MS Money - any good?

gingercordial

Hope this is the right forum.

I've been expanding my stoozing activities from one card a year ago to several new applications in the last month. I'd like to use some kind of software to keep track of everything and was wondering whether MS Money is any good? I've read some mediocre reviews on Amazon so am rather unsure.

I have seven credit cards (stooze and normal use), one current account, a couple of savings accounts and a couple of ISAs. I'd like the software to be able to keep track of what minimum payments are due and when on the credit cards, how much interest has accrued on the savings (with appropriate tax deductions), and also budgeting for my current account. Forward projections would be nice. I'm not bothered about it synchronising with online banking as I'd rather enter the transactions myself then use it as a reconciliation tool.

So far I've been keeping track of things in Excel and on paper, and I know I could put it all together in Excel if necessary, but if MS Money works well then I'd rather use that as it (I presume) can roll things forward automatically rather than me having to do that manually in Excel.

Thanks everyone!

sicker

I have built my own spread sheet in Quatro Pro (similar to excel) and will always prefer it to any other program. It can be manipulated to do anything I want it to do.

John
p.s. it's been getting progresively better year on year.

Omertron

You can download and try Money 2006 for 90 days free at http://www.microsoft.com/money/freetrial_info.mspx

Two things to note here. The trial version is American, but previous experience has shown that you can switch it to English (with an American flavo(u)r), but it should give you a good feel of what Money's like. Secondly, the version you are downloading is the "Deluxe" version, and if you input a lot of information into it during the 90-day period, you'll also have to but the Deluxe version which is about twice the price of the Standard version.

Money UK 2005 is available on Amazon for about £19.

HTH

Edinburghlass_2

I have used MS Money for years and like lots of the features, not least bein able to download my statements into direct from online banking.

I would look about though for an older version as I personally thought they were better than 2005 and should be available cheaper

mr_fishbulb

Edinburghlass wrote:

I would look about though for an older version as I personally thought they were better than 2005 and should be available cheaper

I used both 2003 and 2005. Not noticed any difference between them, so yeah - look for the cheaper one.

gingercordial

Thanks everyone. I'll try downloading it first and see how it goes! I've got a voucher for Amazon which I'd semi-earmarked for this but will test the waters first.

I'm just being lazy really not doing it in Excel, it's just that I'm an accountant so get fed up of doing cashflows and projections at work!