ReflexRacing_com

On a tangent taken from the post by Pete1burn...

I'm looking into getting some Money Management Software. When I was reading through that thread I saw MS Money and Quicken being the two most mentioned.

Anyone prefer one over the other? I'm 22, got a mortgage, no CC debt, and quite a bit of bills and I want to get a grasp on things before they get out of hand.

I was looking into Quicken Personal and Business (I have a small side corporation that I run with my Dad...Consulting work). Any experiences anyone like to share? (Positive or Negative)

Thanks!

moeronn

I posted this same question - minus the business side - and it sounded like six of one and half a dozen of the other. Haven't gone out and purchased either, yet. Need to made a decision soon and get one.

Will Y.

Use the program that came bundled with your computer, if one came with it-- usually, that's MS Money. It's free and can't hurt. Just remember to password lock your files if you are using a laptop that leaves home.
My laptop came with Quicken, but I use Quickbooks Pro instead (for business purposes).

jlukja

I use Quicken, been doing it for the last 6-7 years. I get the basic version for free because I use Turbo Tax to prepare my taxes. I never tried MS Money so I can't compare the two but I'm very happy with Quicken. Its a little tedious to set it up, but once you do keeping up with your bills is pretty straightforward and you can see exactly where your money goes.

ReflexRacing_com

I have Wamu...i see there is an option to download a file in Quicken format...is there a way to have Quicken check online automatically to download transactions or is it purely a manual process? Anyone integrate their Quicken with their bank accounts?

And by Wamu, I mean Washington Mutual.

Anachostic

I have used Money for many years and just bought the 2008 version. Staples has it for $40, and it looks like there's a $20 off rebate.

It integrates well with my Wachovia giving me real-time access to the account. I can pay bills from within Money and don't have to go to the Wachovia website. that's neat. I also download transactions from my Capital One credit card and it reconciles the transactions against what I have entered.

It works well for bill and investment too. That's everything I do with it. I probably use about 80% of its features and it took me many years to ramp up to that level. I'd recommend not trying to do too much right away or you'll get overwhelmed.

I would guess Quicken does almost exactly the same thing. Someday I may go with Ubuntu and try out GnuCash. That would be cool, and by cool, I mean totally sweet.

NiteQwill

Pear Budget if you are looking for budgeting (free too)

studville

Excel works as well for personal finances. I use a template that compares estimated vs actual. Now, I'm curious. Should I give Quicken/Money a try?

'06 Arctic

I've used Microsoft Money since I got out of college and have had a "real" job. I use it for my monthly bills, to track my investments, handle savings account, and checking account. My girlfriend complains that I spend to much time on the program. I've never used Quicken so I guess this is one sided, but either way I highly suggest getting one. Microsoft Money is pretty slick though.

studville

Just something I might add as I think about this more and more. As appealing and popular as torrents and such may seem to be these days to save a quick buck on software (whether ethical or not.. that's not the debate), in this situation I'd say cough up the dough and go to the store. Who knows what kind of stuff someone with a crafty mind can attach to it. Maybe paranoid -- maybe not. Just food for thought.

doopstr

^Yup, I am always sure to run legit copies of personal finance and tax software.

The thing I like most about Quicken/Money is the auto download from my brokers/banks/credit card and the nice graphs and reports they make. I don't really prefer one over the other.

ReflexRacing_com

Nice...Thank you for the insight!

Has anyone had experience with Washington Mutual linking up with their Quicken? I read WaMu's website and it said you can download transactions, but i saw nothing about real-time access. (I'd just like to go to a single place on a day to day basis to track my expenses/income)

Since I already bought Quicken, i'd like to try and work with that...but i was curious if Money was that much better...but it looks like it's pretty much the same.

Thanks for the input! Time to install that bad boy!

Anachostic

I just tried setting up a WaMu account in my Money 2008 file and it doesn't look like WaMu supports the 2-way banking. You have to go through another provider like Yodlee (which Money does behind the scenes.

Here's a good explanation of how Money handles bank transactions: http://money.mvps.org/faq/article/235.aspx

ReflexRacing_com

awesome. Thanks!

ReflexRacing_com

I remember reading about a web 2.0 website that had free online money management? Does anyone remember the name/URL? And if it's any good?

I think it was a one-word company name....

moonraker

think you're thinking of mint.com ? mainly just pools all your cc's, bank accts, etc into one site.

ReflexRacing_com

I believe that is it....nice..thanks!

ReflexRacing_com

I just set up QUICKEN...

How come on some of my investment accounts, it has asterisks and it says "placeholders" for the numbers? Shouldn't Quicken be able to tap the stock market and get Friday's closing stock prices and calculate?

Btw, I am linking up to E*trade....and my 401k is through Diversifed Investments

Thanks guys!

doopstr

quicken placeholders

Looks like it would like you to fill in your cost basis. Quicken knows how many shares you have but doesn't know what you paid for them.

SupaRookie

For this year, I'm looking at managing my money as well. I have Quicken installed and have Wamu. I have two account with Wamu, but it only updated my 2nd account and not the primary...I keept getting an error for the main account. Now I am looking at investment so I can buy a house in 3-4 years.

taz98spin

I picked up Quicken for the Mac, so far so good

moeronn

I decided to give Quicken 2008 Deluxe a try. Ordered the OEM version online through pricegrabber for $27 shipped. Should have it within a week or so and will report back my impressions.

Anachostic

Checkpoint. It's halfway through the year.

Did anyone do this and stick with it and did you get anything out of it?

doopstr

My MS Money finally decided that it didn't want to do bank updates anymore (damn you Microsoft).
I picked up a copy of Quicken Deluxe 2011 today. It imported my Money file almost perfectly. So I'm pretty happy with it.
There is some screen draw issues when running it in Unity mode with VMware Fusion. I don't know if it's because the VM is Windows 7 (64-bit) or a problem with with Quicken. It runs fine in Single Window mode. I ran Money on a 32-bit XP VM with no problems. I'll give Quicken a try on that VM to see if the Unity is any better.

bkknight369

interesting...I'm still using MS Money 2004...works like a charm

Pete2010

Wow - old thread. I highly recommend Mint.com. Recently bought by Intuit, it will pull in all your transaction information automatically. It's the most powerful money management software i've ever used.

doopstr

The main reason I didn't go with mint.com is that they can't import data. Do they at least allow export if you decide to leave? The other reason I didn't go with them is that I'm not comfortable having all of my financial information sitting on their server.

thunder04

iTrader: (1)

Hmm...I'm going to have to check out mint.com.

Anachostic

I switched to Quicken after Money went sunset. My god, I hate it.

thunder04

iTrader: (1)

I've been messing with it a bit today and I have to say I like it! I grabbed the iPhone app, too.

I have a habit of doing PIN purchases, which in most cases mint.com doesn't recognize (so it can't categorize or identify the vendor). I'm going to have to try doing credit purchases for a while to see how it does.

'06 Arctic

+1000, Quicken is compared to MS Money. I haven't been able to find any decent software out there other than Quicken though. And like some others, I don't feel comfortable with all my financial information on someone's server.

Slinks

Its too bad Money was discontinued. I liked it better than Quicken as well.

I've heard good things about Mint.com, but I also don't trust a startup with my personal information

Anachostic

Fuck Quicken. I've spend one full year with it and I'm not going to live with it any longer. They are starting to nag me to upgrade (buy) to the latest version whenever I start it up. Yeah, that's what I want to do.

As we know, MS Money has been discontinued, which is sad, because even as it is right now, it's completely capable of managing finances, with a user interface light years ahead of Quicken. The problem is MS is discontinuing the online services and disabling their software activation service for Money, so you technically can't install it anymore.

In my Quicken-fueled anger, I went searching to see if anyone had created a crack to activate a recently-installed Money. There's no such need. MS has released a "sunset" version of Money that has all online services disabled and no activation required. This is intended for use by existing Money customers, but there is no verification/validation/activation, so none of that can be enforced.

You can get the details at: http://www.microsoft.com/money/sunset.mspx, which has links to downloads for Money Deluxe and Money Home & Business. The download is only 34MB.

I just installed the Money Deluxe Sunset and went through a few things on my old Money file. You can't update stock prices automatically (as expected), but you can update them manually. You can also import QIF/OFX files and even QFX files. So as long as your bank/finance company supports Quicken, Money will still work with downloaded transactions.

If you can live with manually updating stock prices and downloading transactions for import, you can basically use Money for free (as long as you have a license). It no big deal to me because Quicken was so buggy with its automatic downloads and the integrated BillPay was so bad I don't use it anymore.

MS Money, even in death, you will live forever thanks to your foresight of supporting Quicken transaction files.

doopstr

If I only had a handful of accounts I would get that sunset version and go with it.

I've been using Quicken 2011 for about a month. You would think that a product that has been around since the days of DOS would be awesome, but it's not.

doopstr

So my Quicken 2011 is telling me I need to upgrade by Mid April or the faucet to online account downloads is going to be turned off.

Is it worth it for me to look at alternatives like mint/moneydance or just bite the bullet and upgrade? Quicken does what I want so I'm leaning towards upgrading.

Anachostic

You can still download QFX files manually and import them. Not sure if the nag screens will ever go away.

I'm still rocking on MS Money Sunset. It processes OFX and QFX files and I have a Java app that downloads and imports stock quotes. That's all I pretty much need. I discovered I didn't need the total integration after all.

Anachostic

Also, I'd recently been doing some searches on Quicken and alternatives and I saw some comments that since Intuit bought Mint, they've kind of been starving mint of resources because it competes with Quicken online.

Looked into GNUCash and it's still a bit much. The double-entry accounting is very formal and probably not what people think of when they just want a simple electronic check register.

I have to see what this MoneyDance is...

bkknight369

After my machine crashed (taking MS Money with it), I decided to try something new, and picked up YouNeedABudget. So far liking it, though some of the design decisions force users to use specific pattern of budget management

doopstr

I tried importing my data into MoneyDance and it would need some work to get the issues ironed out. I decided I'm just going to upgrade Quicken to the latest version. The headache involved in trying to migrate 16 years of data isn't worth it to me. I want to keep all of my data since I like looking at the historical graphs. It motivates me to keep going.

I see where there is a deal if I buy Turbo Tax I can get a discount on Quicken, so I think that's what I will do this year.

Dan

Just got Quicken 2014 Deluxe and TurboTax 2013 Deluxe at Amazon for a total of $59.82 after the -$35.00 promotion was applied.