Quicken vs. Microsoft Money: your opinion?

They both work. Neither of them work the way you prescribe. Based on your requirement, you'll probably need to hire a programmer and create a custom solution from scratch.

But if that doesn't appeal to you, you'll find that both programs allow you to "model" your personal financial situation through use of repeating "scheduled" transactions that you can use to represent periodic bills and your periodic paycheque, etc., and that they can remind you of upcoming bills and differentiate between those that are paid/unpaid.

You need a certain level of personal commitment to use one of these programs. My father and I have religiously used personal finance programs for over 10 years and fit things easily into our daily lives. I have a friend who tried it and it wound up to be a total waste of his time because he didn't "get" certain concepts and didn't make the personal commitment - 2

1/2 years of data entry and all he wound up with was a pile of garbage data.

Both programs are on yearly upgrade cycles; so while spending $60 or $100 on one of them might seem negligible, keep in mind that the vendors would love for you to upgrade each & every year. I am sure I've spent more than $600 on Quicken upgrades to date. You might be wise to stay with the one that has the lower annual cost, and then only upgrade every other year.

If you're not a very demanding user and you require a more "user friendly" user interface, I 'd suggest Microsoft Money actually. If you have an investment portfolio and want to model it, then I think you're better to go with Quicken.

I use Outlook for this, I keep a separate "monthly bills" calendar set up that I use to enter bills as they arrive. Once they are paid, I change the color by changing the category (Bills Due vs Bills Paid)...

The calendars in Quicken & Money lack this capability, no idea why...

Ha ha - good "integrated" solution...

If you're resorting to doing this you're doing something wrong, in my humble opinion.

As a person with a background in software design, I can tell you that keeping your data in 2 separate places & having to maintain them in sync (without an automated mechanism) is a formula for disaster. You will eventually goof up.

Anyway, just use the Scheduled Transaction List in Quicken to abreast of what's due & upcoming. Overdue & unpaid bills appear at the top of the list; paid bills drop down to the lower portion of the list. The bills "percolate" upwards according to their recurrence periods (monthly, quarterly, etc.). It's not rocket science.

In Microsoft Money, the facility is very similar. It's called "Bills summary".

Here's the actual scoop on the calendars in Microsoft Money & Quicken. They DO display past, present & future bills, and differentiate between them.

In Quicken XG 2004, future (unpaid) bills show up in red text; past (paid) bills show up in black text. In Microsoft Money 2006, future bills show up in regular text; past bills appear in a strikethrough font (i.e. "crossed out" to indicate "done").

After five years using MS Money, I switched to Quicken late last year, mostly because the billpaying and other online functions are important to me, and I find Quicken's more flexible and better integrated than Money's. (For example, downloading data from the two banks where I have accounts was clunky and prone to error in Money. Quicken works much better for me. And Quicken's online billpaying service integrates better with the check register than Money's does.) Both do most things about equally well. Neither provides very good tech support, so you're better off coming to groups like this one if you need advice on how to do things or solve problems. I'm happy with Quicken, and plan to stay with it. But each program has its own look and feel, and ideally you'd play with each to get a feel of which you like best.

New to the group and this post is exactly what I am also interested in. I have MS money 2004 and to my surprise I got a pop up saying the two year online service to connect to the bank for updates has expired. Upgrade is required to Money 2007 to continue this service. Man was I shocked. Not that I don't want to spend the $$ but it was unexpected.

The question is does Quicken also drop online connections to banks etc either annually or biannually to force an upgrade? If not I will certainly switch to Q2007 deluxe

Thanks

Bill

Intuit has announced that support for 2004 Quicken will end in May. Any user that is using "Direct connect" to download directly into Quicken are impacted. Those that download QIF files to be imported into Quicken don't appear to be impacted. My bank uses the Direct connect method so I upgraded to 2007.

So far: Quicken downloads expire every three years.

So its pretty much the same give or take a year Thank you

Bill

Thanks for the reply.

Bill

What if you want to keep using your version of Quicken but are willing to pay Intuit the money they want to charge you for the upgrade? Can that be arranged with Intuit?

Ric

Not with US versions.

I'm a long term Money user, currently employing MS2007. Late last year I went so far as to purchase Q2007. After using both in parallel for a while, I've gone back to Money mainly because Quicken does not incorporate scheduled bill payments into the budget; instead you have to manually reinter them or have Quicken generate a budget from your actuals, but I don't like the inaccuracies of that approach.

222 15872 body I'm a long term Money user, currently employing MS2007. Late last year I went so far as to purchase Q2007. After using both in parallel for a while, I've gone back to Money mainly because Quicken does not incorporate scheduled bill payments into the budget; instead you have to manually reinter them or have Quicken generate a budget from your actuals, but I don't like the inaccuracies of that approach.