Good-Bye, Microsoft Money! 16 Powerful Personal Finance Programs
Published on - July 1st, 2009 (Modified on - February 12th, 2013) (by J.D. Roth) As of today, Microsoft Money is no longer available for purchase. Microsoft has essentially conceded that there’s no demand for the product. From the website:
With banks, brokerage firms and Web sites now providing a range of options for managing personal finances, the consumer need for Microsoft Money Plus has changed. After suspending annual updates of Money Plus in 2008, Microsoft is announcing today that we will no longer offer Microsoft Money Plus for purchase after June 30, 2009.
Now that Microsoft has thrown in the towel, where does that leave existing users of Money and Money Plus? Some of them are worried. I’ve received several e-mails about this recently, including this one from Lee G.: “Microsoft just left us in a lurch by killing Money. Any suggestions on finance software? I’m not really a fan of Quicken, but would entertain it.”
First, it’s important to note that Microsoft intends to support Money Plus at least through 31 January 2011. Until then, you can still get stock quotes and use the software’s billpay feature. After that time, the online functions may (read: “probably will”) expire. If you’re a Microsoft Money user, you still have 18 months to find a replacement. The Money FAQ offers this helpful advice to guide you:
A number of online personal finance management and planning tools are available, many for free, on the Web. Other software solutions may be for sale from companies other than Microsoft. For general account information and transactions, your bank Web site may provide the best solution.
It would have been nice if Microsoft had provided a list of these “personal finance management and planning tools”. Since they didn’t, I spent a couple of hours surveying the current options. Here are 16 powerful personal finance programs to take the place of Microsoft Money:
AceMoney is a Windows desktop app that offers all the features you’d expect: downloadable transactions, budgeting, investment tracking, and more. AceMoney costs $30, but a free “lite” version is available.
Budgetpulse is a free “upbeat” way to manage your money. It offers standard budgeting and tracking features, as well as international compatibility. One of this program’s stated goals is simplicity; it doesn’t try to do a whole lot other than track your core accounts.
Buxfer started as simple tool for tracking debts and has grown into a more comprehensive financial management tool. It allows users to import data from their bank and credit card accounts, set spending limits, track shared expenses, and more. iPhone app available.
ClearCheckbook is “an extremely easy to use tool that helps you balance your checkbook and manage your money. Think of us as an online checkbook register with the added bonus of viewing reports, setting budgets, creating reminders and more.” A premium version adds features. iPhone app available.
Expensr seems to be similar to Budgetpulse. It too offers simple account tracking. Expensr includes some social networking components, allowing you to compare your money habits with other broad groups that you select.
Geezeo allows users to create and manage a budget while obtaining support from other members. According to the intro video, Geezeo also has the ability to track investments. Mrs. Micah tried Geezeo and liked the goal-setting and community aspects of the tool.
Mint has become the Big Daddy of online personal-finance apps, with almost a million registered users. Mint offers support for investment accounts, which is cool, and allows users to create personal budgets. I’ve heard both praise and complaints from Mint users, so it sounds like something you’ll need to try to see if it’s right for you. (Here’s an early Mint review from a GRS user.) iPhone app available.
Moneydance is a full-featured desktop personal-finance manager. It’s available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Moneydance offers budgeting tools, investment tracking, and many built-in reports. Because I prefer a desktop money app, I’m very tempted to try this.
moneyStrands is the new kid on the block. Based in part on a financial management tool from Spain, moneyStrands offers all of the features you’d expect (though no investment-management yet). This tool offers lots of budgeting goals with highly-configurable alerts (“let me know when I’ve spent $30 on coffee this month!”). It also allows you to compare your finances with other demographics (not individual users, but groups of users). If you prefer Spanish, this app is for you. iPhone app available.
Mvelopes is a web-based version of the envelope budgeting system. It automatically connects with most banks and offers a free billpay service. This looks like a slick product, but it’s by far the most expensive program on this list. At a minimum, it costs $7.90 per month.
Quicken is perhaps the most popular personal-finance software available today. It’s fairly comprehensive and well-supported, but not without problems. Old versions are “sunset-ed” at regular intervals, forcing users to upgrade if they want to continue using certain features. I use Quicken for Mac, which supposedly updates investment portfolios automatically. Supposedly. My copy is broken though, and I can’t get it to update correctly. There’s an online version of Quicken, but to be honest, I haven’t heard good things about it. iPhone app available (though users don’t like it).
Rudder sounds like a tool for those who don’t want a lot of extras. As with all of these programs, it allows you to connect to all of your accounts. It also helps you schedule upcoming bill payments. Rudder claims that its “secret sauce” is a widget to help predict your future cashflow. iPhone app available.
Thrive is another online tool similar to Mint. It offers a budgeting component, as well as prompts for when to pay bills and how much to pay. It also encourages users to save. (This feature sounds neat.) Thrive features tools to help users plan for the future.
Wesabe was one of the first online personal-finance apps. It sports a dedicated base of hardcore users. In fact, one of Wesabe’s strengths is its active community — users draw support from each other, sharing tips and ideas. Here’s my review of Wesabe from 2006. (Disclosure: I am on the Wesabe advisory board.) iPhone app available.
YNAB is popular among GRS users, especially those for whom budgeting is important. I haven’t used this software myself, but I know that it allows you to import bank transactions, pay bills, etc. YNAB isn’t for users who want to track investment accounts, but is good for those who want to emphasize budgeting.
Yodlee is the grandpappy of online money-management software. It’s the platform on which many tools, including Mint, are based. But Yodlee also offers its own personal-finance product called MoneyCenter. As you’d expect, it provides the same account-tracking functionality that most of these applications have, but it doesn’t feature budgeting as prominently. Yodlee offers tight integration with most banks, and also has a billpay feature. iPhone app available.
From what I’ve seen, these apps are a lot alike: the desktop programs offer similar feature sets, and the online tools are all close cousins. There’s not a lot to differentiate them. Wesabe has a great community, Mint tracks investment accounts, and moneyStrands offers a Spanish-language option. Each program offers something unique. But is there any one app that knocks it out of the park? I don’t know. What do you think? Which option would you recommend for refugees from Microsoft Money?
For myself, I’ll continue to use the desktop version of Quicken on my Mac. It’s not perfect, but I know its quirks.
Addendum: Many commenters also recommend gnucash, a free Open Source money-management tool. I considered listing gnucash, but discarded the idea because the software is billed as an “accounting” package. GRS readers report that it’s actually very suitable for personal finances.Note: There are many other specialized personal-finance apps out there: PearBudget for budgeting, Fuelly for tracking gas mileage, etc. I’ll do a run-down of these in the future.
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Another free personal finance program out there is HomeBank. http://homebank.free.fr/
It is cross platform. It has rudimentary importing (QIF/OFX/CSV)
All in all, it’s pretty simple, doesn’t have a ton of bells and whistles, but has most of the stuff I find important.
Also, does anybody know of a program that implements the steps of “Your Money or Your Life”?
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What? No GNUCash? This was tops on my list when I was looking at different applications and the one I went with. It can be as simple or as powerful as you need it to be. And it is FREE and open source.
http://www.gnucash.org/
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Maggie,
Were you able to import your Quicken data into Moneydance? I have over 8 years of Quicken data that I don’t want to lose, so I’ve been nervous to make a change.
Thanks!
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I run a small fitness studio and we use Mint to watch our expenses and manage our budget. It beats using excel.
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i still use MS money, and i think is not bad.
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@Leighton BudgetPulse does not sync with banks, allowing users from smaller or local banks to utilize our tool. It requires manual input of data or import of financial bank statements.
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@Chris BudgetPulse allows you to import MS Money files straight into the system in a matter of minutes. It may be a good option for those looking to switch.
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@Steve BudgetPulse allows you to import MS Money files straight into the system in a matter of minutes. It may be a good option for those looking to switch.
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Full Disclosure: BudgetPulse.com is a great manual personal budgeting software for people of all ages, including students. We strive on simplicity and functionality. We don not sync with banks for those users more concerned with security threats. We do allow imports of financial bank statements and Quicken and MS Money files. If anyone has any questions about our tool, please feel free to ask.
Craig Kessler
Marketing Director at BudgetPulse
craig@budgetpulse.com
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I have to put in a vote for Yodlee. Yodlee as stated is the backbone of Mint, they also provide the My Portfolio function for BoA. If you don’t care for the Web 2.0 glossy look of Mint, but just want raw data for analysis, I must recommend Yodlee. The dashboard is a great overview of your finances, most accounts will link, it can track almost anything including cellphone bills and reward programs, and the asset allocation view is useful. The budgeting is slightly weak and it is a hassle to break down transactions into categories if you want to be very precise with budgeting. But if it is for general spending reports, net worth tracking, and investment overview, I recommend Yodlee.
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I think the last paragraph is in some ways the most interesting one here, mainly because I think it is both wrong and right. I do actually think that the apps are distinct: if you take Thrive and Mint, for example, they are very clearly different in the tone and features. And that is reflected in the populations that use them: Thrive, for example, is actually skewed with slightly more women than men (Mint is dramatically more men than women, at last report) and skews younger, for people who are doing less to track their investments and more to make actual financial decisions about things like first homes and stable accounts and beginning retirement planning.
But what is far more interesting is the truth that I don’t think any site out there has it all, and I include Thrive in that. Part of that is just the newness of the marketplace: there aren’t really huge players yet besides Quicken that have been around long enough to truly mature. In Thrive’s case, it is simply a matter of engineering and design power: we know what people need, and we’re working as hard as we can to get it to them, it just takes a serious amount of coding and product-thought to bring that into the hands of consumers in the right way. We’re doing it, and we’re doing it faster, but we are a long, long way from “complete”.
I think that is actually a good thing for consumers. Mature industries are often both resistant to change and rabidly anti-consumer, as they have fine-tuned the money making machine. In the PFM space, by contrast, you have these companies that are still learning right alongside their user base. At Thrive, that means you can pick up the phone, call our number, and actually get me on the line. You can say “I wish it did this” or “This would really help me” and we can bring that to the team and find a way to make that happen. Trying doing that in a more “mature” industry and you’ll likely get stonewalled.
So I’d like to see that as a strength. For those that use Thrive, consider it a call to send me your thoughts about how we can be better: matt@justthrive.com or give me a call on our toll-free line, 1.888.831.4080. If you’re not a Thrive user, check out http://www.justthrive.com , read our blog, and feel free to tell me what you would want anyway: we may already have it, but if we don’t, we can think about how it might help.
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And now, the response wrapup:
@ Bulldog Gin Co: Most of these apps are free, actually. And honestly, given the quality of the free apps, I can’t recommend a pay one. That said, it is worth knowing how they make their money – if you want some details about how we remain free at Thrive, let me know (it helps that we’re owned by LendingTree, which has always been able to help consumers and still be profitable).
@ AmyMo: Just FYI, Mint (like Thrive and many others) actually uses Yodlee as their bank end, so in theory, any account you can connect in Yodlee, you can connect in Mint, Thrive, etc.
@ J.D.: We’ve played around with the Google templates – they are a reasonable way to do it if you aren’t looking for an automatic solution, but they basically presume that you know how to interpret the math and are just looking for a shortcut (rather than the vast majority of people, who have indicated in our surveys that they are trying to get actual advice). That said, I think they are interesting and worth checking out, particularly for advanced users.
@ Jacque: We at Thrive (www.justthrive.com) have a strong savings component (including plans, which we’ll be doing even more with soon). You might also think about Wesabe or SmartyPig, which have interesting approaches to saving.
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Thanks for including us on the list JD. Just a quick note that Expensr (which is also listed) is owned and operated by moneyStrands. We are currently working on integrating some of their features into moneyStrands, so stay tuned for some cool product updates.
Cheers,
Lucia @ moneyStrands
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Another happy Mac MoneyWell user here. Excellent for those of us getting started with a budget and getting out of debt.
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I’ve been a Money user since 1997, and personally I have a hard time believing that there is no money to be made in desktop financial software. But, I’ve largely switched to the Mac now and truthfully Money was all that was tying me to Windows. Right now I’m experimenting with Mint.com and finding it okay, certainly worth the price
But I too would ideally prefer a desktop app, but nothing on the Mac can approach Money’s feature set with the exception of Quicken, which from what I hear is even worse on the Mac than it is on Windows. Moneydance has a good reputation, but if you care at all about the look and feel of your apps, you’re likely to be disappointed. It’s a Java application which is great for being cross platform, but terrible for a native-feeling user experience (As a Java developer it pains me to say that). At this point I think I’m going to see what the early reviews of Quicken Financial Life are like, which is Intuit’s new Mac only product. I’ll have to check out Moneywell in the meantime though.
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I’ve been using Quicken for a few years. I’ve never totally loved it. I enter all my transactions, but I never am really able to figure out what reports are any use to me.
I like the Financial Overview tool that shows my net worth by month. It helps me to see how my debt is decreasing.
But one thing that I want to know is where my money actually goes each month. The Quicken reports tend to look at “spending”. When I send $100 to my credit card company, Quicken doesn’t consider that a “spending” transaction. But that is most definitely part of my monthly cashflow, and I can’t find a way to see it in Quicken.
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Quick side note for Mac users (of which there seem to be many): Thrive is actually developed on Macs, so it is validated against Safari and the Mac version of Firefox – if you ever have trouble with the site in any Mac platform, it is easy for us to troubleshoot, just let us know.
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I had no idea Thrive was owned by LendingTree. That is very interesting. I have also heard that many of these sites use Yodlee for their back-end. I would be curious to know how much these free sites pay Yodlee to use their account aggregation service.
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Richie, Quicken (and Money) in the case you are describing use a more sophisticated accounting model. When you pay a credit card, you’re really transferfing money, not spending it. You spent it already when you made the purchases on your card. Money I know has a specific cash flow report where you will see the CC payment treated more like you’re expecting (an expense), even though it’s not categorized as such. The benefit to this method is that it shows that you’re still spending money when you put things on your credit card, not merely when you pay the card.
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I have used quicken pc for 8 years or so and just can’t bring myself to give it up. It has all my history and hours put into making it just right and like the OP I am used to its glitches.
All though I have set up mint as well. Even if you sign up for mint and never go back to it, it is worth it for the balance alerts, bill reminders, and the like that you can get over sms or email.
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I recommend MoneyDance… I have been using it for about 2 yrs now & I LUV IT! I am also a refugee from Quicken [use Microsoft Money also *yuck*] & MD is so much simpler to use.
I love the fact that it’s cross-platform since I use Windows & Linux. Actually that’s the main reason I use it. Also, the plugins for MD really made me love it more.
I try others but I still prefer MoneyDance so far.
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I’ve used Moneydance for at least 8 years, since I needed something that would work on something other than Windows. It’s been great all that time. They’ve made small improvements over time, but it’s always remained solid and functional. It pulls online bank info, does local budgets, graphs, reports, imports QIF from Quicken. I’m a happy customer.
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I rather liked Microsoft Money and have been using it for years. Rather a pity that it has been discontinued.
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@Richie – the $100 to your credit card is not “spending”. It is paying off a liability created by earlier spending (charging stuff on the card).
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A bit off topic, but my current Money subscription ends at the end of this year and I completely forgot to buy a new version in order to use the product until the drop dead date in 2011. Does anyone know where I can find the software for purchase? Thanks.
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The only thing that makes me abandon online versions is not being able to enter transactions that haven’t cleared yet! All of these do a great job of sucking in your bank data but what about the 10 transaction I have outstanding that haven’t shown up yet? That’s where MS Money always shined for me. I can enter my receipts at the end of every night and each day when it synchs with my bank, it matches the transactions and removes them from my “pending” register. I really want this functionality.
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Why is Matt @ Thrive’s post highlighted with a gray background?
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Your frustrations with Quicken for Mac may soon come to pass: http://bit.ly/1aguH3
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Kevin, I understand that paying a credit card is really just a transfer of assets/liabilities, and the expense happened back when I used the card. But as I am working to reduce my debt, I am regularly trying to look at my cashflow each month. If I get paid $500 this week, I want to know where all of that $500 goes. If I use the whole thing to pay a credit card, most of the Quicken reports will imply that I spent no money this week, but the $0 balance in my bank account says otherwise.
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I have been a Money user for several years and knew it was time to explore some new options.
I have been dabbling with Quicken and reading about NeoBudget that Luke also mentioned in a post above.
Thanks for the comprehensive list!
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@Dustin: Indeed – Tree.com acquired Thrive in February of this year. http://blog.justthrive.com/2009/02/you-me-and-treecom/ says a little bit more about our reactions, but the short version is that we’re ecstatic to have the oppurtunity to help even more people. As a start-up, you’re very resource limited, and being under Tree.com allows us to do more, faster. We’ve hired new engineers, designers, support folks, and I actually only work 14 hour days instead of 16 hour days now. *grins*
@Richie: Honestly, we do the same. As Kevin and Tommy pointed out, otherwise you end up “double counting” credit card transactions – once as they happen, once as you pay them off. Makes cash flow look insane.
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I tried signing up for Thrive and it said I couldn’t have more than 2 numbers in a row in my password…lol
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@Richie: Sheer awesomeness? *grins* I actually think it is because it got logged as spam (probably for going on for too long) and JD had to stick it back in there.
I can’t speak to Quicken, but in Thrive, how we handle the case you are talking about is by showing you how much you’ve paid off on your debt right on the dashboard (on the left side, with a nice green/red arrow system). It is tricky, particularly because banks don’t often give us all the information about what is your old revolving debt versus your new purchases, but we do our best to sync it up – that is my best guess as to why Quicken might not be handling it gracefully?
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Any spreadsheet. Doesn’t have to be Excel – could be open office (which is free). I echo commenter #11: once you start splitting individual purchases into multiple categories, using an automated tool saves no time. Spreadsheets offer no online advice, budget alerts, or reminders to pay your bills. But all those (distracting) bells and whistles drove me crazy. Quicken, MS Money, (and I suspect most of the rest) are needlessly complex for the average person who just wants to know how much they spend, what they spend it on, and how long until they can go on a permanent vacation.
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@Chris: I just tested it and was able to put two numbers in a row…you are not, however, allowed to use the same number three times in a row (to prevent easily hackable passwords; we like security). Shoot me a note at matt@justthrive.com and I can try to help – don’t know why you are getting an error state.
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We have a separate savings account that acts as a “holding tank” of sort. Say we set aside $500 for medical bills, it goes in to the account then I have a spreadsheet that I enter the amount into. Then say when the bill comes, it comes to $200. On my spreadsheet I just go type in we used $200 and it shows that balance as now only having $300 set aside for medical bills. I’m curious, how do some of these programs handle this type of scenario?
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@Scott: Do you mean on a monthly basis, yearly basis, or just an “envelope” that gets used when it gets used? Coming out later this month, in Thrive, we’ll essentially do this budget tracking month-to-month. So you’ll set a budget (or we’ll set one automatically for you), and then you can see how you are tracking to that, including how much you have left, over the month. We don’t do that yearly yet, though we’ve been talking about how we can implement “fund” style features for things that generally aggregate across months.
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If you are looking for Mac personal finance software I would have to give iBank first place with Moneywell running a close second. They are both updated regularly and the developers of both make top-notch customer support a high priority. I usually get my questions answered by one of the developers within 24 hours of posting it on their forums.
In comparison, the customer service for programs like Quicken and Money is abysmal. It seems that all they care about is the bottom line and couldn’t care less about the customer (as is shown by Money leaving its customers in the lurch).
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@Scott, this is essentially how Mvelopes and Inzolo work. You allocate all your money into virtual envelopes before you spend it. Really, money is not being moved anywhere, the budgeting application is simply a representation of where you want your money to go. So your checking account may say $4000, but its all been allocated to different envelopes such as groceries, gas, utilities, mortgage, christmas, birthdays, etc. So really your account balance is not that important only in that it equals all your envelope balances. It doesn’t matter if your budget category is month to month, year to year or whatever. Whatever you have allocated to that envelope, that is what you have to spend.
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To Cara at no.53 – yes, I was able to import all my Quicken data. MD has a helpful forum and good support in case of problems.
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I have been using Crown Money Map Financial Software ($60 for Windows, Mac, or Linux) for about 4 months now. I have used and/or tried a lot of others before settling on this one, including Money, Mint, Quicken and GnuCash. They also offer Crown Mvelopes, but this works out to be a lot cheaper than paying the monthly fee for Mvelopes.
The Money Map works in the same way as Mvelopes with virtual envelopes and a nice budgeting program. It also allows you to track investments. We are taking the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace course right now and this software meshes perfectly with that course. I highly recommend it!
You can download it from Crown.org
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@Dustin: Do you mean “it doesn’t matter” in terms of data or that it doesn’t actually matter in how people behave based on those budgets? The trouble with envelope style budgeting is that while it is extremely useful and productive for long-term expenses (like medical), it works dramatically less well for monthly and weekly budgeting, because of the features of mental accounting. The problem is that the envelopes become too siloed and non-exchangeable; at least in lab research, people become reluctant to move money between envelopes at the appropriate interval to allow for agile budgeting.
Still, the intersection is interesting and I’d love to see more quantitative data on how envelope budgeting performs in life compared with other styles.
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@Matt: I guess I should say for me it doesn’t matter if the envelope type is month to month or year to year because the principle is the same, once your envelope is out of funds you either don’t spend or fund it from another envelope. But I think it does matter to some people as friends have suggested it to me. That is why I have envelope types (fixed, paced, and rollover). While the implementation isn’t quite finished yet, it is something that makes inzolo a little different from Mvelopes.
What “lab research” are you referring to? Is this testing that Thrive has done? I would be interested to see these lab results.
As far as performance, the envelope system has been a blessing to me. I’ve been using it for over 3 years now. I’ve paid off $41,000 in consumer debt. I used to go into overdraft almost monthly. Since using the virtual envelope system I have not hit overdraft at all.
That said, I can see where you are coming from about not wanting to move money between envelopes. Generally I have a few envelopes with negative balances and I don’t want to move money for various reasons (waiting for reimbursements for example). But I know I have enough in my account that it is not a problem and that I will soon fund those negative envelopes to make up for it. But I’ve added some reporting that helps track negative balances to ensure that overall I’m safe within my budget.
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Hey JD,
Thanks for the personal finance Google Docs. They are are really cool.
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I have a question for everyone downloading bank info into financial applications – do you pay for this service? I’m new to all this and am trying out Moneywell right now. In order for the program to automatically download my Bank of America info I would have to pay $9.95 a month. I’m too cheap to do that. The download/import is kind of clunky so I’ve pretty much just given up on it.
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@deb: I use Bank of America and with MS Money, it doesn’t cost anything to download my transactions and synch….I have a bad feeling that may change now that I have to choose something else.
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@deb: Bank of America typically does charge around $10 for this service. The only free way is to use the download/import method.
@Chris: Either you maintain high bank balances (in which case the service is free) or it may just be an oversight. I think you’ll be okay changing finance software, I just wouldn’t tell BOA about it.
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I thought it was worth mentioning that if you have a bank or credit-card account with Bank of America, you already have access to their My Portfolio tool. I think it runs on the Yodlee platform, but you use your existing B of A login, so there’s no need to create and track another online account.
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Never could MS Money to work with my credit union accounts – checking and savings would end up mixed together and my balance was always off.
My CU only allows transactions to be downloaded to Excel, Quicken and MS Money….
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Hmm. I’m a current user of MS Money and was thinking about changing to Quicken in the hopes that it would be better able to calculate loan interest and repayments (Money NEVER gets it right), but have now been put off by the news that Quicken forces you to upgrade. Are you really forced to, or only if you use the online functionality? The only updates I get online are share prices.
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