Canada, Mint (and other auto-download services)

[scrubbyfish]

Fellow Canadians, what's shakin' in your online banking worlds??

VanCity said I am not allowed to link my account to Mint for auto-downloading. That my doing so violates the terms of my banking agreement, eliminates their guarantee of my funds' safety, yadda yadda.

I'm moving to TD (for other reasons), and in Googling found this:

When I contacted TD to ask them about Mint, their position was, and I quote:
“As a TD Canada Trust Access Card Holder, you’ve agreed to not provide your confidential information to third parties. This would include divulging our password and Access Card number to Mint.com. So, this would include companies that try to aggregate your financial services under one roof.

We view the aggregation of services as a security issue and generally do not support it, so while you may be able to access your accounts initially, there will likely come a time when your information becomes blocked.”

People should be aware that using Mint (or other aggregators) may place them in jeopardy with their institutions should there ever be a need to dispute transactions on their accounts.

Even if there were no security risk (and I tend to think there's not), I'm not keen to get all set up and running in a system that may be blocked at any point, as it indeed was with VanCity.

Is anyone in Canada finding a way for auto (online) downloads of their transactions to their tracking software?

[Spudd]

I'm with TD, and use Mint, and it works pretty well. But I am concerned about the protections I may be giving up by doing so, if my accounts are ever compromised. (i.e. if TD knows I gave my password to Mint, they might not reimburse me the missing funds). I have been thinking about quitting Mint, but it's just so handy.

I found that Microsoft Money (Sunset edition) is available for free download, and you can download Money files from the TD website that get imported, so you can do some things similar to Mint. But for me it was much harder to use and I gave up.

Have been thinking of getting Quicken, which I think can connect automatically, but is not a breach of the agreement (since you are just storing the password locally on your PC, not giving it to a website). However Quicken is pretty expensive so I have not taken the plunge yet.

[TrMama]

My compromise has been to only link my checking and credit card accounts to mint. If my credit card accounts get hacked, it's easy enough to cancel them and most companies are pretty good about not making you responsible for any fraudulent charges. My credit card #'s have been stolen several times prior to me using mint and it was no big deal.

Since mint allows me to keep better track of my money, the balance of my checking account is generally pretty low. Any excess funds get sent to my various investment accounts (which are all with other institutions) regularly. If my checking account were wiped out, the thief wouldn't get much and it wouldn't have much of a long term impact on me.

I have not linked my investment accounts because if those were wiped out, I'd be up the creek.

[Goldielocks]

Aggregating financial information "in the cloud" is always a valid safety concern, and I am / was worried too.

Using Mint has far more benefits to me, so I am taking that risk.  I may or may not regret it.

ScotiaBank, CIBC and others will "block" e.g., ask for password questions to be answered a lot, but still give me access after I respond.  TD does not do this as much, but may in future.  So it is likely that the the "blocking" may be as simple as needing to reset up that account in MINT every couple of weeks.   

[scrubbyfish]

Awesome, folks, thanks!!

I've been poking and pushing through this stuff, and have just now successfully learned how to download my info from VanCity to YNAB and clean it up in there. It's kind of awesome -I was really surprised at how simple it was, and at how sophisticated YNAB was in handling it! When I reduce my accounts, and as YNAB also learns how I want everything done, it should end up totally doable.

I might stick with manual entries for outgoing, because that keeps me conscious, and info download for deposits. I think that gives me all the benefits of Mint, etc, with none of the risks (or bank crabbiness).

TrMama: That sounds like an effective balance/compromise, too. (I might do something like that. I actually prefer not to see what the investments are doing anyway.)

[RichMoose]

I ended up dumping Mint for this reason. This means manual categorizing, but fortunately wife and I average less than 1 transaction per day so it's not bad. As for the investment side of things, I find Questrade does a pretty good job.