Comments on: Your Take: Do You Use Money Management Software?

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:40:46 +0000

I’ve been using Quicken since the late 80s or early 90s.

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 12:58:07 +0000

Yoshi, I should’ve clarified, I meant online personal finance tools.

By: Yoshi

Yoshi — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 11:42:54 +0000

“Back in 2003, there weren’t many personal finance tools out there.”

I am not sure what the author is talking about here? I began using and syncing my financial data with the banks in 1995 using the original MS Money. I used it to the end, owning every version.

I recently switched, in Jan 2010, to Quicken 2010 and am sorely unhappy with the tool, but it was supposed to be the best direct-connect offline tool for the job. It stinks to put it mildly. I will never buy another intuit product again; including turbo tax…it is that bad. You can’t even hide reconciled transactions in Quicken without it recalculating the balances based on what transactions are currently in the register. That isn’t cool to me at all.

By: Ashtrom

Ashtrom — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:51:55 +0000

At the beginning, I used excel spreadsheet, but then, together with my fried developed software on that basis and now using it. We call it Aimiya Financial Goal. The main idea for me – I do not track my expenses on a categorise way, instead of this I am using balance sheet approach, recording my balances on a permanent basis, compare historical data with my financial goal and then analyse changes in order to get some decisions.

By: Justin

Justin — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 06:22:01 +0000

GNUCash
KMyMoney

By: Henry

Henry — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:55:30 +0000

QB basic free edition

By: Justin

Justin — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 22:35:51 +0000

psst.. gnu cash, if you’re a geek and don’t like strangleholds.

By: Justin

Justin — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 22:34:30 +0000

After ~8+ years of being under the stranglehold of M$ Money, which locks the clients financial data in a fragile proprietary format that corrupts easily — I have switched to GNU Cash.

What a difference!

I really like the proper accounting with expense accounts (as opposed to MS Money categories). GNU Cash also handles foreign currency exchange, while MS Money forces you into one currency.

Open standards FTW!

By: Craig

Craig — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:13:31 +0000

I’ve used Money and Quicken over the years and hated both. Especially hated the way some banks let you link to your account from Money/Quicken while others required downloading from their website. The final straw was when banks started offering free bill pay but you had to use their website (rather than Direct Pay thru the desktop software). I’ve been using Yodlee’s Moneycenter for the past two years. It simply puts ALL my accounts in one place with one login.

By: Heather

Heather — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:18:40 +0000

I have been using microsoft money for several years now, but it is now longer meeting my needs. I have customized spreadsheets in excel for now until I find what I need.

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 22:47:12 +0000

I currently use an Excel spreadsheet, but would love to try the new version of Quicken.

By: Rob W

Rob W — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 22:38:13 +0000

I use Quicken Delux 2004. I got a copy from a friend and have been using it for a month now. It sure beats using spreadsheets.

By: SK

SK — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:54:09 +0000

I use a spreadsheet for budgetting my expenses and use another to plot my monthly account balances and Networth and compare each month with the previous.

By: sandi_k

sandi_k — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 02:42:36 +0000

I am using clearcheckbook.com

It doesn’t require account numbers or passwords, so that makes me more comfortable with it.

You can also create a “cash” account, to track cash spending – which many others don’t allow.

It’s very easy, and I like it, since it’s web-based, which has evolved as a requirement for me. (I use a MAC, and many software programs (YNAB Pro) don’t yet have MAC versions).

I also use Google docs for my initial spending plan each month (pre-tax figures).

By: Nan

Nan — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:53:03 +0000

I use pencil and paper to do our household finances. It has generally worked so far, because we did not have much money to manage and what little we did just sat in a savings account at our credit union. But we recently graduated and got jobs, so we are earning a little better and I am beginning to spread out the money (wow, CDs and savings accounts!!), so it is getting a little more difficult to manage on paper. I also like the way you can quickly analyze spending using software, where as you need to get your calculator out with pen and paper accounting.