Money program for home. Mint or Gnuchas?

[Dave Lehnert]

I have used MS money for years. Looking for something different. Does not have to be some huge powerful package.

MS Money has been discontinued as of this year.

http://www.mint.com/ looks very interesting but putting all your info on-line does not sound like a good idea. Any users with thoughts?

www.gnuchash.org- (http://www.gnuchash.org-) What little I have read , looks to be something of interest. Any users with thoughts?

Any other program you like?

[paul cottingham]

Being a huge fan of open source, i would lean towards gnucash. That being said the learning curve is not shallow.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

What do you want to do with it?

We use Quicken basic for most of our needs.

[Dave Lehnert]

What do you want to do with it?

We use Quicken basic for most of our needs.

Just to keep track of all my accounts. Amount, interest rates, cd due dates, Stock info. I just used MS Money and put everything in a asset acount, then manual update each month with new values.

[Eric Franklin]

I have been using Mint for the around 4-5 months and I've really like it. The biggest limitation to me is the budgeting in Mint. They have a great iPhone app too.

I don't have any concerns with the all my data financial data at Mint. Just need to have a good strong password.

[paul cottingham]

homebank may be worth looking at as well.

[Jim Becker]

I have used Quicken practically "forever" and it's never let me down. Intuit also owns Mint now, if I'm not mistaken, so it will be interesting to see if it stays as an option.

[Dave Lehnert]

I have used Quicken practically "forever" and it's never let me down. Intuit also owns Mint now, if I'm not mistaken, so it will be interesting to see if it stays as an option.

Quicken does own Mint.

What is your opinion on the security of using Mint?

[Dan Friedrichs]

What is your opinion on the security of using Mint?

Probably not much more dangerous than using TurboTax or any other service like that.

I've heard that the security for Mint is quite good (even armed guards outside the data center, etc) - I'm sure Quicken realizes the PR problems they'd have if there was a data leak...

[paul cottingham]

Yes, but the safest data is data that never leaves your computer.

[Mark P. Miller]

I know you said that you're looking for something different, but is there any specific feature that's missing from your current software?

I'm still using my same version of Quicken from 2000. It does what I need. The thought of changing to something else makes me queasy (lost records, new learning curve, etc.).

But then again, I could be missing out on something useful!

[Dave Lehnert]

I know you said that you're looking for something different, but is there any specific feature that's missing from your current software?

I'm still using my same version of Quicken from 2000. It does what I need. The thought of changing to something else makes me queasy (lost records, new learning curve, etc.).

But then again, I could be missing out on something useful!

The MS Money program does what I want it to do but MicroSoft ,as of 2010, has discontinued the program. They recommend Quicken but was reading reviews on Amazon and people don't think much of the new program.
Very disappointed.

[Matt Meiser]

We are in the same boat. I've been using Money since I graduated from college and actually switched banks one time because they dropped Money support. We are switching to Quicken soon. I didn't even think of looking around for 2 reasons. First, support from the manufacturer I want to be able to call tech support "right now" if we have a problem. Second support from the bank. We use the direct connect or whatever its called method to download transactions and pay bills.

Supposedly the market for finance software has shrunk due to the online services banks are providing. But they don't allow you to manage multiple institutions and it leaves them holding your data.

Costco has a pretty good price on Quicken if you are a member or know one.

[Dave Lehnert]

We are in the same boat. I've been using Money since I graduated from college and actually switched banks one time because they dropped Money support. We are switching to Quicken soon. I didn't even think of looking around for 2 reasons. First, support from the manufacturer I want to be able to call tech support "right now" if we have a problem. Second support from the bank. We use the direct connect or whatever its called method to download transactions and pay bills.

Supposedly the market for finance software has shrunk due to the online services banks are providing. But they don't allow you to manage multiple institutions and it leaves them holding your data.

Costco has a pretty good price on Quicken if you are a member or know one.

Looks like Quicken is the only option left for the most part. Have you read the reviews on Amazon? Tons of reviews and hard to find one good word for the new stuff.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Dave,

We use a very old Basic version of Quicken. I hope we don't have to update when I replace this computer.

My bookkeeper/CFO ....she is not too computer literate....and she has very little patience.

It took me years to convince her to use Quicken to find and correct problems with the checkbook. I don't even want to think I'll have to do it again for a new version or have to take over balancing the checkbook myself!:(

[Eric Franklin]

I think the days of personal financial software installed on your computer is fading rapidly.

Services like Mint are where things are going and after using Mint, it would be hard to go back. The only item I am missing are the saving goals.

I was hesitate at first with using Mint because of the security concerns but I got over quickly. They encrypt all your data and they can't change your financial data, they just read it.

I would trust having my data at Mint with a good password versus Quicken or similar program data sitting on a laptop unencrypted. If the laptop was stolen, it would be relativity easy to get that data if the drive and/or file wasn't encrypted.

[Dave Lehnert]

Dave,

We use a very old Basic version of Quicken. I hope we don't have to update when I replace this computer.

My bookkeeper/CFO ....she is not too computer literate....and she has very little patience.

It took me years to convince her to use Quicken to find and correct problems with the checkbook. I don't even want to think I'll have to do it again for a new version or have to take over balancing the checkbook myself!:(

In reading the reviews on quicken, users are upset about their "sunset policy" The program is rigged so you have to by a new updated software after 3 years.

[Matt Meiser]

A lot of software is going that way. Look at all the Antivirus packages for a perfect example. Microsoft did the same with Money a few years ago too. I don't think the banks were all that happy about having to support a multitude of versions either. At one point our bank offered to reimburse us for buying the latest version of money.

[Rob Bodenschatz]

I used Quicken from 1992 through 2007. Switched to MS Money in 2007 and then back to Quicken a few months ago. Just went through something that might interest Quicken users.

I was having a problem with corrupted categories. Quicken has a "cleanup process" but I've been told that it won't work when your data file size reaches 15-20MB. Once that size is hit, there is a very high probability of data corruption (all data, not just categories) and there's nothing you can do about it except delete data to make the file size smaller. Don't know about you but I'm not willing to do that. I report on older transactions for trending reasons. I consider the amount of transactions I enter to be pretty average & it took 7-8 years to hit that limit. Like me, if you have a significant number of transactions, you are probably sitting on a time bomb.

BTW, this information is not published anywhere but I confirmed with multiple Quicken resources.

Oh, and Quicken customer service is about the worst I have ever dealt with.

[paul cottingham]

Oh, and Quicken customer service is about the worst I have ever dealt with.

Amen to that. And they charge plenty for it too.

[Jim Becker]

Quicken does own Mint.

What is your opinion on the security of using Mint?

I've honestly never looked at it since I'm a happy Quicken customer.