What can I replace Microsoft Money with, now that MS has abandoned it?
I've been budgeting with MS Money since 2004 and was pretty disappointed to hear it's being discontinued. Budgeting is actually a stress-relieving hobby for me, and I can be a bit of a control-freak when it comes to finances, so I decided to start early looking for a replacement rather than waiting until MS Money can no longer download transactions. Here are the pros and cons of the ones I've tried (updated 10/2010): You Need A Budget Pro (YNAB) - Based on the old envelopes system, YNAB has you allot money from each paycheck to a specific budget category (envelope). It encourages you to live on last money's income, and if you have trouble with overspending, that can be a great plan. Personally, I'm a big believer in the envelope concept, so that's the biggest pro I found. Also, it's a downloaded software, so once I've bought it (for about $50) it's mine, without forced upgrades as far as I've seen. The big con for me was that it does not automatically download transactions. I would have to sign on to each institution's website and manually download to the program. Also, coming from Money, I'm used to having features that YNAB doesn't offer, like the ability to store information about my accounts. Overall, it's forward-thinking and a good budgeting system, but will take some extra time to download transactions and isn't really a comprehensive management tool for all my financial needs. You can try it out with their free trial. Mint - This is a free online program. The free part was a major pro. It also looks pretty, if that's important to you. Updating is automatic, once you've got it all set up, so that's a pro. Mint's budgeting tools are so-so. Basically, you choose a category and tell it your limit. It yells at you (by text or email) when you cross the line, but doesn't seem to offer any other incentive to stay on budget.  When I first looked at Mint, it did not connect with my credit union, but it currently connects to all my banks and all but one of my student loan institutions.  Another recent improvement is that Mint now allows you to manually add transactions, including pending checks and cash transactions.  The cons for me are that it does not give me a good end-of-the-month report, doesn't allow me to enter details of my paychecks, and doesn't give me any cash-flow forecasting. Overall, Mint is a good casual, retrospective, free online tool, but doesn't allow for much planning ahead. Mvelopes - Here's another online option, but this one is subscription-based. Again, we find the old envelopes system, which I think is smart, so that's a pro for me. It's online, so it downloads transactions automatically, but also allows you to manually add transactions, so another pro. The big con on this one is the cost. Depending on how you far ahead you choose to pay (quarterly, yearly or biannually), you're paying $7.60 to $12 per month. They do offer a free trial for 14 days (plus another 14 days offered when you try to cancel). Another con is that they don't provide meaningful reports. Overall, a good concept, but not worth the cost for me. Quicken - I hadn't tried Quicken earlier because they don't offer a free trial, but after the last few fell short, I landed with Quicken 2009. Pro for Quicken, as an MS Money user is that it is remarkably similar in format and options. The registers and reports are nearly identical. One frustration I'd had with Money was that it was ridiculously slow at start-up, and after a year or so of entering data, Quicken is dragging. Con for Quicken, again as an MS Money user, is that it's budgeting is not as detailed as I would like.  Also, it does not download transactions smoothly now that my banks all ask security questions as part of sign-in.  I have to sign in to my bank's website and manually download.  Quicken 2011 is out now, but I haven't tried it yet.  Hopefully they've solved the problem of security questions.  Quicken 2011 promises an improved cash-flow forecast, which sounds promising, and was a feature of MS Money that I have very much missed.  Haven't decided yet if it's worth the $50 to upgrade to 2011. I use GnuCash which I really like.  However, I've never used any other personal finance software so I can't really compare.  Before GnuCash, I used an Excel spreadsheet which works fine for very basic finances. Pros Cons Well, you could replace it with.. itself! Microsoft Money Plus Sunset versions The Microsoft Money Plus Sunset versions are replacements for expired versions of Microsoft Money Essentials, Deluxe, Premium, and Home and Business. They allow existing customers to use MoneyPlus to continue accessing their data. Changes to the new versions include file conversions from older versions of Money, no required activation, no online services and no assisted support. Microsoft Money Plus Sunset is available now. Download at: http://www.microsoft.com/money/sunset.mspx How complicated is your budget? We have a fairly in depth excel spreadsheet that does the trick for us. Lots of formulas and whatnot for calculating income, outgo, expected and actual expenses, expenses budgeted over time (i.e. planned expenses that are semi-annual or annual) as well as the necessary emergency funds based on expenses.  Took me a few hours to initially create and many tweaks over months to get just right but it's reliable and we know we'll never lose support for it. I'd be willing to share it if desired, I'll just have to remove our personal finance figures from it first. Current Money users may want to take a look at this: http://sites.google.com/site/pocketsense/home/msmoneyfixp1 Pretty easy (and secure) way to continue getting online data into Money. www.mint.com is a very good web site that can upload your financial data from your bank and analyze it for you. Security concerns seem to have been addressed reassuringly. MoneyDance Is the way to go.  I've been using it for years and it works well.  It keeps getting better, and best of all, it's completely cross platform!  Mac, Windows and linux! I used to use Quicken, but support for that has been suspended in the UK.  I had started using Mvelopes, but support for that was suspended as well!  What I use now is an IPhone app called IXpenseit to track my spending. I use http://moneydance.com/ it has Mac, Windows and Linux versions and works well for my needs. Uh, Quicken is virtually identical to MS Money. If you liked money and don't want to change, use that. I use MoneyStrands.com to manage my spending. It's a lot like Mint, but provides support for more banks, and works with most Canadian financial institutions. I can't really compare them fairly though, since I didn't bother with Mint after learning that they don't care about Canadians. If your bank isn't supported by MoneyStrands, or you don't want to trust an online webiste with your account login, you can create accounts for manually uploaded files. It just means you have to log into your bank yourself, download the transactions as QFX, OFX, CSV or other supported formats, and then upload the files to the appropriate account in MoneyStrands. I love the expense tracking and reporting that MoneyStrands offers, but like Mint, their budgeting feature is seriously lacking. Fortunately I don't need to budget month-to-month, I just use it to see how much I spend on various categories, to help create annual budgets and decide how much I can invest or use for a vacation. I have been using Acemony http://www.mechcad.net/products/acemoney/ for a couple of years now and extremely happy with it. Very simple and intuitive to use. The best part is - life-long free upgrades If you would like to use linux I suggest you to use KMyMoney http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/ It is based on gnucash but it is easier to use IMO hledger is a free software, cross-platform double-entry accounting tool I've been working on for a while. It has command-line and web-based interfaces to your local data, and some other interesting features. There's also ledger (http://wiki.github.com/jwiegley/ledger/) which is command-line only. These are.. different, but worth a look for some folks. I have used Quicken for over 10 years.  It has always provided the information I needed and I have always received good support from Intuit. Check the Financial section in this list of Open Source Software I suggest you to test AlauxSoft Accounts and Budget. This software is a money-like. There is a freeware and a shareware (24 EUR). You will find its at http://www.alauxsoft.com Best regards, Michel ALAUX.
"I have to disagree with Scott's point about bank's ability to reimburse you for money withdrawn by people who stole your debit-card - that is only limited to transactions taken place after you reported the lost of the card (http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre04.shtm).  In the event that someone got into your banking account and conduct transactions without your knowledge, you are pretty screwed unless you can prove it wasn't you who did the transaction.  The same goes for people whose debit card was ""copied"" (e.g. by swiping through those hacked ATM) - the bank's insurance policy doesn't kick in until you report loss. Mint.com is very nice website and too bad it doesn't work for Canadians.  I instead opt'd for Yodlee (moneycenter.yodlee.com) which is the engine behind Mint but works for Canadians (but without all the social network aspects/features).  These sites are good for aggregating your various personal financial info online, but none of them are good enough (yet) for me to ditch my Microsoft Money - oh wait, MS has decided to discontinue the product and I need to look another one... Chris" According to this site:   If you think the plan trustees or others responsible for investing your pension money have been violating the rules, you should call or write the nearest field office of the U.S. Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA (formerly PWBA)). Looking at EBSA's FAQ for abandoned plans finds:   EBSA has developed an Abandoned Plan searchable database to help participants and beneficiaries find out if a particular plan is in the process of being, or has been, terminated. The site is searchable by plan name or employer name and will provide the name and contact information for the QTA, if one exists.  If you do not have access to a computer to conduct the search, you may contact one of EBSA’s Benefits Advisors to assist you by calling toll-free, 1.866.444.EBSA (3272). So I would try searching the database for your plan.  If that doesn't help, you can call EBSA and ask for more specific assistance.  Or use the contact us page to find an alternative contact method. He gets a lot of praise, but I'm unsure if it's more due to his own skill or Ballmer's incompetence. Seriously weird decisions happened during his time as a CEO. Even at the time, the Nokia thing didn't make much sense and was very controversial.  Nadella is also directly responsible for breaking new ground as forming the first [ad supported operating system](http://www.google.se/search?q=windows+10+ads), a move not going into the history books for the right reasons.  But yeah, besides this, he seems to be the right person for the company. During his time, we've also got things like the high quality Microsoft Surface lineup, and the Ubuntu subsystem on Windows. Hell, maybe ads is even what Windows 10 needs, I have no idea. I guess it depends on how the general public takes it, how much people care, versus how much they give Microsoft. Personally it's helped me realize how little I actually depend on Windows nowadays. It's new times now, with so much and so many services web based. The strings that have tied me are getting weaker and some have already broken. Photo post-processing and library management via Adobe Lightroom has been a strong one, but Raw Therapee is becoming very good indeed. In common with many companies, Microsoft has been engaging in share buyback programmes, where it buys its own shares in the market and then cancels them. It's often a more tax-efficient way to distribute profits to the shareholders than paying a dividend. So there were more Microsoft shares in circulation in 1999 than there are now. See here for information. A desktop application that has the same features (although as already stated, nothing will be identical but if you are looking for functionality then certainly there will be) and pretty simple to use was Microsoft Money, however, Microsoft stopped supporting it with newer versions and while the existing versions will work, I still use mine, there will be no future updates. I like the interface, its simple to use and has all the features you want. They abandoned it in favor of Intuit's Quicken but personally I am not a fan of the Quicken interface. They still had a more extensive and probably too much for the average user application called Office Accounting, but they abandoned future updates and supports on that in favor of Intuit's Quickbooks. Again, I am not a fan of the interface but they are very feature rich including invoicing and payroll, again overkill for the average user. They still have the Small Business Accounting in the form of Microsoft Dynamics, but that is utterly overkill for personal use. I generally don't trust online or cloud based accounting solutions like Mint or even Quicken online because I don't trust my information security to some third party without knowing how they are securing it and what will happen to me if/when they are leaked due to breach. So I like to keep everything local to myself and that's a good move for you, you should do that. It seems at the moment the market standard without much competition is Quicken for personal use and Quickbooks for small business. I would recommend you start with Quicken and if your needs increase in the future, you can easily transfer into Quickbooks to scale up as they are fully compatible with each other. Check it out here and compare their products to see what works best for your needs. Maybe in front office. My wife has now worked for three big banks in various asset management roles and her current place (one of the largest European banks) just upgraded to Outlook/MS suites in 2016. Before that it was Lotus. The transition took a year and was horribly managed. Her whole department's IT consists of one guy supported by their Indian global centre which is (apparently) not very good.  Similar horror stories at her last place, one of the Japanese giants. "I currently use Mint for this, which I see that you have already disqualified but not why you have disqualified it.  Set ""budgets"" for how much you want to spend on what type of expense, and then be sure to assign expenses to a budget as they come in. Mint actually learns what expenses go to each budget and eventually does it automatically." Capital One 360. No minimums balance, no fees. Everything's online. Make deposits using an app or an image of the check. ATMs are free almost everywhere.