With Microsoft Money software no longer being offered, you may be wondering what other budgeting software products and tools may be available for use. The good news is that there are a lot of great alternatives to MS Money.
Here are a number of popular budgeting tools that you can check out:
Budgeting Tools and Software Products For Your Desktop
- Excel Spreadsheets: If you aren’t an Excel user, could it be because you’ve deliberately decided that spreadsheets are just too much of a bear to use? But it may be time to revisit how Excel works. I personally use this tool for my financial management needs. While it’s the most basic tool out there for your money (some desktop products are actually based on it), it’s also the most flexible one you’ll probably ever come across.
- You Need A Budget: I’ve covered the YNAB tools to some extent before — just check out my review of YNAB (You Need A Budget). YNAB Pro is a highly rated desktop budgeting tool which incorporates a methodology that strongly encourages you to stop living paycheck to paycheck. The product enforces a strategy that allows you to create a savings buffer while you budget. You can check out more details here.
- Quicken: This software is probably the best known alternative to Microsoft Money. On occasion, there’s a Quicken software discount offered on Intuit’s products that range from $20 to $50 off (depending on the product). The latest sales promotion will become available from June 15 to June 28 when you’ll be able to receive the aforementioned discounts. Quicken products include Quicken Deluxe, Premier, Home and Business, and Rental Property Manager, which you can pick up here.
- iBank: From IGG Software, we have this financial management software application for the Mac. The full version costs $59.99 and the software comes with a 30 day guarantee. It has some interesting features, including the ability to sync up your data with your iPhone, and the ability to manage your loans and investments. It’s also compatible with tax applications, allowing you to export your tax records to software like TurboTax.
- Moneydance: Here’s another software product that you can download. It appears to do the standard stuff that other products do, but there’s one thing that stands out about this application: the fact that it’s open source financial software that runs on a lot of software platforms such as the Mac, Windows, Linux and various Unix operating systems. Moneydance is also one of the fewer products that can support multiple languages and currencies. The downside? I haven’t tried it myself, but I’ve read that it comes with less features (bells and whistles) than more popular products of its kind. Could simplicity be a good thing? It’s available for $39.99 as of this writing.
What About The Free Financial Tools?
For your money management needs, there’s also the free online stuff that you can blame for the demise of Microsoft’s money software. So what are some of the buzzworthy online personal financial tools out there?
- Quicken Online: We’ve already discussed Quicken desktop products, but if you’re looking for an Intuit product that’s available at no cost, then try out Quicken’s free online version.
- Mint.com: This online personal finance tool is one of the most recognized in its space. I’ve actually covered them a little bit on this blog. Find out how Mint stacks up to similar tools in the following articles: Mint vs Thrive and Mint vs Wesabe.
- Wesabe: This is another great money management tool that comes with a highly regarded online community. They’ve got some cool forums too.
- Thrive: With this tool, you’ll be able to do the basics: make a budget, manage your spending, manage your savings, plan for your future and get a credit score. Check out my Mint vs Thrive post for more insights.
- moneyStrands: Yet another financial site to help you set up a budget, control your spending, and start saving… you get the picture. I’m sure there’s more where this came from.
With online banks, online brokers, free personal finance tools, sites and other desktop personal financial software products to compete with, Microsoft Money could no longer compete in the budget software marketplace, but hopefully the alternatives we’ve provided will make for good replacements.
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Any idea when the next version of Quicken comes out. I’m a 10 year user of Money and will make the jump to Quicken but don’t want to buy now and then find out one month later that a new version is available.
As always, thanks for the mention SVB. The move is an interesting one by Microsoft, made still more interesting by the fact that most of the personal financial management websites remain on the open market. It will be interesting to see if any of the big boys (Microsoft, Google) decide to make a strategic acquisition to help them compete in the space, or if it will be left to see who can consolidate the largest user base among the current handful of major players (Thrive, Wesabe, Mint, Rudder, Geezeo, etc.)
It is very important to know how much you spend and how much you earn to be able to understand if you are becoming financially free or getting into debt. Thank you for great tips.
The only tool I’ve used so far is GnuCash, a free, open source, cross-platform programme. So far I’ve used it mostly for tracking, but I suspect I could use it for pretty much everything financial I might need if only I’d take a bit of time to learn more.
I’m looking for something that I can have different “folders” within each account, so that in my savings account I can designate say, 10% to emergency, 25% to regular savings, 15% to vacation fund, etc. No online bank will allow me to do this within one account. Does anyone know of anything that will suit me?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t ING Bank have something like this? I wrote about it in my Orange Savings account review. With an ING account, you can create subaccounts (with labels) for your savings. But I’d love to hear other suggestions as well.
I wish my bank offered subaccounts like ING. Unfortunately I am not looking to switch banks, I was thinking more of some type of program or software that I could have just on my computer that would do this. I would also love any suggestions.
I use QuickBooks for my business. It’s the best, low cost solution. I’ll have a look at the products you’ve suggested for personal use. I never gave Money a second look – just wasn’t impressed.
The beauty of Excel is that it works across platforms. If you change from a PC to a Mac, you can convert Quicken data to Macintosh format…but you can’t change back! So you’re pretty much stuck with Macs now and evermore, unless you want to start all over. So if you base your taxes on data that you’ve entered in Quicken, you need to restart at the beginning of a tax year. If your Mac’s hard drive dies in July, you get to buy a new Mac, even if you really would like to switch back to a PC.
Also, newer versions of Excel will read data from much older versions. Quicken engineers obsolescence (by way of forcing consumers to keep buying new upgrades every couple of years) by seeing to it that new versions won’t read data from versions that are more than a few years old.
Excel will do most things Quicken will do; trouble is, it has quite a learning curve.
One that you forgot to mention is Piggy Banks (http://trypiggybanks.com). Its free, super easy to use as it walks you through setting up your budget and helps you stay within it, it downloads all your transactions automatically, and it *just* works.
Full Disclosure: I am the Marketing Director for http://www.budgetpulse.com. We are a free manual personal budgeting software. No security risks because we do not sync personal account information. International compatibility. We strive on a simple tool that anyone can use and still has excellent budgeting function. We have a new complete revamped site release coming in the next week or two. If anyone has any questions or would like to learn more, please feel free to contact me.
Craig Kessler
Marketing Director of BudgetPulse
craig@budgetpulse.com
I use a combination of Mint and spreadsheets. Mint takes extra time, believe it or not, but it can occassionally help you catch something you may not have caught on your own. It’s a checks and balances system.
@Jenny: if you are willing to switch banks, SmartyPig is one option for doing that. But you could also do it in Thrive through our Planning section – we take your savings account and split it into virtual “plans”, which you can then allocate your savings to as you wish. We already have a pre-made Rainy Day Fund goal to help you along and we’re working on a new feature that will make vacation planning and such easier.
I had heard that they were going to nix it (MS Money). Part of their overall strategy to cut back and trim the bottom line. I’ve always used Quicken and the price isn’t bad at all. Not sure I like the idea of all of my financial information online. Seems like you are just asking for trouble.
Great Post. Online tools are really helpful when it comes to managing finances. I use one too it’s called Billeo. It’s a free browser plug-in that tracks my expenses, which in turn helps me make a better budget each month. It also saves receipts, manages passwords and sends reminders when bills are due. Very handy!
I’ve been a spreadsheet user for many years going back to SuperCalc on an Osborne CP/M computer before DOS.
For the past 10 years or so, I’ve been using an Excel one. The first sheet projects ahead one payday at a time showing what expected bills I’ll be paying from that paycheck and has a running balance down the right column. I even created a graph showing my projected balance against time. The second sheet is my check register, set up just like a paper check register. It feeds back the checking account balance to the first page as the current balance. It’s gotten a little beyond the two basic pages, but that’s where the heart of it is.
I actually don’t use Excel, but rather OpenOffice.Org as it runs on my Ubuntu Linux system, too. The spreadsheet resides on a flash drive that I take with me to the office during the day. It’s automatically backed up to our home backup server each night.
The actual bottom line is that you should use what works for you. Everyone is different….thank goodness!