I still use quicken 2002 deluxe. I used Money until 1997 and found it more intuitive, but switched because several providers at that time offered quicken but not money data.

The last quicken v. Money we had was over 18 months ago, here . With lots of folks thinking of upgrading soon, I'm hoping the time is ripe for a new go-around.


I'm tired of recurring downloading issues with quicken. I'm also hopeful that 2002 quicken data should be handled competently by a 2005 money program. Here are factors I've considered (no doubt I'm missing some):

Money Premium 2005 seems to get the better reviews over Quicken Premier 2005. Here is the most recent example I've seen. I especially like the greater customizability. Of course these more expensive versions of these packages may not be worth the cost...

Neither 2005 product should be adopted for at least a few more months. Newsgroups and reviews alike indicate that early adopters of these new versions of these at their peril.

Quicken ineptly handles CDs and simple interest loans. For a previous FW discussion of the CD issue, see here

How much will tax software issues complicate a switch. I've used turbotax for the last several years, and like being able to import data over...perhaps switching to Money would make that conversion problematic...?

Handling very complex finances easily is a big plus. I have many bank accounts, several rental properties, a couple of businesses, and various assets to track. I'm constantly getting the "too many tabs" error message in Quicken. I don't know if Money does this better or not...

Here are 2005 and 2004 comparisons of the MS Money products (thanks tivo1).

TIA for your insights!

Interesting thread. I'm using Quicken Deluxe 2004 for Windows and there is definitely room for improvement.

Reviewers have absolutely trashed MS Money 2005 on Amazon. One relevent excerpt from a review (note: I have not verified this myself):
First there is a new Internet Services Policy you must agree to. It starts out with "Microsoft® Money 2005 includes up to two (2) years of Internet-based Services. You will be able to use the Internet-based Services in Microsoft Money 2005 for a period of two (2) years from installation of the product or until September 1, 2007, whichever is earlier."
**** In two years you can not perform online banking!!!

TheGrayMan said:Reviewers have absolutely trashed MS Money 2005 on Amazon.This happens every year at Amazon and I don't put much credence in the reviews. It seems to be a matter of a large and prolific pro-Quicken, anti-Microsoft contingent at work.

The most recent PC Magazine review gave the nod to Money in a heads up comparison study.

I'm currently using Quicken Deluxe 2003. I've been a Quicken user for over 10 years, and have never used money.

That being said, I'd happily move to Money if I thought it was going to be a big improvement. Intuit's policies and lack of fixes is quite annoying. I tried Quicken 2004 but swiftly dropped it and stayed on 2003. I'm considering an upgrade to '05 but don't see the need just yet. Maybe at tax time, when they are bundling Quicken with Turbotax, I'll get a copy.

And I'll readily cede that Money gets better reviews than Quicken. It's just that, for me, it's not worth the headache to make the switch, and get used to a new interface, when there aren't any feature difference that are driving my changing.

To add my two cents to the discussion... I used to have Money 2000, then 2002. I stopped using Money 2002 for a variety of reasons - mostly, just not being organized enough at the time. This year, when I wanted to do a new budget, I decided to start with a clean slate and purchased Quicken Premier 2005. I figured that this software is the market leader, so I hoped that it would not have some of the annoying issues that Money had. Guess what? It had all the same annoying issues, and it was a lot less sophisiticated than what I was used to with Money. Just as an example that first comes to mind, I could not specify on my credit card accounts that an introductory rate was in effect, and when it expires. That's important to me personally, and not having this feature was a turn-off. Having spent a number of hours with Quicken, I became disappointed. And the fact that it didn't easily accept the QIF format was the deal breaker. So I went back to Money, purchasing the Deluxe 2005 package.

My review so far? In a nutshell, I like it. It's MUCH improved from what I remember from 2002, and overall, a significantly more sophisticated software package than Quicken. It has better features, more intuitive interface. Does it solve all my problems? Of course not. Having read a lot of the Amazon and other reviews, I can see how people are annoyed when their financial software doesn't do EXACTLY what they want. But I have also come to realize that there is no single financial software package out there that will do it. Just like with any software, one also has to adapt to it at the very beginning because it will never be a perfect fit.

If you're not in a hurry to buy a software package now, I would also recommend you wait for a couple of months, until MSFT irons out all the kinks. One big disappointment for me is that it doesn't "talk" to Ameritrade, although they are supposedly "working" on it. I'm sure that they'll fix it eventually. Ultimately, I think that Microsoft will end up the winner in this race between Quicken and MS Money, and I'd rather bet on the winner right now than having to switch my entire financial history to a different program a few years down the road.

meehawl said:
I have Money 2005
....
And yes, the EULA reminds you upon install that you only get two years online banking with the product. Software as leased service. Welcome to MS's new revenue maximisation strategy. God knows I was running Money 2001 for so many years it wasn't funny, especially if you were a bean counter in MS.


Thanks for that insight meehawl. Do you know when this limitation was introduced? I'm wondering if a good compromise would be to use the very last version BEFORE Microsoft limited the ability to use online services. I am using Quicken 2002 Deluxe still, and would not want to have to upgrade 2 years if I made the switch to MS Money 2005.

SliverOfFear said:
Student loan accounts. I have three separate school loans all though the same institution. I write one check which covers the payment amount on all three loans. In Money I have set this up as 3 separate accounts, since they have different interest rates, payment amounts, etc. The problem is that I can't split up my transaction to go to three separate loans/accounts. I had to setup a dummy account that the money was "transferred" to, from which I could then apply the different amount to the different three loans.

Anyway, I am definitely not using the full power of this package since I can't get it to work how I want. Just my 2 cents.

SoF: I think there is way to do what you want to do at least for the student loan accounts. Can't you use the "split" feature on the transaction and then split up the payment accordingly?

bk330ci said:Do you know when this limitation was introduced? I'm wondering if a good compromise would be to use the very last version BEFORE Microsoft limited the ability to use online services.

Money 2004 specifies no limited duration for online services. Of course, because MS reserves the right to amend the terms and conditions of Money's online services and partner offers unilaterally, your guess is as good as mine as to how long Money 2004 will be able to access online services.

DaveHanson said:Good point about QIF, giddemyer. Has anyone confirmed that MS Money 2005 still supports QIF?The beta did. QIF->OFX converters are out there. Most institutions are switching over, anyway...TheGrayMan, the point about a 2-year window for online banking is disconcerting if true. Has anyone confirmed this? I take it money 2004 does NOT have this limitation?I am surprised by this. What a perverse limitation! I can't imagine why anyone would buy it, except through the "better than FAR" deals that may pop up. Glad I managed to ditch it for GNUCash! What do they mean by "online banking, though?" The services through MSN money (billpay, credit monitoring, online account consolidation)? I can see this. But if they mean auto-downloading of statements, that would be a stupid move!

EDIT: I guess it does also mean downloading statements and stock quotes (which should be cheap for MS to give away--you can, after all, get this info manually). Quicken's QIF importer expires after a similar timeframe too. Wow--encouraging upgrades by annoying your customers.

I'm a Quicken user. . .have been for years. I'm also an accountant I spend as much time in Excel as I do in my personal Quicken (like a true fw'er).

Every year a new version of Quicken comes out, I ALWAYS upgrade to the new version. I figure it's a small investment if it's going to help me better manage my finances. If it keeps me from missing only one late payment (or other costly mistakes), it's pretty much paid for itself.

In all of my upgrade years I have never had more problem's than with this year's version of Quicken. And I'm talking about going backwards here. . .things that worked before, now do not work and it's a PITA.

Simple stuff like my two biggest issues:
-My scheduled paycheck with a mass of deductions now loses all of it's split categories. So if I had classified the paycheck to go to 12 different categories, upon upgrade, the program lost all of that information. And I have TONS of scheduled transactions! It's been a lot of work to recrate that stuff and this problem continues to re-create itself.

-The "out of reconciliation" tool that warns you that you deleted a reconciled transaction that now causes your account to be out of balance never comes on anymore. Hate that.

I discover more problems each day too.

I'm curious as to the comment about "Money is more sophisticated." Allowing you to enter an introductory rate on a credit card is way cool. I can't do this in Quicken and it's stressful if I were to forget to pay the balance when the introductory rate was up (and like a true FW'er, I have about 5 of these I'm floating on right now).

I think it would be helpful to list the things I CANNOT do in Quicken and see if others have solutions or if Money does these things:

-Like SliverofFear mentioned, Quicken cannot budget it NET income (after payroll deductions). In my budget, it shows me when my federal tax was $50.00 outside of budget (maybe due to a raise or something). I don't care. Net net, my paycheck was bigger. Just show me the net increase. I have "heard" in Quicken that you can group expenses. I've been thinking you could maybe create a group of expenses and income called Net Paycheck and then have that one group flow to your budget as one item. I haven't tried this.

-I struggle greatly with business expenses. I travel a lot for work and currently I have $12,000 in expense receivables. I dump everything into a seperate account to track seperately, but it's hard to reconcile what I've expensed, what I haven't, what I've been reimbrused for, and what I haven't.

-I took a loan out of my 401(k). Can you say QUICKEN NIGHTMARE??? I have no idea how to do this. Currently it looks like my 401(k) return % is in the tank because I "lost" all this money. I have no idea how to fix this. I even used their "wizard" to enter the transaction. . .I don't know what happened.

-For awhile I could never get my 401(k) balance to accurately reflect FMV. After a great deal of searching I finally figured out that in this very tiny menu there are historical prices and somehow a very low futuristic price got in there and was making the balance appear very low.

-Quicken has a Cash Flow Forecast that is one of my favorite tools. You put in monthly income and expenses and it shows you a timeline and how your cash is going to grow. When you feeling down, hating your job, fire this baby up and it shows you that in 10 years you'll have $1m in cash (or whatever). And it'll save mulitple versions of the forecast, so I estimated 5 years ago what I would have today, then I did another estimate 3 years ago, then I have today's actual and I can look at all three graphs stacked on top of each other to see how my estimates have changed over the years. Problems: this tool doesn't pool from your budget. You're basically entering your budget all over again and you're maintaining two sets of numbers in the same program. Also, I have a terrible time reconciling the numbers. The tool says I have $12,000, but in my account I only show $8,000??? Where is it getting the information.

-Flexible spending accounts: same thing as business expenses. I spend more than is in the account, so I submit a bunch of receipts. I want the program to remind me when I need to submit more receipts.

-(this one is so minor and easy it drives me nuts). . .I get paid on the 15th and the last day of the month. . .why can't the scheduled transaction adjust for weekends?? If the 15th falls on a Saturday, the deposit will happen on Friday (or maybe Monday, it should be a parameter). Same with expenses. I don't know how many times I've mixed up credit card payments because it falls on a Sunday and they wanted the payment YESTERDAY.

-For my budget, how do you show a transfer to an account as an "expense"?? I want to know how my cash situation looks from month-to-month, but I can't tell my budget that I have a student loan payment $xx.xx, a mortgage payment of $xx.xx, and a credit card payment of $xx.xx because those aren't really expenses. They're more of just a "transfer" to another account for Quicken.

-Investments are a huge gray area with Quicken. Until two years ago, I didn't even track my 401(k) in Quicken because it was nearly impossible. Today it's still really hard (and I have an accounting background). The program puts in these "placeholder" entries (I have no idea what these are); they drive me nuts. There is such a big slew of reports it's hard to tell what report will give you what information. My background is not strong in finance. . .I just want to know how my 401(k) is doing, but it's next to impossible.

-Quicken help on things like refinancing, closing costs, and ESPP SUCKS. I've had to post messages on FW to understand how to do track these things.

-Is there a way to accrue expenses?? My property tax is $3,000 a year. I want to be able to recognize a portion of that as an expense each month, but not have it affect my cash. I can't find a way to do this.

-The tax planner is hard to use. I have certain accounts that hold income and expenses that I want Quicken to reference, but it just doesn't seem to work that way.

-Also, why can't they build in FICA, state, Medicare, and federal withholding rates to help us better estimate withholding for my paycheck?

-The retirement planner is kindof cool, but I just want to understand how the program calculates that I'm going to have $4m by retirement age because I just don't believe it. The tool is just black box you're supposed to rely on??

-How do I estimate real estate appreciation (or other types)??

-If I do have credit cards and I do miss the payment by a day or two (or if I have money in and out of my HELOC while it's not floating on 0% credit cards) why can't Quicken help me calculate the interest on those? There is a Loan wizard. I used it to set up my mortgage, but I don't find it easy to use.

I'll stop there. I'm sure people are getting bored with my issues.