Thu 17 Jul 2008
It’s worth doing a quick review of personal finance tools…? while it’s fun to talk about the macro-economy, sometimes we just need to make sure our own little micro-corner of our personal finances are under control too.? The established players in the space are our old Quicken and MS Money:
I personally have a love/hate relationship with Quicken.? It is some of the worst software I’ve used, especially with the 2008 version.? It’s so bad that I would have stopped using it if it weren’t so darn useful.? A while back, I went looking for alternatives to Quicken or Money…
- Mint
- Wesabe
- Quicken Online – would it be less annoying than the desktop software?
- You Need a Budget
- Geezeo
- Yodlee’s MoneyCenter
- Rudder
The main drawback to almost all of these is that they are online/website solutions.? Can I trust my personal finances to some company’s website?? Beyond the usual paranoia of trusting other people, some of the marketing material leaves me a little curious how serious their security really is.
Anyone tried these out and have some feedback or suggestions?
July 31st, 2008 at 10:54 pm
FYI, Microsoft Money uses Yodlee to power it’s vital “Automatic Updates” feature so you can easily keep your accounts up to date. So using Microsoft Money is really just getting Yodlee with extra reporting/alerting/manipulation options tacked on.
I’ve tried Yodlee and found it OK, but simply awful at tracking true Investment activity…like tracking the true cost of your investment portfolio as you rebalance and/or buy/sell – it’s like every time you buy something you start all over on a cost basis and any past profits are erased, eliminating many helpful month-to-month, year-to-year tracking and reporting features by undermining the data entirely. Not cool.
All in all, I haven’t seen any tool that provides the reporting, alerts, and other key features that Money and Quicken provide, even in their puzzlingly flawed-to-this-date form.
BTW, I’ve met the project manager for MS Money…he’s a great guy but he left MS after the 99 version was released. Since I haven’t seen any forward movement on any feature I care about since Money 99, me thinks that his position wasn’t actually replaced…or at least it wasn’t replaced by someone who’s committed to improving the nuts and bolts of this basic finance tool but rather a graphic designer who thinks new button icons and menu option placement will justify the cost of the upgrades…
July 31st, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Also, it’s sad to me that neither Money nor Quicken tie into additional tools, like financial blogs, e-mail alerts, or other potential mashups/linkups for non-secure portions of the software. There’s so many potential tie-ins and useful financial stuff they could put in there, both free (like allowing you to put RSS feeds to places like Fool.com or Morningstar.com on your welcome page…which Microsoft and Quicken could get a little money stream going with their preferred RSS feed providers) and for direct profit (like “hey, we just saw that your investment accounts are now worth $1mil, and we think it’s time for you to contact an estate planner. Here’s some planners in our preferred network…” and obviously they would have a finders fee for any referrals that their software generated…and it would be generating these referrals automatically on thousands of personal computers out there…). There are so many ideas that are missing from all the versions that have rolled off the presses while Web 2.0 has marched forward at a steady pace of awesomeness….
July 31st, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Also, Jason G., since you are a recent Mac convert, have you considered iBank? http://www.iggsoftware.com/index.php
October 14th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Quicken Online is now free…
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10065050-2.html?part=rss
The article also mentions Buxfer… might be worth a check someday.