I'm done with Quicken. What's a good alternative?

August 28, 2024 8:55 AM

I've been using Quicken (on the desktop) for 20+ years, and I'm just done. $50-$70 per year for product whose user experience dates back to the 90s, is sluggish even on modern processors, and has all sorts of cryptic error messages. What's a good alternative to this?

I'm so sick of Quicken's workflows that all I use it now is to download and review transactions on 20+ accounts (half of which rarely have transactions, so it's more of a warning), and reconciling accounts with statements to look for weird things. I don't do any reporting, check issuing, or any other functionality in quicken.

posted by Mushroom12345 to Work & Money (7 answers total)

I pay $100 a year for a service called Monarch. Worth a look unless the money angle is a main annoyance.
posted by creiszhanson at 9:19 AM on August 28 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I also use Monarch and like it. I shifted from Quicken to Mint about 4 years ago, and then when Mint was discontinued I shifted to Monarch. I especially like the way it allows you to review transactions and set up and manage budgets. My biggest complaint is the way it handles goal tracking. I finally gave up on that function and track that separately in a spreadsheet.
posted by OrangeDisk at 9:35 AM on August 28

Best answer: I think I’m coming up on ten years with YNAB, but you have to kind of learn to ignore how it’s opinionated in terms of its “four rules”. (It’s gotten better about this in the time i’ve been using it.)
posted by supercres at 9:51 AM on August 28 [1 favorite]

I'm interested in the answer to this thread - but I'm OK with my ancient Quicken 2012. My issue is that I don't want to do anything cloud- or web-based. I really don't want my financial information anywhere on the 'Net, especially given some of the recent breaches and the fact that many breaches are reported months after the occurrence.
posted by TimHare at 10:09 AM on August 28

Best answer: You can use Tiller which imports all your stuff into fancy spreadsheets. The upside is you can fiddle with them to your heart's content, which is also the downside. There isn't a clean way to reconcile statements.
posted by credulous at 10:27 AM on August 28

Best answer: I've been using MoneyDance. It's cross-platform, inexpensive, you buy the software and it's yours. Or it was last time I checked. Good service, good upgrade policy. Reliable. Not sluggish.
posted by amtho at 10:33 AM on August 28

Quicken has an online tool called Simplifi. I migrated there when Mint shut down and have have generally been happy with it.
posted by chrisamiller at 10:44 AM on August 31