Quicken and/or Microsoft Money Plus You Need a Budget (YNAB)

Here's a great comment I received to my post titled A Great Alternative to Quicken and Microsoft Money where I suggested using You Need A Budget:

I'm [an] expert excel user and use excel regularly for budgeting and cashflow management - MS Money for Credit Card Transactions and Asset\Liabilities Management. MS Money can do things that YNAB can never achieve, however for budgeting and cashflow management it sucks big time. My suggestion: use both, YNAB for day to day cashflow management and MS Money or Quicken for all the other transactions.

I agree with this 100%. I've used Quicken for years and it's great at tracking stocks, credit cards, etc. But the budgeting feature is very poor (I've always wondered why -- it seems like this would be an easy part of the software to develop.) So I use a custom version of Excel to track my budget (I have for years) and Quicken to do everything else.

For people just starting out and only needing budgeting help, I recommend going with You Need A Budget. Then, as your needs increase, go with Quicken (my preference) or Microsoft Money. The combination of YNAB and either Quicken or Money should do everything you need to get and retain a good handle on your finances.

Comments

[claire]

Glad YNAB is getting some airtime. The owner spends a lot of time on savingadvice.com and he sure works hard plugging his product.