I recently posted on an article that compared the top two financial planning software packages, Quicken and Microsoft Money. I received several useful comments and wanted to share them with you.
It turns out that people aren't really happy with either one. Here's the first comment:
I use Microsoft Money 2005. It's my first try and I've never used any previous versions of either. Personally I found it difficult to figure out exactly how to make sure all my accounts balanced. Using the online updating alone frequently screwed up the balances at my accounts (particularly BrownCo). Now I make sure to manually check every entry which is autoupdated.
It's decent software but it could definitely be vastly improved. It's also pretty buggy and frequently crashes. I lost my whole data set and had to start over after 6 months of use.
I think I might try the next version of Quicken if I can get a good post-rebate price (they tend to put these things on sale a few months before the next version is due to come out).
Ok, so much for changing to Money. Maybe I should stick with Quicken. But wait, it's a mess too:
I find Quicken buggy and unintuitive but seven years into record-keeping and I too feel "confined". I couldn't even import my quicken for windows data file into quicken for mac after I switched computers last year without losing a LOT of data (data files are incompatible, they have an "importer" and a lot gets lost in translation). So I run quicken under virtual PC and its horrifically slow. But..as you said...the devil you know! Not yet sure if I will upgrade, sounds like they have some new features that are quite nice, but not sure if it's worth the price.
Ok, maybe Money's the way to go. But wait, it's even more of a mess than Quicken:
I'm getting tired of Money myself. Too much flash, not enough tool if you get my drift. I had 2003 and it suddenly went haywire. I could not recover my data no matter what. Then, like a lemming I got the new version 2005 and tried to import my data... still no luck. I was very pissed to have to start over again. Two years lost! I had to re-enter all my investment info. I generally don't feel it does as much as it should, the reports are limited still, and there are more bloody adds all over the place. I don't really care for the integrated internet features, if I wanted to do research ... I do it my way on my preferred sites.
There needs to be another way.
Maybe I'll just bag them both and use Excel. ;-)
Not sure what the problems are with Quicken. I'm using the 2005 Deluxe version right now, and have gone thru various versions dating back into the mid-90s.
I love the program to death, and cannot imagine how I'd get along without it. I should note, however, that I never use Quicken's ability to download transactions from various institutions, and that seems to be a feature with which lots of folks have complaints.
I had a few issues with my 2003 Deluxe version, but nothing major, and 2005 has been perfect so far.
Posted by: Michael | October 19, 2005 at 04:19 PM