Best Mint Alternative If You Pay Mostly in Cash

Was on Mint for years and it just never showed half my actual spending. Farmers markets, tips, paying people back in cash, random street food. The sync looked complete but I'd always know my real monthly number was higher than what the app showed. Never found a good fix for it in Mint, just kind of accepted the data was off.

When Mint shut down I went looking for a replacement and realized the cash problem was going to be the same with any sync-based app. Your bank doesn't know about cash. There's no feed for it. If you spend $40 at a farmers market it doesn't exist as far as your bank account is concerned.

So I started thinking about this differently. If bank sync can't solve the cash problem anyway, maybe manual entry isn't actually a downgrade - it's just a different approach that happens to cover what sync can't.

I've been on DrakeAI since, typing in what I spend as I spend it. Including cash. honestly tho the tracked numbers are higher than they used to be which I initially found alarming and then realized was just... more accurate. I was losing a significant amount to "invisible cash" before.

It's not the easiest habit to build. I still miss things sometimes when I'm in a rush. But for cash-heavy spending, the choice between sync and manual isn't really about convenience - sync just doesn't have the data. You're choosing between incomplete automated tracking or more-complete manual tracking.