Best home budgeting computer programme

colsten

MS Money is the best by far, from a features point of view. I got spooked because it went out of support, but I know many others didn't and are happily still using it.

I migrated to AceMoney, which is just as good, and which seems to have half decent support.

Squiggly_Diddly

Just saw this thread and was going to say MoneyManagerEx as well 👍🏻

sfry

Yes MS Money still works even on the latest Spring update that was released this month for Windows 10.

Sea_Shell

Squiggly_Diddly said:

Just saw this thread and was going to say MoneyManagerEx as well 👍🏻

I've just tried to download it, and I'm very confused.    It just seems to have downloaded some folders??   Zipped, whatever that means?   I'm not very tech savvy, but I thought this would be a bit more "plug and go", but it seems very "techy" to me.

I got a warning when I went to open the file, so I haven't, and I don't know now how to delete it.   

What am I doing wrong??

blue.peter

Sea_Shell said:

I've just tried to download it, and I'm very confused.    It just seems to have downloaded some folders??   Zipped, whatever that means?   I'm not very tech savvy, but I thought this would be a bit more "plug and go", but it seems very "techy" to me.

I got a warning when I went to open the file, so I haven't, and I don't know now how to delete it.   

What am I doing wrong??

I don't think you're doing anything wrong.

I've never used it before and have just downloaded it because it looked interesting to try it out. The first thing I did was to scan it for viruses. My copy passed with no problems (as I'd expected).

You appear to have expected a self-installing executable. It isn't. It's a manual, but fairly easy, installation. You'll need to created a new folder in a sutable place - say in your Program Files folder. Windows will tell you that you need to authorise any changes in there, so do that, or create your folder somewhere else. Call it something like MMEx. Extract everything from the zip folder that you downloaded into that folder. Look in the bin subfolder for mmex.exe. (The icon is a green circle with a $ symbol.) That's the main executable. Create a shortcut to it wherever you like - say, on your desktop or in your start menu. Use that shortcut to launch the executable. It'll open with a wizard that gets you started with using it. Hint - you'll need to start by selecting a currency, but GBP isn't listed alphabetically. It's under U for United Kingdom.

That's as far as I've got with it in five minutes of trying, but I hope it's enough to get you going as well.

blue.peter

Here are some MMEx first impressions, after only a few minutes of playing with it. I'm used to AceMoney, so I'm comparing MMEx with that.

It looks good, and appears to have all the functionality I'd want (albeit using different terminology in some cases). The account listing is categorised as I'd expect. The navigation pane on the left is a really good idea, and something that AceMoney would benefit from.

On the other hand, I'm used to creating new accounts by right-clicking on the Accounts screen (Home Page in MMEx). This doesn't work in MMEx, but it's not a big deal to click on the tool bar instead.

The graphic representation of income v. expenses on the right of the home page is new to me, and of no interest. But some people might like it.

The reconciliation function is something that I don't bother to use in AceMoney. For this reason, I'm not sure that I like the MMEx approach of only showing the reconciled balance on the home page. If I was going to use this program, I'd be looking for a workaround, e.g., a way of automatically treating every transaction as reconciled, or showing a total balance.

I'm not intending to change from AceMoney - after all, I've been using it for years, I already have a long history in its file format and I'm familiar with it. But if I was, or if I was just looking for my first such program, I'd give this one very serious consideration, and might well use it. I'm quite impressed. And it scores over AceMoney in that it's £37.50 cheaper.

Sea_Shell

Well I seem to have got it up and running!!!   I'll have a play with it over the next few days and try and get it so it mirrors my own spreadsheets for a few months (I have the time) and then see whether to switch to it permanently.

Quick question, is making a payment on a credit card a transfer or a payee?

blue.peter

Sea_Shell said:

Well I seem to have got it up and running!!!

Good

Sea_Shell said:

Quick question, is making a payment on a credit card a transfer or a payee?

Here's what I do in AceMoney. I treat credit cards as a type of account, and payments made, e.g., for this morning's grocery shop, as a withdrawal from the appropriate card account (American Express). The payee would, in my example, be Sainsbury's. When I pay off the credit card, I treat it as a transfer from the relevant bank account (Nationwide) to the credit card account.