Wanted to ping the hivemind about this. I’ve been a Quicken user for the last 10 years. Ironically enough, I’m probably Quicken’s most faithful and least lucrative customer, as I’m still using Quicken 99.
Quicken 99 is great, for a pre-internet product, but it has basically zero integration with any online banking service, so reconciliation is a tedious, manual affair.
I thought that it’s probably time to upgrade to a more recent version, but from the comments I’ve read at various places (Amazon, etc) it sounds like it’s an outsourced buggy piece of crap now.
Do you guys use Quicken or some other similar personal finance program that you’re happy with?
For personal finance, I’ve been pretty happy with MS Money. They have a home office edition I bought when I started doing some outside consulting work.
For work I’ve been using Quickbooks, which gets more and more stupid with every new version. So I wouldn’t be surprised if Intuit’s other cash cow was doing the same.
Like you, I am still using Quicken 99. For home AND my wife’s business (just her gross receipts and expenses…her accounts receivable and invoices are done via a separate veterinary software package). 10 years of data still there. Easy to move from computer to computer. Still works fine in Vista (no Aero). I pay all bills on-line, but don’t have a desire to do it through Quicken. I figure once I get an up-to-date version, I’ll be locked into annual or semi-annual upgrades in order to stay plugged in.
I’m not even sure Q99 files are still usable in new versions of Quicken anymore.
I am a Quicken fan, but obviously not one that Quicken wants to promote its product.
[EDIT] - I have become a Turbotax fan - - I’ve used it for the last 2 years. I just manually enter everything, but after you do it once it’s easy to do it the second time. You’re locked into buying a new version each year, but that’s cheap compared to hiring an accountant. So I print out my Q99 Cash Flow statements, and enter them manually into Turbotax 2008. Schedule C is pretty easy with Quicken 99 statements, I haven’t felt the need to get up-to-date with Quicken so I could electronically import them into Turbotax.
Quicken went bad, and if you read the review of every new release, it pretty much says “worse than the last year’s version.” I used it religiously for many years, but in 2005, I switched to Money, which was much better.
But then Money did the same thing Quicken did, and it hasn’t had a single meaningful improvement in the last three years. At this point, they’ve taken the year off it, and it’s clear that it’s in pure maintenance mode.
About a year ago, I switched to Mint.com, which a) is free, b) has a better UI than Quicken or Money, and c) is better at what it does. It’s not a perfect replacement for Quicken/Money, as it has some significant limitations (it can only handle downloadable accounts, and doesn’t do anything meaningful with loans), but as a budgeting and light investment tracking tool, it’s great.
Well, what they say is that they don’t hold onto your account passwords, and those just go to Yodlee (which is one of those companies where if you don’t trust them, you don’t trust online banking). I don’t think they’d lie about it, but it’s not like I can verify the claim.
Nothing bad’s happened to me in the time I’ve used it, but obviously that’s no guarantee of anything, either.
I used Quicken for several years, but jumped ship when I got sick of the kill pill they planted in their online functionality, which forced you to upgrade every so often if you wanted to continue to sync with your bank. I switched to Moneydance, which I’ve been using for about a year, and haven’t had any problems yet. I’m a pretty light user, though, as far as features go.
Another Mint user here. I really only use it as a light budgeting tool but it’s great for that. It’s pretty easy to navigate and does some nice, but basic, graphing and visualizations on your spending habits. I’ve set up some alerts to inform me when I go over certain spending limits for the month.
If you need to plan finances ahead of time I’m not sure how much Mint will help. It’s more of a record keeper of what you’ve already spent.
Also if you tend to withdraw a lot of cash and make your purchases that way then Mint will be even less use as it won’t be able to classify your activity.
