Would anyone recommend Microsoft Money?

[T S Skoglund]

For a number of years I have kept a spreadsheet to track investments
and savings accounts.

I have now decided to try and keep track of my spending, and I've been
recommended to have a look at Microsoft Money 2005 which I am told is
capable of painlessly handling both expenditure and my investments /
bank accounts.

I don't necessarily want to track all transactions in my current
account, and I suppose in the larger scale of things my finances are
rather straight forward.

A couple of questions;

- has anyone used Microsoft Money, and would you recommend that I buy
it? Why (not)?

- are there other 'all-in-one' packages out there that could
potentially meet my needs?

Thanks,

 

[Tumbleweed]

Bill Gates?

 

[Terry Harper]

For a number of years I have kept a spreadsheet to track investments
and savings accounts.

I have now decided to try and keep track of my spending, and I've been
recommended to have a look at Microsoft Money 2005 which I am told is
capable of painlessly handling both expenditure and my investments /
bank accounts.

I don't necessarily want to track all transactions in my current
account, and I suppose in the larger scale of things my finances are
rather straight forward.

A couple of questions;

- has anyone used Microsoft Money, and would you recommend that I buy
it? Why (not)?

- are there other 'all-in-one' packages out there that could
potentially meet my needs?

If you are used to using a spreadsheet, why not stick with it? I've
never tried Microsoft Money, but I did try Quicken once and gave it up
rapidly, as it had a mind of its own, and wouldn't do as it was told.
It couldn't handle standing orders and DDs for a start.

If you use a spreadsheet with a number of columns for different
classes of expenditure, you can easily analyse where your money is
going. One worksheet for each month, and a summary sheet in a workbook
should do for each year.

 

[Steve Firth]

- has anyone used Microsoft Money, and would you recommend that I buy
it? Why (not)?

No, it's arcane in operation and difficult to get it to do anythign
other than what M$ wants it to do.

- are there other 'all-in-one' packages out there that could
potentially meet my needs?

Quicken, of which MS Money is a poor clone, is much, much better. Sadly
I dont think it is available in the UK.

 

[Adrian Boliston]

If you are used to using a spreadsheet, why not stick with it? I've
never tried Microsoft Money, but I did try Quicken once and gave it up
rapidly, as it had a mind of its own, and wouldn't do as it was told.
It couldn't handle standing orders and DDs for a start.

I find that "quickbooks" works very well.

 

[Jim]

T S Skoglund wrote...

For a number of years I have kept a spreadsheet to track investments
and savings accounts.

- has anyone used Microsoft Money, and would you recommend that I buy
it? Why (not)?

I have been using Money 2000 for several years, and don't have many serious
complaints. I looked at upgrading once, IIRC to Money 2003, and immediately
switched back to M2000 after experiencing something similar to 'bloody paper
clip' syndrome. I would not buy a current version.

- are there other 'all-in-one' packages out there that could
potentially meet my needs?

I would recommend that you stick to spreadsheets and databases which are
infinitely more customisable for your needs.

 

[NC]

well... I'm going to fight the tide here!
I've been using it for some years now - started with money 2003, and now
use 2004 (reviews say there's no real point going up to 2005 as the
changes are very minor).
As to using it - depends on what you want / expect it to do.
I am currently paying off a couple of credit card debts (almost there!)
and as a result run a very tight ship. The best thing about the software
is the ability to track regular payments - these are set up once in the
'Bills and payments' section and allow you track you projected
weekly/monthly etc spending according to their schedule (very flexible,
bills/deposits can be set to daily/weekly/bi-weekly/monthly etc etc).
Therefore, start of the month our two salaries go in, I then work for
the rest of the month on the final account balance for the month given
to me by Money (if that makes sense ?!) rather than whats actually in
the bank. For the last few years I have NEVER been caught out by a bill,
or ran out of money at the end of the month. This allows me to pay down
the maximum I possible can on the debts at the start of month, taking
into account everything else that has to be paid out later in the month.

I also use a few other features - reports on spending catagories etc,
but none of the advanced bits like tracking investments / mortgages /
tax etc.

YMMV with Money depending on your bank. Natwest used to allowed me to
download transactions from their online banking; however I moved to
cahoot and they do not. As a result, I spend about 2 mins a couple of
mornings a week entering transactions. Sounds a pain, and takes getting
used to, but I dont see it as a problem now.

At the end of the day, earlier versions of MS Money go for pennies -
pick one up and see what you think...

 

[Gav]

For a number of years I have kept a spreadsheet to track investments
and savings accounts.

I have now decided to try and keep track of my spending, and I've been
recommended to have a look at Microsoft Money 2005 which I am told is
capable of painlessly handling both expenditure and my investments /
bank accounts.

I don't necessarily want to track all transactions in my current
account, and I suppose in the larger scale of things my finances are
rather straight forward.

A couple of questions;

- has anyone used Microsoft Money, and would you recommend that I buy
it? Why (not)?

- are there other 'all-in-one' packages out there that could
potentially meet my needs?

Thanks,

I like yourself used to manage my accounts in excel. I then moved to
Microsoft Money 2000 and used this for several years. Had no real problems
or complaints with it, or at least if I did nothing major because I can't
remeber having any problems. I now use Gnucash and prefer it to both the
previous methods, but I don't think there is a Windows port so its probably
not an open for you. From my point of view I found that moving from Excel to
MS Money was worthwhile.

Gav

 

[Phil Thompson]

I've
never tried Microsoft Money, but I did try Quicken once and gave it up
rapidly, as it had a mind of its own, and wouldn't do as it was told.
It couldn't handle standing orders and DDs for a start.

they have withdrawn Quicken from the UK market, I guess they didn't
understand it. The USA seem to use "checks" to pay for everything so
all their packages focus on checkbook reconciliation, whatever that
might be !

Phil

 

[rob.]

well... I'm going to fight the tide here!
I've been using it for some years now - started with money 2003, and
now use 2004 (reviews say there's no real point going up to 2005 as
the changes are very minor).
As to using it - depends on what you want / expect it to do.
I am currently paying off a couple of credit card debts (almost
there!) and as a result run a very tight ship. The best thing about
the software is the ability to track regular payments - these are set
up once in the 'Bills and payments' section and allow you track you
projected weekly/monthly etc spending according to their schedule
(very flexible, bills/deposits can be set to
daily/weekly/bi-weekly/monthly etc etc). Therefore, start of the
month our two salaries go in, I then work for the rest of the month
on the final account balance for the month given to me by Money (if
that makes sense ?!) rather than whats actually in the bank. For the
last few years I have NEVER been caught out by a bill, or ran out of
money at the end of the month. This allows me to pay down the maximum
I possible can on the debts at the start of month, taking into
account everything else that has to be paid out later in the month.

I also use a few other features - reports on spending catagories etc,
but none of the advanced bits like tracking investments / mortgages /
tax etc.

YMMV with Money depending on your bank. Natwest used to allowed me to
download transactions from their online banking; however I moved to
cahoot and they do not. As a result, I spend about 2 mins a couple of
mornings a week entering transactions. Sounds a pain, and takes
getting used to, but I dont see it as a problem now.

At the end of the day, earlier versions of MS Money go for pennies -
pick one up and see what you think...

A trial version is available from the MS web site, however I think this is
only for the 2005 version. 2004 seems to be better.

Note if you create a file with the 2005 trial you will have trouble getting
the data into an earlier version, also if you get the USA trial the file
will not work with the UK version.

Various banks allow downloads from their online banking pages that Money can
load and process. Nationwide allows you to use Money to download all your
statements directly, without going to the site.

For any other questions you might want to try the microsoft.public.uk.money
newsgroup.

 

[Waqar Aziz]

get the free trial of the MS site and give it a whirl, be careful and make
sure you get the one for your local country ie cannot open a USA file on
the UK software etc

Waq

 

[me]

Various banks allow downloads from their online banking pages that Money can
load and process. Nationwide allows you to use Money to download all your
statements directly, without going to the site.

Lots of bank sites, allow a download as comma separated variable files
(ie: compatible with just about[1] any spreadsheet/database prog)

[1] Just bunged the caveat in to be safe but I would be surprised if
there was something out there that couldn't handle a csv. I now stand
ready to be corected!

 

[rob.]

Lots of bank sites, allow a download as comma separated variable files

(ie: compatible with just about[1] any spreadsheet/database prog)

[1] Just bunged the caveat in to be safe but I would be surprised if
there was something out there that couldn't handle a csv. I now stand
ready to be corected!

should be "corrected"

Seriously, there is one it's erm Microsoft Money!! You need to feed the csv
through a conversion tool :-(