of thing at Thrive (www.justthrive.com), though we’re glad to see that Mint has learned from our site’s Financial Health score in creating their “Financial Fitness” criteria. The concern is for token economies.

To provide some of the psych background, in a token economy, people start taking actions so that they can gain “points” instead of because itself is worthwhile or enjoyable. This actually works tremendously well at getting people to do things…as long as they keep “playing”. The moment they stop getting rewarded with points, they stop engaging in the behavior, because the tokens were the only reason they started behaving that way in the first place.

Thrive displays your Financial Health as a way of helping you track how you are doing, and to help users understand how various financial health elements can affect their lives. We’re doing more to expand it and make it a better educaitonal tool that helps you sum up at a glance how your behaviors are affecting your life. But – and this is imporatnt – it isn’t used extensively as a motivator.

People already have the motivation: they have the dreams, wants, and desires, and they know they need money to accomplish them. What they need is not simply temporary reinforcement that works only as long as they with the program (and the “points”), but rather practical, quality advice that helps them achieve those goals and continue to grow financially, even when they aren’t online. And that is what Thrive seeks to enable by providing easy-to-understand, easy-to-use financial advice that actually helps people change.

But don’t take my word for it. I’m commenting here because I think people need to be able to compare for themselves, and it is important to understand not only where the ideas are coming from, but how they are being implemented by different sites. We invite people to see for themselves why Thrive created Financial Health and how we are using it at http://www.justthrive.com

And as always, feel free to give us your feedback by e-mail at feedback@justthrive.com or you can grab me at matt@justthrive.com or even call us with specific questions – you’ll get one of our team. Maybe even me! =]

By: Flexo

Flexo — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 04:18:20 +0000

Stephanie: Mint randomly selected 10% of their user base to receive the new features early. But anyone who wasn’t in that 10% can use the email address I listed to join the group.

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:53:45 +0000

It looks like they’ve already rolled this out to a few people (my boyfriend and I both found this financial health tab in our mint accounts). I agree with Jake that there are some kinks that need to be ironed out and other functionalities that would be very beneficial. Some of my accounts aren’t updating anymore on Mint, even with all updated account information.

I like the “financial health” idea. It’s similar to what Thrive (https://www.justthrive.com/) has.

By: Jake

Jake — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:22:16 +0000

I wish they would focus on rolling out cash flow and period to date budget functionality vs. these financial advice features but I guess they have to find a business model to generate revenue….

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:01:49 +0000

Cool Cool – thanks for the heads up!

By: Kelly

Kelly — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:36:49 +0000

Thanks for this amazing offer to be included.
I can’t wait to see the beta version.
Wesabe also recently updated their site, so I’m curious to see the differences!