Posted: 7/15/2005 6:06:11 PM EDT
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What budgeting/personal finance software is best for personal finances (i.e. not "small business")? I'm just looking for something that is good at tracking and categorizing expenditures and investment accounts and debts. No bill payment feature needed. Most likely I'll just stick with my existing excel spreadsheets, but if there is something cheap and better, I might look into it. What do you use? |
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I've used both MS Money and Quicken (and paper ledgers back in the day). I greately prefer Quicken. So much so that I paid for Quicken 2005 Deluxe to replace a copy of Money 2004 Deluxe that I got for free. Of course, everyone has different opinions on things like this, and you might prefer Money. Thus, I recommend you try them both and see for yourself. Money has a free 90-day trial download: www.microsoft.com/money/freetrial_info.mspx Unfortunately, Quicken does not offer a trial download. But they do have a 60-day no-questions-asked return policy so you can buy it, try it, and return it if you don't like it: web.intuit.com/support/quicken/service/refunds/6183.html A bit of a hassle, but it is better than nothing. |
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I use Quicken. I used to use Excel. After using both, for SIMPLE financial tracking I still prefer Excel. I made my own workbook and it worked very, very well although it lacked the pretty interface. However, I couldnt get Excel to properly track my investments no matter how hard i tried. Quicken does this easily, and does it correctly. |
I bought Quicken back in March or so. It takes a little bit of time to set up (assuming you want to put in past account history and what not) but once it's running it kicks ass. You can make your own categories for spending and income (I made a Firearms and Accessories category  ) and tracking where your money is going couldn't be easier. Helped me open my eyes to the fact I was spending $125+ a month on fast food. Great way to keep track of your money and save it!Quicken roxorz my boxorz ETA: The only thing I dislike about Quicken is their absolutely ABYSMAL execution in terms of entering savings bonds and tracking their appreciation. They claim there's a way to do it, but it was so damn confusing and terrible I said screw it. I ended up downloading a program from the US Treasury that tracks interest and value and what not and just entered the bonds into Quickn only as a monetary value and listed them as an asset. |