Which Personal Finance Software to use?

gsmh

I'm interested to know what you guys thought of Money Manager EX. Is is not good enough for your needs? I find it just perfect so I'm surprised nobody has followed up my recommendation.

colsten

I am missing nothing in AceMoney, so therefore I am not investigating other solutions.

wmb194

The screenshots Google serves of Money Manager EX make it look second rate. I'll only be considering alternatives if MS Money stops working with Windows 10 and even then I could probably still get it to work via a virtual machine running an older version or build of Windows.

blue.peter

cloud_dog said:

... I may operate in a similar fashion to colsten and blue.peter (although I am guessing here).  All our discretionary spending is done via a credit card, so only one debit each month from the bank account.

Yes, this is exactly what I do (not that it really matters - what does matter is that what we each do works for us).

gsmh

Really?

https://www.moneymanagerex.org/features/overview

I previously downloaded and installed AceMoney, which has been recommended on here and it is rather convoluted to say the least. I didn't find it particularly intuitive or very nice looking. MS Money is not being actively developed and is a obsoleted product.  I found it unintuitive too, but that probably says a lot about me - I need my software to be intuitive, or at least to become intuitive quickly. Money Manager EX has a very slick and simple interface, is being actively developed and is free. It appears to be a hidden gem.

colsten

It's not about looks but about functionality. Many on here wouldn't even dream of willingly giving up MS Money as it's been rock solid for almost three decades. The basic principles of savings and investment management haven't changed, and not everyone is taken in by glitzy interfaces. The only reason I moved to AceMoney is that I wanted supported software, and a package that let me retain the many years of data I had in MS Money. As I said, I am missing nothing in AceMoney, so therefore I am not investigating other solutions. YMMV.

inspectorperez

gsmh said:

I'm interested to know what you guys thought of Money Manager EX. Is is not good enough for your needs? I find it just perfect so I'm surprised nobody has followed up my recommendation.

I have used a software package called Visual Accounts for years. It basically comes in 2 forms, personal or business. It is no longer being developed, but the business app does cater for MTD filings for VAT purposes, so it is not actually obsolete. Has served me well over the years, but I did decide to download the Money Manager EX software just to have a look at it.

First impressions are very favourable, and I might start to have a bit of a play with this to see how flexible the reporting functions are. Certainly intuitive and I think it would be a useful source of comprehensive information for anyone needing to look after my affairs when I'm no longer around to provide guidance

blue.peter

gsmh said:

I'm interested to know what you guys thought of Money Manager EX. Is is not good enough for your needs? I find it just perfect so I'm surprised nobody has followed up my recommendation.

I had a brief look at it, out of mere idle curiosity. It didn't seem at all bad, but I couldn't see any reason to switch from AceMoney. After all, if it ain't broke, why fix it? AceMoney serves my needs very well, and has done for a long time. If I was starting from scratch and needed something, I'd seriously consider it, and might use it long-term. But I'm not starting from scratch.

wmb194

GSMH wrote, "MS Money is not being actively developed and is a obsoleted product." So what? It works fine and is easy to use. When there was an issue a few years ago caused by a Windows update Microsoft fixed it so it actually isn't fully unsupported. The one you're suggesting is free, so how much development can anyone really put into it? AceMoney seems to be a one-man band and the one time fee for all future updates is a business model which usually fails.
In terms of new features the thing I'd really like is some kind of calendar integration with Outlook e.g., the automatic population of forecast bill payments, account maturity dates and dividend and interest deposits but unless I've missed it I don't see this with Money Manager EX or AceMoney.
A few years ago I tried the then current US edition of Quicken and it was absolutely dreadful. If you want to see what unintuitive looks like you should try it!

gsmh

wmb194 said:

The one you're suggesting is free, so how much development can anyone really put into it? AceMoney seems to be a one-man band and the one time fee for all future updates is a business model which usually fails.

I've noticed many users of this forum just don't get the opensource concept. It is way more than 'free software' and pretty much the whole internet runs on (free) Unix based systems, developed by opensource developers. Major players such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, MacDonalds, NASA and many more run their systems on an opnsource product, Linux. To be dismissive of it is to show ignorance.

A list is available here: https://www.tecmint.com/big-companies-and-devices-running-on-gnulinux/