What personal finance software do you use?

[Dave]

I'm making some effort to move my electronics & software into this decade, so I'm interested to see what people out there are using. I've been using Microsoft Money for 10+ years (MSMoney 2004 on XP right now - super stable, never have any problems), but they killed MSM in 2009 and completely stopped supporting it in 2011. Apparently, it's quite hard to get MSM installed on the newer OSs, and since I'm looking to switch to a Win8 laptop soon, I'm trying to figure out my options:
-keep the old desktop just for using MSM2004; man, talk about wasting energy and space...
-get an old XP laptop, install MSM2004; spend a little money, but retain mobility, stability, familiarity, and all of my history
-put some time in and make an XL spreadsheet that does my essentials; can do most of what I do, cheap but time consuming, can consume all of my historical data, most labor intensive for the future (yeah, I could also build my own database and a rudimentary program to operate it, but we're talking even more time and effort there - maybe a future project...)
-adopt something new; change is bad?

Personally, I really like Money for what I need, which are relatively basic yet pretty specific. It's super useful to have years of records available for reference at my fingertips, and I use it remarkably often in my day-to-day life. I tried to define my use cases, so if you know of a program that can do this (or have suggestions on top of my what I listed above), please share your experience

1) I don't care about the program hooking into my actual bank accounts, that's not a seling point for me.
2) It is extremely important that I be able to make custom categories to classify purchases, and be able to assign purchases to those categories. Furthermore, being able to break individual receipts down into multiple categories is also pretty critical (Ex: go to Walmart, but a jug of motor oil and your groceries; need to be able to split those)
3) Ability to enter receipts/transactions before they hit accounts. This is twofold - I want to be able to enter receipts when I get home to get them out of my wallet instead of waiting for it to hit the bank, but more importantly I like to enter fake transactions to predict the state of my accounts, then delete them once I have a plan (yeah, I can do it in XL, but that's annoying sometimes...)
4) Maintain numerous account types: savings, checking, loans, physical assets, escrow, 401k, IRA
5) Budgeting, including warnings when approaching/going over budget
6) Automated updates of stock information is a pretty good feature. Likewise, showing a portfolio summary broken out by account giving me the details of each holding is pretty big (close price, yield, intraday hi/lo, 52 wk hi/lo, my market value, etc.)
7) Searching for transactions by keyword, or viewing all transactions within a category
8) Charting/reporting: monthly income & expenses, spending by category over time, cash flow over varieties of accounts and date ranges
9) I write pretty specific notes on a lot of my transactions, this helps me clarify what the purchase was.

[Apoc]

mint.com

[.RJ]

[SlimKlim]

mint.com

+1

The most irritating part of mint is trying to train it to categorize your purchases correctly, mine never knows what to do with my rent check, but its free, and as far as I know has all the features you listed.

[WRXtranceformed]

<!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.bankofamerica.com">www.bankofamerica.com</a><!-- w -->

[BLINGMW]

wow. I use excel... but uh, just to make sure I paid the bills mostly on time. All that other stuff :dunno:
You must have a lot more money than me

[Dave]

http://www.bankofamerica.com

LOL. I'm sorry, did you even read my requirements?


I researched Mint at the beginning of 2012, but I got the impression that you couldn't add custom categorization or multi-categorize individual categories. I did some more research last night and it looks like you can now, so that was a big win for me.

I've definitely been intrigued by Mint recently and have been leaning that way, but I am a little concerned about it being the new hotness right now, and then having to adopt something else in the next year or two (though this may be mitigated by the fact that Intuit owns it...). It's also a little concerning that they're able to maintain the site for free for all of its users - how much personal data are they really collecting and selling? (like Facebook for your finances).

[WRXtranceformed]

http://www.bankofamerica.com

LOL. I'm sorry, did you even read my requirements?

No. I read the post title and answered your question...

[Dave]

wow. I use excel... but uh, just to make sure I paid the bills mostly on time. All that other stuff :dunno:
You must have a lot more money than me

LOL, probably not. I just enjoy working with personal finances to find ways to maximize on my return from them, and I'm a little anal retentive when it comes to record-keeping on my money. It helps me realize where I'm being wasteful or can use it more effectively.

[Evan]

tried mint, didnt really like it.

quicken is the most well known, id give that a shot first

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option 2 is to us Money Plus (2007) which is win 7/8 compatible and ms made free when they discontinued it
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.mymoneyblog.com/free-download-microsoft-money-plus-sunset-deluxe.html">http://www.mymoneyblog.com/free-downloa ... eluxe.html</a><!-- m -->

[Apoc]

My longer answer is I've used Quicken for the last 8 years, but I'm finding it increasingly challenging to be tied to a client-side solution. I dabbled in Mint 5 years ago and didn't like. I tried again about a year ago and like it better, but didn't quite commit. Just recently, prompted my the desktop where my Quicken is installed slowly dying, I've decided to hit Mint full force.

[.RJ]

I'm finding it increasingly challenging to be tied to a client-side solution

This x eleventy for all things computing right now. Desktop apps are dead.

[Mike]

also mint, but it has proven a bear to keep up with. still does a decent job with no attention. then again, if you want anything up-to-date you're going to have to give it some attention.

lee, those features you were looking for have existed long before the beginning of 2012. sorry you didn't try hard enough.

[Apoc]

also mint, but it has proven a bear to keep up with. still does a decent job with no attention. then again, if you want anything up-to-date you're going to have to give it some attention.

I still enter every transaction in Quicken manually and balance my "checkbook" every month against a bank statement. I probably spend 20 minutes a month doing all these things. Would this qualify as enough attention based on your experience?

[HAULN-SS]

Damn...doesnt your bank take care of that for you on their online banking site?

[WRXtranceformed]

lee, those features you were looking for have existed long before the beginning of 2012. sorry you didn't try hard enough.

What features have I been looking for? I didn't say I was looking for anything

[Apoc]

Damn...doesnt your bank take care of that for you on their online banking site?

How do I know if a transaction occurred never got to the bank or if something unauthorized shows up? I also check my credit card bill every month line by line to make sure there is nothing unauthorized. I've caught enough mystery fees and transactions to not allow any institution to "watch it for me."

[Mike]

lee, those features you were looking for have existed long before the beginning of 2012. sorry you didn't try hard enough.

What features have I been looking for? I didn't say I was looking for anything

you said mint was lacking some features in early 2012. it was not lacking those you mentioned.

[Apoc]

you said mint was lacking some features in early 2012. it was not lacking those you mentioned.

That was Dave.

I researched Mint at the beginning of 2012, but I got the impression...

[WRXtranceformed]

lee, those features you were looking for have existed long before the beginning of 2012. sorry you didn't try hard enough.

What features have I been looking for? I didn't say I was looking for anything

you said mint was lacking some features in early 2012. it was not lacking those you mentioned.

I didn't say anything about mint in this thread...I don't even know what the program is

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