Quicken

[kap]

Does anyone here use this software to budget personal or family's finance? Please share your experiences or suggestion for a better finance software. TiA

[Zoidberg]

I used Quicken for years but got fed up with it and moved to Moneydance. Easier to search, sort by amounts, etc.

To be fair, I only use it (and Quicken before it) as an electronic checkbook and nothing else.

[kap]

I have been using XCEL to keep tap of our family's budget, i.e. mortgage payment, home insurance, groceries, gas expenses, IRA, and the likes. I cannot stand XCEL. I thought Quicken might be the appropriate app.

[Zoidberg]

Well, then, take a look; I tried a bunch of the "after Quicken" apps and found this one the best: http://www.moneydance.com/

[Greg the dogsitter]

I'd recommend some sort of database for keeping track of finances, so Excel would be out.

I'd also think it's much easier to use something commercial (e.g., Quicken) as opposed to rolling your own solution.

I like Quicken, but I haven't tried anything else.

[Silencio]

We too will be looking at Moneydance. We need something more easily cross-platform compatible than Quicken, so that looks like the most ilkely choice.

[kap]

Moneydance offers a full feature trial download and the price is the same as that of the basic Quicken. It's worthy to try.

[Fritz]

can you pgm key combos within the app of do you need to use Keyboard Shortcuts from sys prefs?

Is it more stable then Qkn? Intuit annoys more an more with each "revision".

[davester]

I use Excel extensively, but it is a bad match for personal finance management since it is a "flat" database, and has none of the many tools needed for tracking, reconciling and budgeting your accounts. In the early days I used Lotus 123 (precursor of Excel) for money management, but both of them are far too limited to do this job well. Quicken is infinitely better than a spreadsheet and is relatively easy to understand. Quicken is quite amazing in the way it can graph or tabulate many different parameters and then allow you to click on parts of the graph or table to get a new graph or table that will dissect the particular item you clicked on. For basic personal finance it fits the bill perfectly, though Moneydance might be just as good.

That said, the bad things about quicken are:

1. For a long time the file format and several of the features were incompatible between mac and PC versions...the two programs were very different from one another. I don't know if they've fixed this.

2. Much like m$, they roll out a new version every year or so, without adding useful new features, and in many cases fouling up features they already had.

3. They have started the practice of disabling online features after a couple of years so that you MUST upgrade if you want to keep automatic downloadable stock quotes, etc. This is really annoying and is done only to keep the $ rolling in. I very much resent them deliberately wrecking the program to force me to give them more money.

[Zoidberg]

davester makes a good argument for Moneydance, eh?