Personal Finance Software?
So, as part of our New Year's Financial Sovency Plan (r), the wife and I are determined to start tracking all our finances on the computer again. We kind of fell off the wagons because all we had for doing it was a clunky old copy of Quicken 99.
I have been looking around to see what is out there, but I wanted to see if anyone here can give me any first hand accounts of the newer generation of financial software.
So far I have looked at:
Quicken 2006 - Seems to be pretty well regarded, but they have apparently dropped support for importing QIF files, and my bank changes a fee to do it the new way. Not a deal killer, but we are doing this so we can try to save money, after all. 
Microsoft Money 2006 - Reviews that I have read on this would seem to indicate that it is a piece of crap. However, I am leery of software reviews from people I don't know. Does anyone have any experience here?
GnuCash - Not gonna happen. My wife is not too big into using Linux.
MoneyDance - Seems to sell itself as an "upstart" financial software suite. Does anyone really use this though?
Does anyone have any experience with any of these, or with something else altogether? (other than an Excel spreadsheet....)
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I use MoneyDance... it works fine for my wife and I. Of course, I have yet to run into a personal accounting app that satisfied me completely. So, "fine" in this case means something along the lines of "I have yet to hurl my monitor from the desk using it."
Also, I have to say it's a bit deceptive to call any of the apps you list "financial planners." Yes, they (the ones I've used anyway) have ways to predict what your financial situation will be X months from now, but really, if you need financial planning, hire one. My wife and I did this a couple months ago and are now simultaneously more comfortable with what we're doing with all the mad loot she makes and more terrified about the large number of things that could go wrong. I never said it was comfortable, just a good idea
We do use MoneyDance to track things like money market funds, 529 plans, 401k's and such... the financial planner person has yet to complain about the format of what we send into her from time to time.
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I used Money 2003 for about a year. It's ok software once you get all the ads they put in it disabled. I understand Quicken is also loaded down with ads, but never used it so can't really compare further. Money helped us categorize our expenses, see where our money was going, where we needed to cut back, etc... the monthly/quarterly reports it gave were neat.
Yeah, I realized last night when I wasn't getting any responses that 'Personal Finance software' might be a better title. I'm going to go change it now.
Re: a financial planner, we have one for our long-term investments, and she is doing wonders for us (so far). This is really more about managing our day-to-day money bleed than managing the 401(k). I am happy to see someone using Moneydance, though, because it is looking more attractive as I investigate it.
Grump: I think if I want to go Quicken I will have to try to pick up a '04 or '05 copy. As I said above, I don't mind doing some extra work, but I really don't want to have to pay my bank any more fees. =) Apparently those years still have the ability to import .QIF files. Also, I am pretty comfy with how it work because I have been using Quicken 99 for a while.
Leap: That's the one big complaint I have heard about MSMoney: the ads. Also, some people say they have had stability problems, but in my experince a lot of people don't know how to use a computer properly, so that may be their problem.
Thanks for the input guys! Keep 'em coming!
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Being poor, perhaps I'm ignorant in these financial regards, but what do Money and Quicken do that Excel can not? Last Quicken I saw was around 2003 and I gave it a big thumbs down.
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I have used both MS Money and Quicken and I give the nod to Quicken. From what I remember, I could do just a little more with Quicken. I will confess that I never really used either to their full potentials, but Quicken worked better for me. I may actually have an older version of Quicken at home. If so, consider it yours if you want it. I will look this afternoon when I get there if you are interested.
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Use Quicken. That way, when you're doing your budget, you can say to yourself "Feel that, Highlander? That's the quickening!" You can even use a Scottish accent if you want, even though you're supposed to be Spanish.
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Turns out my wife bought the new copy of Quicken while she was at Costco today buying toilet paper. Thanks for the offer, oldmanscene24.
Fletcher: Duly noted.
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Good luck!
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*tear*
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Ramirez was Egyptian, not Spanish.
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Before this thread totally dies, I didn't want to leave you hanging, Danjo.
I am ideally looking for something that is going to do at least some of the work for me, by easily importing transactions to the register, and categorizing and reporting on expenses. I have enough energy to make sure those go in OK, and do some futzing with them, but if I had to manually enter it all in a spreadsheet, it wouldn't happen, realistically.
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Hmm. He said he was from Spain. He must be a liar.
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What was he doing with a name like 'Ramirez' if he was from Egypt?
NOTE: I have never seen the movie(s) or watched the show.
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His most recent identity at the time was as a Spanish dandy, hence the partial Spanish accent. The partial Highland accent they never explained. He was originally Egyptian, if I remember correctly. I love that movie.
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hello
i am currently using parcus for my financial software and i have found that this program are user friendly and also it has all the features that you will ever need in financial/budgeting software
check it out at
http://www.parcusgroup.com/index.html
I thought he was supposed to be Sean Connery.
I just assumed the plot called for Sean Connery to be transported back to 17th century scotland in a time machine, but they edited that part out in final cut.
I've been using Quicken 2004 since...uh...2004. It isn't fancy, but it has been stable and does what I need it to do.
Hmmm...registered for one hour...I smell SPAM!
Has anyone tried Buddi? I might be interested in it, but I haven't broken away from Quicken yet, mainly because I don't see anything about reconciling against bank statements on the Buddi page. I still do stuff mostly by hand (no bank importing, etc.) so while Quicken works just fine for me, it's a bit of overkill. I like the idea of a lighter (and free software) alternative.
Personally, I've never found anything that really completely beat an old copy of MS Money. I don't even remember what version it was, but that doesn't matter anymore since I doubt it would even download transactions from banks now. When I made the move to Macs for most of my stuff, I wound up trying Quicken for awhile and found it to be torturous. For awhile, I tried most of the competing software including GNUCash and MoneyDance. Most of them were alright, but lacked the ability to download statements. Since then, I've been using nothing. It's not ideal, but I seem to have just as good of information on my financial state as I did when I WAS using something. Eventually, I'll likely break down and reinstall Money in a virtual Windows box or something.
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I don't know how long ago you tried out GnuCash, but if they haven't gotten that in by now, I'd be surprised. Last I'd heard they just about had that implemented, and that was around a year ago.
Edit - GnuCash can indeed import files now: http://www.gnucash.org/
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Necromancy!
I wanted to see if anyone had any experience with the new versions of the open source quicken alternatives, like GnuCash. I don't have an issue buying a new copy of Quicken, but if there is better software out there I'd like to use it instead.
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I've never used it, but it's free -- try it yourself and see what you think. Don't forget to report back with a 500-word essay.
GnuCash is here; they just released 2.2.1 about ten days ago.
I'll likely try it in any case, but since I've never used Quicken, I won't be real good for a comparison
I'll be happy to post my opinions, however. I was hoping someone who had tried both would be able to comment on the differences.
Kat on Cally wrote:
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I liked old Quicken (2003 and before...)
I recently upgraded to Quicken 2007 and have not been pleased. Every 2-3 years Intuit discontinues support for their old products, which is another reason I dislike Quicken. I'm downloading GnuCash right now to see how it is...
EDIT:
This pretty much sums it up for me too...
AnimeJ wrote:
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They also force banks -- FORCE them -- to stop supporting older versions of Quicken to make you upgrade.
Keeping in mind that I have never tried Quicken in any form (and won't, now that I've realized it was Intuit that put some insane background process on my machine), I spend a few hours today with gnuCash and really like it. I didn't say that for the first hour or two, but I eventually got it set up pretty smoothly for what I want to do.
It imported by bank generated QIF with no difficultly, but not having any account tags on anything I had to do it manually, the first time, which was rather painful. Now that it's done, it handles it automatically very well.
Currently, I'm trying to get the hang of making reports do what I want them to - I would like more then bar charts or pie graphs, and have an easier time tracking particular expenses. It's takes a little more clicking then I would like to do something like show groceries over a month, or something like that. There may be an easier way, but I haven't stumbled across it yet.
It's stable and free, and does the job. Works for me.
Kat on Cally wrote:
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I have been pleased as can be with the various iterations of Quicken. Just picked up the 2008 version and it seems smooth as can be. I like it because it integrates seamlessly with my bank and I can import all transactions directly into Quicken and then reconcile all the account activity that I have put in with what the bank is. Now I never miss a receipt, debit, ATM withdrawal - if it happened it gets imported - that I like. I also like the budgeting and tracking features. Plus I am able to import the data easily into my PDA for on the fly stuff.
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GnuCash is one of those typical open source things...it can do just about everything, but it sure isn't going to hold your hand doing it.
So, I love it, of course.
I've been a big fan of gnucash for awhile, ever since I decided I wanted to start keeping track of what money I didn't have and couldn't afford to actually buy anything to do so (even when I did pirate software more frequently, I generally only did so when I thought I might end up buying it ;p). gnucash takes a bit of a different way of thinking (or workflow, if I can get away with using that) than quicken and etc (or different than the older versions of quicken, I haven't actually used it in awhile). The gnucash way of doing things makes a lot of sense to me though.
If you do not want a linux install to run it, you can run some linux distro under a virtual machine (vmware is dead simple to use these days for something like this) and just save the files to somewhere within your windows install, or if you are willing to reboot each time to use it, getting a ubuntu live cd, and again just saving it somewhere in your windows install could work.
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