I give it an F I have been working happily with MS Money on my Windows XP computer. I just bought a second Windows Vista computer and downloaded a new version of Money Essentials on it, so I can work with my Money files on the new computer. The new version of Money can not read the .mny files on the older version! So there is no way I can work with my own Money data on my computer (if I had bee a Quicken user, I could transfer the data).
Money has become a useless product for me - I give it an F.
Good program, just not very usefull I have tried almost every year to get into using Microsoft Money, I'm just a tech junkie really. I love using computers to do all sorts of things, Media Center, heck, even controlling the lights in my house. But managing my money?
I think many users will just be disappointed with the actual functionality of this software, is it missing something? I think so.
Fact is, you can do almost everything through the existing online banking with your current bank. I just seem to find issues with actually finding a use for MS Money.
It becomes even more difficult if certain bills change, or you have varying income. How do you plan a budget, etc... when your income changes week to week? It seems to become more of an annoyance than a useful tool.
But WHEN would MS Money be useful? If you have some steady income, or have some serious budgeting issues, if you cut your finances really close every month, this may help you budget yourself a little better. But really... who DOESNT know how much their bills are month after month?
So I was really hoping the online capabilities would make this thing great. But they don't. The software "offers" integration with my accounts, but 4 out of 5 of my institutions, will not bring up any information in MS Money, so yup, I get to login to my financial institution manually, then download the file into money, thus, making it pointless to use MS Money in the first place. And the 4 institutions that don't seem to work? Citicards, CapitalOne, Washington Mutual Cards, and Bank of America Credit card. NONE of them work, ALL are major carriers. The only thing that does work nicely, is my washington mutual bank accounts... great..... But again, whats the point if I can't manage ALL my accounts.
So again, if you have serious budgeting issues, and the patience to sit in front of the software and carefully budget everything, add everything in manually, and maybe even some investments you want to track, etc... Money might be usefull... But for me, I'm going to wait until they get their online kinks worked out... because for me, it's all about convenience, and this just aint convenient.
Microsoft Money works for me I use it to manage our savings and checking accounts. It gives you options to manage other accounts, but I just keep it simple. It works great.
Money is better than Quicken I've been using either quicken or money since the late 80's. I started out with Quicken, but then one day my computer hard drive crashed. I thought I would be OK, since I always backed up my quicken to alternating floppies; however, Quicken could not recover my files from the floppy backups. I switched to MS Money in '95 and NEVER LOOKED BACK. I have been using MS 2006 for several months (it was preinstalled on my Compaq laptop) and find only one annoyance; they seem to be keen on you putting your Money data on the web. Sorry, I don't trust MS security that much, but I do like MS Money 2006. I hear there are not enough improvements in the 2007 version to justify an upgrade. Also, if you have 2005, no real need to go to 2006 either. I did trial a copy of Quicken last year just to see if they'd caught up with Money, but I was not impressed enough to switch.
Bugged and disgusted I have two computers, and this program runs on neither one! You must have an internet connection or the program cannot run - despite what it says on the package about "internet functionality".
The program fails with a critical error on my laptop, which is connected to the internet.
I deeply regret spending money on Money 2006. Thirty bucks that I will never see again :.(
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