http://ask.metafilter.com/tags/quickenalternative Questions tagged with 'quickenalternative' at Ask MetaFilter. Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:13:51 -0800 Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:13:51 -0800 en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 http://ask.metafilter.com/83480/Personal%2DFinance%2DSoftware%2Dfor%2DMac%2DQuestion%2DDeluxe%2D2008%2DEdition Mac switcher / Intuit hater question: Is there a good alternative to Quicken for the Mac? My wife just got me a new MacBook as a pre-Valentine's day present (yes, she's awesome.) There are obvious equivalents for all of the applications I have on my old desktop (running XP), except one: Quicken. <br> <br> I know there's a Mac version of Quicken, but from what I hear it lacks a lot of the functionality of the Windows version. I also know that I could run the Windows version via Parallels, but that doesn't appeal to me for two reasons: a) the only reason for me to install Parallels/XP would be for Quicken, which makes the whole thing rather expensive, and b) over the last few years I've come to hate Intuit with the proverbial heat of a thousand suns just as much for their product-sunsetting, privacy-invading ways as for their insecure software. (Bastards.) So Quicken in either form is right out.<br> <br> Our requirements are fairly typical, I think. Our financial life is not crazily complex, but we've got investments and a mortgage so I think we need something more than an spreadsheet or an "envelope-based" program (like <a href="http://www.snowmintcs.com/products/budgetmac/index.php">Budget</a>). Some budgeting and forecasting capability would be nice. Being able to download transactions from online banking is a necessity. Whatever I choose, I don't want to be locked into a proprietary format, so the ability to use or export to a common format is vital. (Ability to import our previous history from Quicken is NOT important. I haven't been keeping up recently, so our Quicken file is pretty out of date at the moment -- I would be OK with starting over in a new program.) So, what personal finance software for the Mac should we look at?<br> <br> There's <a href="http://ask.metafilter.com/16554/Personal-Finance-Software-for-Mac-OS-X">this thread</a> asking the same question, but it's almost three years old, and the situation has probably changed. Mentioned in that thread are <a href="http://www.liquidledger.com/">Liquid Ledger</a>, <a href="http://www.iggsoftware.com/ibank/">iBank</a>, and <a href="http://moneydance.com/mac">Moneydance</a>. I also know about <a href="http://www.gnucash.org/">GnuCash</a>. Any opinions about these four programs? Are there other alternatives I should look into? tag:ask.metafilter.com,2008:site.83480 Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:13:51 -0800 apple finance financial mac money quicken quickenalternative software harkin banks