DIY personal finance.

September 6, 2005 1:10 PM

Personal Finance Filter: Covered previously here, here, and here. I need to track income and outgo, as my family unit has more money outgoing than money incoming. I've done this before with MS Money (2003), and Quicken for OS X (2002) and I'm looking for something better.

If you know the answer to any of the following questions, I'd be eager to see it.

1. Can I do this with Yodlee? How good is Yodlee for replacing the "what am I spending money on" features of MS Money or Quicken? I currently view aggregated account data for all my credit cards, investments and bank accounts using my Credit Unions IIS powered webpage, and I know that it is insufficient for tracking "what I am spending money on." For my immediate purpose, I don't need to track investments or net worth in quicken; I just need to figure out how much we need to cut from our budget, or how much more money we need to make.

2. Has Quicken gotten better in the last few years? It'd be my preferred solution, since I can use it under OS X. The last time I tried to use Quicken (Quicken 2002) it was an unstable, crashing OSX UI disaster.

3. Is moneydance worth even trying?

Also, if you have any other ideas for personal finance management, please post!

posted by u2604ab to Work & Money (6 answers total)

I use Moneydance. It's pretty simple and not particularly flashy. The basic functionality works the way it should, and there aren't many bells and whistles. It is a bit rough around the edges UI-wise but I'm used to it after a few months of daily use. The documentation is not great, however. I bought it because the price was right. Unless you need the more advanced features you'd get from Quicken, I see no reason to shell out the big bucks.

There's a program called Liquid Ledger out there for OS X that looks promising, but they have yet to release a demo version, so the only way to try the thing is to buy it and then refund it within 30 days (unless you want to keep it). Anyone here tried it?
posted by Succa at 1:18 PM on September 6, 2005

I use Gnucash. Is it completely free? Yes. Does it work? Yes. Is it beautiful? No. Does it try to lock you in like every commercial finance product? No.
posted by jellicle at 1:24 PM on September 6, 2005

Best answer: I use Quicken (2004?) for OS X. I'm cranky that the interface isn't the one window (or one webpage) format I'm familiar with from the PC, but it's never crashed on me in eighteen months of use. It does everything I need and more. (I had Quicken 2002, also, and refused to use it.)
posted by jdroth at 1:41 PM on September 6, 2005

You mentioned the "where do i spend my money" report in Quicken, but I think you'd really get what you wanted better with the Quicken "Cash Flow" report. This will list inflows and outflows by category and give you a total (inflows minus outflows) at the bottom. You want that bottom number to be black!

However, I just use an Excel spreadsheet with a simple pivot table and macro to update it. It's easy and I can manipulate it in anyway that I want to... I like the unlimited flexibility. If you want to check mine out, send me an email and I'll send you a copy.
posted by crapples at 1:53 PM on September 6, 2005

I use Quicken on OSX with no crashing problems.

The way I use it is like this: enter data for all accounts. Do that for long enough that I can generate averages and baselines, which enables me to come up with budget for regular expenses (rent, phone, trash, savings, etc.). Compare that to income, determine how much I have left for fluctuating expenses (entertainment, purchases, groceries). Set a monthly budget for fluctuating expenses. Get a second job if necessary; sell things on eBay.

Now, if it were just me in my household, I'd be able to tell every day or every week how close I was coming to my budget of fluctuating expenses, because I'd have only my receipts to enter. But since there are at least two of us buying things from the same credit cards and bank account, that gets complicated. So we have a lo-fi solution: on our kitchen counter sits one of those calculators with a paper-tape ticker. Every day whenever someone comes home, they enter their receipts into the calculator and update the ticker. This way, the last figure on the ticker shows our current balance, which we can easily consult when someone suggests they want to go to the mall or out to dinner. If it's towards the end of the month and we've still got $300 left -- sure! Some months we come in under the budget, and I don't carry that over to the next month, but put it into savings.
posted by xo at 2:52 PM on September 6, 2005

Response by poster: I marked jdroth as best answer because (s)he compares the current quicken to a product I used before and says it's superior.

Still, when I look at Amazon user reviews of Quicken 2005 and Quicken 2006, their brutal, and very much remind me of my dreadful experience with Quicken 2002.

Anyone use Yodlee for this?

I appreciate the suggestions of Liquid Ledger and Gnucash. I'll look into each of those.
posted by u2604ab at 5:09 PM on September 6, 2005