Author Topic: Mint vs. 401k/IRA rate of return - help me understand the disparity  (Read 3543 times)

Megma

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When I look at my investment performance on my mint account for "1 year" it shows me at +4.5%, this includes both my IRA and 401k accounts. However, when I look at my "1 year performance" (IRA with t rowe price) it shows my return to be +15.4% and my 401k for the "past 12 months" says +12.3%.

Can anyone explain to me why this is the case? I can't understand how two accounts up over 10% combine to up only 4.5%. when I look at the mint graphs they kind of stress me out, make me think my investments are under-performing. I like having this quick touchstone without having to look at the two accounts separately but the disparity makes no sense to me! Have others had this issue?

Thanks for your help!

freeedom

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Re: Mint vs. 401k/IRA rate of return - help me understand the disparity
« Reply #1 on: February 04, 2015, 09:16:23 AM »
I've found Mint to be inaccurate in this area. I use mint mainly for tracking day to day transactions, bills, credit cards.

For investments I use personalcapital, and it is much more accurate.

ShoulderThingThatGoesUp

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Re: Mint vs. 401k/IRA rate of return - help me understand the disparity
« Reply #2 on: February 04, 2015, 09:18:50 AM »
I agree, Mint doesn't handle basis correctly and gets very confused.

sirdoug007

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Re: Mint vs. 401k/IRA rate of return - help me understand the disparity
« Reply #3 on: February 04, 2015, 09:22:53 AM »
Ignore the mint.com investments tab.  It is completely worthless and usually wildly inaccurate.


trailrated

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Re: Mint vs. 401k/IRA rate of return - help me understand the disparity
« Reply #4 on: February 04, 2015, 10:09:44 AM »
Ignore the mint.com investments tab.  It is completely worthless and usually wildly inaccurate.

+1 I sent an inquiry into customer service to ask about it and they basically said "there are issues, deal with it"

aspiringnomad

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Re: Mint vs. 401k/IRA rate of return - help me understand the disparity
« Reply #5 on: February 04, 2015, 10:23:39 AM »
I've found Mint to be inaccurate in this area. I use mint mainly for tracking day to day transactions, bills, credit cards.

For investments I use personalcapital, and it is much more accurate.

Exactly what I do. Think this is how MMM recommends using the two as well.

Megma

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Re: Mint vs. 401k/IRA rate of return - help me understand the disparity
« Reply #6 on: February 04, 2015, 01:12:48 PM »
Thank you all for feedback! Apparently the consensus is that Mint is wrong and just sucks at this, something that had not really occurred to me honestly. I thought there must be a difference in the time scale or something!

I kept thinking why am I not seeing the gains everyone else is seeing? Apparently I am, Mint just doesn't. Thanks!

Jack

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Re: Mint vs. 401k/IRA rate of return - help me understand the disparity
« Reply #7 on: February 04, 2015, 03:27:07 PM »
Why Personal Capital and Mint? Is there something Personal Capital sucks at?

(I'm asking because I currently use Mint and might be willing to switch, but I would probably not be interested in using both at the same time.)

aspiringnomad

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Re: Mint vs. 401k/IRA rate of return - help me understand the disparity
« Reply #8 on: February 04, 2015, 10:04:34 PM »
Why Personal Capital and Mint? Is there something Personal Capital sucks at?

(I'm asking because I currently use Mint and might be willing to switch, but I would probably not be interested in using both at the same time.)

Mint is great for setting and keeping a budget or at least I've found it to be so. Since finding MMM and downloading Mint to my smartphone, I've slowly lowered my budget every month and it's been the perfect companion app for that. I'm quick to recategorize things when necessary in Mint, including Hiding From Budgets and Trends my 401k contributions which invariably show up as uncategorized spending.

With Personal Capital's interface, which is incredibly slick in my view, I actually enjoy monitoring my investments and tracking my net worth in ways that Mint just cannot do.

You may be able to do it all in Personal Capital, but since I use both as described above and it works for me, I can't speak to PC's budget tracking abilities. Since they're both free, and checking my accounts is an enjoyable aspect of the MMM lifestyle for me (I probably check each once a day on average), I really don't mind using two different apps.