what I like about mint is that the updates are automatic (although about a day late for retirement accounts, etc.). Transactions can come through the day-of. What I like is the list of transactions. They just come one right after the other until suddenly you see something odd. You can figure out what it is -- a mistake, fraud, etc. and fix it. You can see what bills look high over time and do something about it (phone service for example -- why did I never notice that we were paying $40 to MCI for long distance each month but we had free minutes through our cell phones? stupid!). You drive down your regular bills, and then look for patterns. You can anticipate extra funds coming in or fewer expenses and move the extra over to savings where you might not spend it as readily. I just like the automaticity of it. What I don't like is that sometimes it doesn't recognize certain accounts all of a sudden, or that Bank of America freaks out and locks out mint users. That takes time to fix at mint which makes the service less useful for that time period.