Quicken vs. Microsoft Money - Which do you prefer?

[Bluezy]

I would like to hear from others their thoughts and impressions on both Quicken and MSN Money software packages. What are the advantages of each program? I am in the market for financial software and any thoughts or comments would be appreciated.

I am leaning towards Quicken. Their offer for $50 to open an ING account is valid until 12/31/05.

[akaivyleaf]

What exactly do you want the software to do? I do a lot with Excel and didn't have to pay extra for the software as it came bundled in the Office Suite. I'm also fairly talented with making Excel graph trends, etc.

I guess my question to you, is what am I missing by not having either one of these programs?

[Bluezy]

If I had either program, I could tell you. Since I do not, I am wondering about the experiences of others who DO own the program.

Both programs are supposed to be money management software helping you to track expenses, credit card debt, investments, download checking statements directly from banks, etc. I am also wondering if one program is more user friendly than the other?

[akaivyleaf]

Originally Posted by Bluezy

Both programs are supposed to be money management software helping you to track expenses, credit card debt, investments, download checking statements directly from banks, etc. I am also wondering if one program is more user friendly than the other?

With the exception of downloading, Excel does the same thing. Just trying to save you some money. But I'll wait to hear others comments about the software.

[mbhunter]

With the exception of downloading, Excel does the same thing.

You can even do double-entry bookkeeping with a single Excel spreadsheet if you want. (I did this for a partnership I'm involved in.)

We have both Excel and Quicken. We use Quicken for our home finances, and it's much better suited for home finance tracking than Excel is because Excel is a general spreadsheet program and, as such, can't do personal finance as well out of the box. Quicken is very nice if you have a lot of transactions and if your financial institutions support download of the transactions in Quicken's format. You might be able to download a CSV file to your Excel spreadsheet too, but odds are you'll be shuffling columns around if you have more than one place you're downloading from. Quicken reduces the amount of hand-entering a lot.

If you just need a lightweight tracking program, Excel will work. Just create a sheet in an Excel book for each account, model the columns after your checkbook register, and maybe add a category if you want to track by category.

Or you can try Quicken -- you might like it! We do. Plus, you can have it make that cash register "cha-ching" sound with each transaction if you want! It's much more satisfying than having the Office Assistant tapping the inside of your monitor screen.

[jmjj215]

Turn of Office Assistant

I prefer Excel - Money and Quicken do TOO much in my opinion. I don't like thinking about my money that often (or at least in that amount of detail that often), and I don't like MS Money's layout.

I do NOT like automatic downloading for personal transactions. I think there is a lot of power in writing things down yourself when you make the purchase (or recording them manually somewhere). It's a great control on cutting expenses - writing things down yourself. When something does it for you automatically, you lose that advantage.

I prefer the flexibility of an Excel spreadsheet. My commercial version imposes Rules on the cash flow of the user that help them stay on track, in a conservative financial position as a household. Quicken and MS Money obviously can't do that.

Also, the added skills I have since using Excel have helped me with my job - an extra plus.

Is there any way you can try a trial version or something like that?

[mbhunter]

Oh good -- I'm glad you saw this post Jesse -- I thought of your budgeting software when I saw the Excel part.

Your point about writing your own transactions down is an excellent one. I recall hearing Donald Trump talk about how he liked to write as many of his checks for his businesses as possible so that he saw where the money was going.

After one's budget is on track, though, and just needs "fine-tuning" it's nice to have some help, especially if there are a lot of transactions to pile through. We download ours, but we also check them and categorize them (Quicken gets the category right some of the time, but not all of the time). That way we still get some of the benefit of actively look at the transactions, because it is very easy to get lazy with the automatic downloads.

[BAGAGT1]

I currently use Money 2005, I got it free from buying TaxCut to do my taxes. I previously didn't use the automatic download feature, but I do now as it saves a lot of time balancing the checkbook (and it keeps my wife honest in handing me reciepts). I've been using MS Money for about three years now. Although I use the auto download feature, I still enter my transactions first, then download the data, this way I can easily see if I forgot to enter something. I have enough history now that Money usually get the category correct.

I used to used Quicken, until they blocked me from upgrading. Money is starting to feel a little bloated with the 2005 version, as there are a lot of features that I don't use.

[jmjj215]

BAGAGT1, it's funny that you would enter your transactions first - lots of people do that - even though both companies tout the automatic downloading as a great time-saver

Money is starting to feel a little bloated

This was the main reason I stopped using Money (it came w/ my laptop several years ago). It almost has too much.

[BAGAGT1]

Originally Posted by jmjj215

BAGAGT1, it's funny that you would enter your transactions first - lots of people do that - even though both companies tout the automatic downloading as a great time-saver

Some of the banks that we have dealt with identify the payee by address only, which makes trying to remember transactions difficult, so I still see a benefit to entering the info manually first, then downloading to balance.

[Bluezy]

Update:

This weekend I made the purchase of Money Deluxe 2006 ($59.99 with a $20 rebate). It was MUCH less expensive than purchasing Excel.

So far it has been easy to use. I appreciate the ability to download banking updates. Money even supports EmigrantDirect accounts

Thanks to all who responded to my thread. I appreciate the input.

[krayziebone33]

I love Excel. I love being able to format my own things and highlight things that I want to stand out. I just find Excel to be a lot more flexible and I like having control of how things look and what the functions are. I agree with the person who posted a good poing about writing things down manually. I agree that it gives you a better sense of what's going on with your finances. I usually write down everything on notebook paper and then transfer it to the Excel spreadsheet. Tedious? Yes. Worth it, though? Yes.

[zetta]

I've never used MS Money. I used Quicken for many years. The downloading and reports were great (and I won't take the time to enter everything manually, no matter what system I'm using) I was very unhappy with the way its budget tracking works. For example, I tend to go on a big clothing shopping spree twice a year, usually when the sales hit, but I don't necessarily know exactly which month -- one year it might be Jan and Aug, another it might be Feb and July. If I budget $600 for clothes in Jan, but spend it in Feb instead, it looks like I'm way under budget in Jan but way over budget in Feb. If I try to say I'll spend $600 for the quarter, then it insists my budget is really $200 each in Jan, Feb, and Mar.

I've switched to an envelope system (Mvelopes) instead for budget tracking, and for the first time the tracking is actually influencing my spending. When I was using Quicken I would spend hours making cool reports, but it didn't actually impact how I spent my money.

Quicken looks nice for investments, and I am planning to upgrade and try tracking our stocks and mutual funds in it -- unless someone can tell me why they like MS Money better for investments. Or perhaps some online tools like Morningstar are better?

[Homebody]

I use Quicken because of the reports I need at the end of the year for taxes.

I use youneedabudget.com for budgeting. The combo of the two meet my needs perfectly.

[mrvirgo]

I used Quicken for five years and Money for two. When my old computer crashed and burned, I decided to use a spread sheet instead on my new PC. I never liked the fact the bloated Quicken and Money ate up my hard drive and offered me features I virtually never used. Any spread sheet program will do. It's all the tracking I need.