Which Financial Software do You Use?

[LFKB]

And what are some of the benefits. With money in various bank accounts, Vanguard, Treasury Direct, etc it seems like a huge pain to track on each website. I am currently using mint.com but wanted to get others thoughts as to what they use and why they like it.

Thanks

[Jake46]

iBank. Former Quicken user. Handles everything I need.

[livesoft]

I use MS Money. I like it because it is on a computer at the house. I can show all accounts on a page and get the portfolio value on any date between today and 2003. I can run performance reports between any two dates for any set of accounts and investments. I can have it report to me all taxable dividends to compare with 1099s from brokers. I can have it report capital gains both realized and unrealized. I can see all my tax lots. It is very helpful with tax planning. It keeps a history of all my transactions since I started with this program. It even keeps track of my checking accounts.

[englishgirl]

I use mint.com.

It doesn't track investments terribly well, so I still keep a spreadsheet with them on. Mind you, I don't update it nearly as often as I used to, because mint is fine for a quick balance check or other simple things. It's when I want to really play around with the numbers and pretty charts that I go back to the spreadsheet.

[rob]

I use Money 2002 (the last one without quote download timebombs) BUT it just stopped a few month ago and does not do stock quotes any more.

* There is a Money version fixed to have no timelimit BUT there is no functionality in it either.
* I have been looking at MoneyDance (a name from long ago before I used money) and it seems like a great option.
* There is quicken but I just hate the interface and most anything about it.
* There is always excel but that's pretty manual and not a great interface - although I extract money 2002 data to excel for the allocation motioning so certainly an option..

Post back if you find an interesting option.......

[SLH]

I use portfolio-hub because it allows me to track all my investments. It provides nice performance and balance trend reports.

[livesoft]

I use Money 2002 (the last one without quote download timebombs) BUT it just stopped a few month ago and does not do stock quotes any more.

* There is a Money version fixed to have no timelimit BUT there is no functionality in it either.
...
Post back if you find an interesting option.......

My MSMoney is 2007 version and quote downloads work just fine.

[abuss368]

We used Quicken for approximately 10 years. We started to ask ourselves what benefit we were getting from all the time required to maintain, enter, and the cost to upgrade every few years.

We decided to quit using the product over 3 years ago. At first it was an adjustment but it soon became a way of life for the better. Expenses are predictable. Investment statements provide more information than we need. We use a simple Excel spreadsheet that takes a few minutes.

For anyone who needs a program like Quicken to budget, montior their finances, I would not try to steer them away.

For us simple and easy works best.

[Rob5TCP]

I used Microsoft Money 2005; through the end of this year.
I have Quicken 2013; and transferred data files from MS Money.
I will run parallel for the 1st quarter and for some historical reports.
It takes about 30 minutes a week and I usually do it while watching a movie
or TV.

[LadyGeek]

This thread is now in the Personal Consumer Issues forum (software).

[chaz]

Vanguard and this forum are enough for me.

[grabiner]

I use Quicken, but I don't download transactions; I enter manually into Quicken and then reconcile with the official statements. This allows me to catch things such as checks clearing twice or for the wrong amount.

The main reason I use Quicken is to make accounting easier at tax time; everything is set up by category, so I can immediately see how much I contributed to charity (and, the year I moved from NJ to MD, how much in each category of income was earned while I was a NJ or MD resident).

[Bacchus01]

Quicken.

But I wish Money would not have died. It was a FAR superior product.

[LFKB]

Thanks Rob, livesoft and everyone else. I am going to look into MS Money some more

[bill1958]

Don't know what exactly your needs are, but I recently started using Fidelity's Full View, but you may need an account with them to set up. It updates mostly very well (most bills and financials accounts), and is free. I haven't used the downloadable expense reporting yet, but it looked good when I initially looked at it. Perhaps someone else here can comment on it.

[bUU]

We have used Quicken and probably have since 1986 or 1987, so moving away from Quicken is not something we would do unless the alternative was functionally superior. The cost of Quicken (effectively $60 every two or three years - there is no need to upgrade every year) is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things. We just stopped using Quicken Bill Pay, so the software is not quite as valuable to us as it was in the past. However, I still don't see anything out there that will both provide superior (not just comparable, but superior) functionality going forward, and also provide a quick and easy way of taking on and safeguarding our historical records. At this point, there are still some things in our portfolio that I would be hard-pressed to determine their cost basis (especially ESPP purchases from 1998 and prior), without our records in Quicken to refer to.

We do use Full View, mainly to keep an eye on it to see if it ever can replace Quicken. It doesn't seem like it is anywhere near even heading toward that. It's a nice way of keeping tabs on multiple different things (and the only way I have to pull together in one place various utility bills and reward points balances), but I don't see it as something I can compare to Quicken in any substantive way. I haven't checked into Mint.com very much, but since neither Full View nor Mint.com have a way of sucking in all my historical data, I'm not inclined to worry too much about this.

Now eventually I could see coming to understand better precisely what historical data I actually do need to keep, and that might prompt me to give up Quicken (assuming that Full View eventually improves enough), but I would still be worried about having my historical data somewhere where the tool I used to review it could conceptually vanish on me with inadequate notice, and requiring an unknown process to port the data to some going-forward tool. At least with Quicken, I know that as long as I can boot up a computer that runs the current software, I can access all that data, and there are capabilities within it, already, that allow me to export all the data in some agnostic format.

[Sheepdog]

I still use Money 2002 even though I cannot download quotes and all credit card data directly any longer. (I can still download transactions from Vanguard and two credit card accounts (PenFed and HSBC)). I enter the data for the other financial institutions manually now. I love the software's functionality and will hate shutting it down whenever I purchase a new computer. (I cannot transfer the Money software to a new computer.) It has been a great asset for me with its cash flow program to plan future spending and income in retirement as well as historical financial records and tax preparation. No other financial software that I have found has that quality cash flow program.
I regret Microsoft discontinuing Money.

[Rainier]

Quickbooks.

It works for personal too, not just business. Only because I can't reconcile in mint and quicken Mac is so bad.

[midareff]

I developed my own portfolio tracking excel spreadsheets with a master portfolio page, a master bond yield/duration page and a page for each holding which details every transaction (buy/sell/distribution). Whenever I feel like an update I export two views in M* which update all prices, duration, SEC %, Total Year Todate, 12 Month Dividend Distribution, Last 12 month performance, and a few other things I use, etc. The data is stored on more than one hard drive.

[gd]

Quicken 2004. I found the price downloading promoted an obsession with daily values, and was happy to be rid of it. I never downloaded transactions, because process of examining them and entering my own categories and notes is a big part of its utility to me. I waste vastly more time on vastly less useful tasks every day. If all I wanted was a summary list of investments, I'd keep a spreadsheet or use Vanguards feature of allowing external investments to be entered by hand in my account page.

[BigFoot48]

I love the software's functionality and will hate shutting it down whenever I purchase a new computer. (I cannot transfer the Money software to a new computer.)

Why not upgrade to the Sunset version? http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20738 I use MS Money and while it no longer does downloading of data, it only takes me about 10 minutes a month to enter portfolio activity, and balance the checking account, and another 5 to enter credit card activity details. I also use a script http://pocketsense.blogspot.com/ to download in seconds month end fund NAV, although I don't really follow or use Money to monitor fund or portfolio performance, preferring a spreadsheet to do that.

Money reports are very good, and free makes them perfect!

[Hexdump]

I went from MS-Money to Quicken up until 2010 when I switched to a free product that was developed for the Linux world but runs just fine on my PC, Windows 7.
It's called KmyMoney and does everything that I need and want with the exception of certain imports. Vanguard and Fidelity and my credit cards work just fine.
I had tried a lot of the freebies, like YNAB, GnuCash and IMHO, KmyMoney is the best.
http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/index-home.html

No connection, yada, yada

[Niko]

We use a simple Excel spreadsheet that takes a few minutes.

***

For us simple and easy works best.

+1 for excel. Simple, free (assuming you otherwise have office), and effective. I also tie my accounts into mint.com, but not for financial planning purposes. Mint offers an easy way to check my various credit card accounts at one time to ensure none have unauthorized charges. That has happened to us twice in the last 2 years, and I noticed each within 24 hours thanks to mint.

[JamesSFO]

Quicken (2013 for PC running on Parallels on my Mac) - I haven't found a substitute I'm willing to use, I've also used Quicken since about 1988-1990 on DOS originally. That said, I find the product to still be buggy. Sigh.

[sscritic]

Quicken 2007 for Lion on my Mac. That reminds me: I have to enter the $1.70* I just spent on donuts this morning. I don't have to enter the Starbucks coffee purchase as I don't track my Starbucks card on its own; I only track the reloads from my credit card.

How does Mint handle donuts?

* I splurged; it must be a Christmas/New Year thing. Usually I get a cake and a raised for $1.60 or a cinnamon roll for $1.30.

[ciscovp]

Gnu cash.

It is free. Don't understand why folks pay for money software.

[BHCadet]

Quicken 2010 Premier on my PC.

[LazyNihilist]

Gnu cash.

It is free. Don't understand why folks pay for money software.

GnuCash for me as well. Pretty happy with it.
It has double entry book keeping which is very important as well.

[fishnskiguy]

Hardcover bound ledger, .5MM mechanical lead pencil, and a ten dollar Canon calculator. I have good records back to 1988, and never a BSOD. The pages of the ledger meet my definition of "software"'.

Chris

[Bungo]

I track investments but not day-to-day spending. I use a simple OpenOffice spreadsheet.

[Peter Foley]

I used MS money for at least a dozen years before giving up on it about 5 years ago. I constructed a couple spreadsheets for AA tracking and withdrawal scenarios. That is all I use now. I found that while I tracked all spending in MS Money for years I never modified my spending based on the data.

[yosef]

I was also a Money user for a dozen or so years before MS killed it. I use Mint now and like it for the most part. About the same time I switched I also started to get a little more lazy about properly categorizing all my transactions. Was that $75 Target purchase "Household", "Groceries", or some combination thereof? I no longer care, as long as it's "close enough". It's much the same with Mint vs Money. Money did more, but Mint does enough, and gave me some of my time back as well.

[NAVigator]

I have developed my own Excel spreadsheets for tracking my investments, desired and actual asset allocations, my IPS, current net worth, etc. For household finances, I have used Quicken for a very long time. Thanks to Hexdump in his earlier post, I have downloaded KMyMoney and imported my data. I will continue to evaluate this program.

Jerry

[protagonist]

Question: How do you wean yourself from Quicken?

I understand that there are better products on the market these days and some are free. But every transaction, every check I have written in the past 20 years, everything I have ever done financially is recorded in my Quicken software. Just to try to transfer by hand the last couple of years of data into a new program would be a draconian feat.

Is there a sensible way out without losing 20 years of work and data? Or am I a slave to Quicken to the end of my years?

Help!

[BHCadet]

Gnu cash.

It is free. Don't understand why folks pay for money software.

I downloaded GnuCash to try today.
I was able to export a QIF file from Quicken and import it to GnuCash.
But, it was very slow to start up.
And in order to download quotes, I've to install Perl first.
It will take some time to setup the tool and get familiar with it.
I'll play with it.
But, will keep Quicken for now.

[geekpryde]

Quicken user since 2010, formerly a MS Money user.

Bought Turbotax 2012 today on Amazon, got an $35.00 off coupon for Quicken 2013. Decided to pull the trigger even though Amazon reviews have been horrid, since r10 is now out and most of the major issues appear to be fixed. I upgraded from Quicken 2010, and everything for me appears to be fine. No errors or issue yet.

[blevine]

Quicken 2001
I use no transaction download functions, since my main purpose is to record my own transactions in parallel
to the various banks/funds etc, and reconcile my accounts. Therefore have not upgraded in years.
Price downloads were nice but for someone owning a few funds not a big deal.

Would not even try any site asking me for passwords.
Consolidation is a secondary goal, my primary goal of reconciliation is not served
by copying data from website to website (to mint) nor via DL to your PC software.
Also not comfortable giving our passwords.

[NAVigator]

I have downloaded KMyMoney and imported my data. I will continue to evaluate this program.

Well, I tried. I was just beginning to like KMyMoney, when I got a popup message saying it would have to shut down. When I restarted the program, only one of the 9 accounts displayed, the entire ledger was gone, the ending balance was the only line that was intact. Many years of data with thousands of transactions were lost. I'm not going to risk my home financial information to something that is unstable and unreliable. Back to Quicken for me.

Jerry

[fickle]

It takes about 30 minutes a week and I usually do it while watching a movie
or TV.

Pardon a naive questions from someone who doesn't use financial software:
what do you get back for your 26 hours a year, i.e. what is the benefit? I understand the idea if you run a business or have long, complicated itemized tax deductions, but if neither of these, what am I missing?
thanks.

[bertilak]

It takes about 30 minutes a week and I usually do it while watching a movie
or TV.

Pardon a naive questions from someone who doesn't use financial software:
what do you get back for your 26 hours a year, i.e. what is the benefit? I understand the idea if you run a business or have long, complicated itemized tax deductions, but if neither of these, what am I missing?
thanks.

I get:

• Downloaded transactions for over a dozen accounts at seven different institutions (banks, credit cards, Vanguard, pension and social security).
• Password management for the above.
• Downloaded stock and fund prices as well as buy/sell/dividend and other investment activities (long/short term cap gains, by individual lot).
• Automated bill payment for literally dozens of payees. This includes entering regular payments for me automatically into my check register so I can monitor my "float" a month in advance.
• No writing into physical check registers, no manual math (with or without calculator), no retyping things into a spreadsheet (therefore no transcription errors and it is impossible for things to get out of sync) no stamps, no envelopes, no remembering to mail on certain dates.
• Maintaining all financial information in a single place, including accounts I manage for other family members. Quicken lets me mark those accounts as "separate" so they don't count towards my net worth.
  

Oddly enough, I have no use for the budgeting features.

[LadyGeek]

Pardon a naive questions from someone who doesn't use financial software:
what do you get back for your 26 hours a year, i.e. what is the benefit? I understand the idea if you run a business or have long, complicated itemized tax deductions, but if neither of these, what am I missing?
thanks.

From a different perspective, it's the point of checking your finances once a week. Did anything unusual show up in your credit card account? Did your paycheck get deposited this week? That sort of thing, especially since catching fraud or unintended mistakes is time critical.

Automated online access from a single application makes this type of transaction checking trivial. If you look at your accounts via web access separately (and on a regular basis), then you don't need the software.

Oddly enough, I have no use for the budgeting features.

Same here. Excel is much easier, although I do run a few reports to get a general idea.

[stan1]

Question: How do you wean yourself from Quicken?

I understand that there are better products on the market these days and some are free. But every transaction, every check I have written in the past 20 years, everything I have ever done financially is recorded in my Quicken software. Just to try to transfer by hand the last couple of years of data into a new program would be a draconian feat.

Is there a sensible way out without losing 20 years of work and data? Or am I a slave to Quicken to the end of my years?

Help!

I'm not sure there are better products than Quicken. There are different products. It depends what you are looking for, and what degree of customization you must have. What do you dislike about Quicken? Many people seem to want an information portal rather than a history of transactional account ledgers. I happen to like Quicken's transactional approach. I have 16 years of data, including cost basis for taxable investing accounts. Over the years I've tried to import into MS Money, GNUCash, and MoneyDance. In all cases the import failed or was too lossy. I don't mind paying $45 every 3 years to keep Quicken current. I do not expect a mass market tool like Quicken to keep track of my asset allocation the way I want to do it but it works fine for keeping track of transactions.

[midareff]

I must be either very old fashioned or expense tracking deprived as I don't use anything for day to day, month to month expenses. Groceries are bought as needed, same with gas and most anything else. Credit cards, bank balances, etc., get checked at least once a week .. maybe more around fund distribution and transfer time. Don't write one check a month normally ... groceries go to 6% AMEX, gas to 5% PenFed, the rest to a 2% FIDO AMEX and for those that don't take AMEX is the FIDO 1.5% VISA. Most everything is on autopay monthly, download and save all card and bank statements. Nothing left to do.

[stan1]

I must be either very old fashioned or expense tracking deprived as I don't use anything for day to day, month to month expenses. Groceries are bought as needed, same with gas and most anything else. Credit cards, bank balances, etc., get checked at least once a week .. maybe more around fund distribution and transfer time. Don't write one check a month normally ... groceries go to 6% AMEX, gas to 5% PenFed, the rest to a 2% FIDO AMEX and for those that don't take AMEX is the FIDO 1.5% VISA. Most everything is on autopay monthly, download and save all card and bank statements. Nothing left to do.

That's fine. Different people have different personal preferences. Your approach works for you, others might want to do something else.

[protagonist]

Question: How do you wean yourself from Quicken?

I understand that there are better products on the market these days and some are free. But every transaction, every check I have written in the past 20 years, everything I have ever done financially is recorded in my Quicken software. Just to try to transfer by hand the last couple of years of data into a new program would be a draconian feat.

Is there a sensible way out without losing 20 years of work and data? Or am I a slave to Quicken to the end of my years?

Help!

I'm not sure there are better products than Quicken. There are different products. It depends what you are looking for, and what degree of customization you must have. What do you dislike about Quicken? .

Thanks, Stan. I suppose I have been pretty happy with Quicken (with the exception of some of Intuit's attempts at invasiveness, most of which can be thwarted but I still find them annoying). But I have heard and read that Quicken has become a bit of a dinosaur, and I really haven't seen many improvements in recent editions, so I wonder what others have to offer.

At this point I am considering sticking with Quicken but not updating, as I have every few years when support for the old software ceases. Since my portfolio is pretty simple nowadays (a few index funds and a bunch of CDs and bank accounts) and I enter all transactions by hand (doing so automatically never worked well for me), the ability to download quotes, etc is not so important. It seems that the giants of software (like most giants) reach a point where they subsequently hardly improve, they just get potentially more invasive and a bit different to look at.

[jegallup]

Quickbooks.

It works for personal too, not just business. Only because I can't reconcile in mint and quicken Mac is so bad.

Same here...inherited a copy when I retired. I don't keep track of investment holdings with it, though; the Vanguard site and a spreadsheet take care of that we'll enough for me. QB is helpful in managing rental property and consulting income.

[mike143]

groceries go to 6% AMEX, gas to 5% PenFed, the rest to a 2% FIDO AMEX and for those that don't take AMEX is the FIDO 1.5% VISA.

Add Priceline VISA for 2% all and Citi Forward VISA for 4% restaurants and all Amazon.com purchases.

[Hexdump]

I have downloaded KMyMoney and imported my data. I will continue to evaluate this program.

Well, I tried. I was just beginning to like KMyMoney, when I got a popup message saying it would have to shut down. When I restarted the program, only one of the 9 accounts displayed, the entire ledger was gone, the ending balance was the only line that was intact. Many years of data with thousands of transactions were lost. I'm not going to risk my home financial information to something that is unstable and unreliable. Back to Quicken for me.

Jerry

That's a surprise Jerry and unexpected. I had no such issue at all. I am running Windows 7.
Was all that data the result of an import ?
They have a support site here,
http://forum.kde.org/viewforum.php?f=69

I seem to remember that I made no attempt to import all my history. I picked a date in time and started there. Aug.1, 2012 I think. For budgeting purposes which I use, I ran a Quicken report for the YTD numbers and entered them into a dummy account.

[NAVigator]

I'm also running Windows 7. The data was imported from a QIF file without a problem. I only have a credit union account and a few credit card accounts. Nothing complicated. I don't even use the online features. I just did a little cleanup of the data when it shut down.

I started looking through the forum for a solution.

Jerry

[newkidontheblock]

I was a long time MS Money user. It was tough to see MS sunset a product that I loved.
I tried Quicken but hated the interface.
I gave up on Quicken and began using Mint. It does a good job for everything except portfolio.
I am using personal capital to keep on eye on my portfolio.