Recommendations for money programs(Quicken, etc)?

[Greensleeves]

Can you recommend a good money program? I saw on another thread someone uses her money program to balance her checkbook--it seems too good to be true! I would love anything that would make it easier. Tell me what works for you.

[tempestjewel]

I use Mircrosoft Money and I love it, but my BIL works there and I got it cheap, so that's why I got started in the first place. It is awesome though. You can link it up with all of your online banking accounts, but I do mine manually because it just got to confusing for me to do it that way (I'd pay for something and I hated waiting for it to "clear"). You can list out all your bills and deposits and make sure things balance, make savings goals, and customize a flexible budget. By flexible, I mean if you overspend one category you can reallocate from another fund on screen and see how everything works out. It has helped us to see exactly what all our accounts are worth and it projects out spending habits into the future to help you forgo going "into the hole". I've found it immensely helpful! It even reminds you of upcoming bills! It helps me keep my cool, but I'm one of those people who just loves nitpicking at stuff like this :

[DahliaRW]

I use MS Money and love it too (but my dh is the BIL listed above, so needless to say we get it cheap too). It is handy to track spending and fun to see the pie charts and graphs of what you spend your money on. It's also nice because you can split receipts when you enter them into different categories (i.e. if you bought clothes and groceries you can put part of the purchase under clothing and the other under groceries). It also lets you know when you go over a budget you set, which is handy (but also annoying at times!).

[Greensleeves]

Microsoft money sounds great, I will have to check it out! I like the idea of a pie graph showing what we spend. We don't spend frivolously at all, but we also need to know where our money is all going to!

Do you use Microsoft money to balance your check book too?

Thanks for the feedback!

[DahliaRW]

Originally Posted by Greensleeves

Do you use Microsoft money to balance your check book too?

Yup. We don't even use the register that came with the checkbook. We just make sure to back up the Money file weekly or so and save it on a seperate computer (or burn a CD or whatever) so that if one computer goes down we still have the records.

[tempestjewel]

I use it to balance the checkbook, but I also record purchases in the register. It helps me to make money not so "abstract" when so many bills are just automatic withdrawal these days. I feel like it helps me to be more consciously aware of where the money is going. But you can do it either way, which is what is great about using the program!