Sometime in the early 1990's, when I started working, I decided to get some software to manage my personal finances. I had a paycheck, but had no idea where all the money went every month. I knew I paid rent, phone, power, ate food, bought clothes, partied (a lot!) and at the end of the month, seemed to have no cash left over. Sounds normal for a kind in their 20's.
I bought Microsoft Money (I was using Windows in those days). Money allowed me to download statements from my bank and track where it all went. Seeing my Net Worth report in those days was a depressing sight. I persisted and got into the habit of tracking my income and expenses using Money. It was easy to use, easy to see what was going on and easy to better manage my meagre budget.
Tardis to 2002 and you'll find me migrating my old data from trusty Money to Quicken on the Mac. Not so fast, Hiltmon! You see, by then I was employed out of Hong Kong and living in Japan. Money had no problem tracking my still meagre bank balances in Aussie Dollars, Hong Kong Dollars and Japanese Yen. But Quicken for the Mac is single currency and could not load in all my accounts from Money!
Intuit's web site recommended creating foreign currency accounts as investments and then manually putting in the exchange rate to value that investment. As if that was a smart solution! Not! You cannot transfer money between one account and another that way, you have to manually create a withdrawal from one and a deposit in another. You cannot have securities in a foreign currency (like Euro stocks in a US dollar account). And you have to go through the process of manually re-valuing each account every time you want to get a full picture. Hassle factor - high. Yuk!
Since it was all that was available at the time, enter work-around stage left. I created a Quicken file for each currency and managed each separately. Whenever I want a Net Worth report, I copy the balances into Excel and add it up. Hassle factor - medium.
Rumors on the web at the time had it that Quicken would match the Quicken for Windows feature set in the next version for Quicken for Mac (Quicken for Windows is multi-currency and can do all of the above). Nope, not happened! Not the next version or the version thereafter. What gives Intuit? Huh? Selling a product on two platforms with the same name and different feature sets! Mac users are not good enough? Gaah! Get smart and match feature sets, no more money from me or anyone I known until then!
I have recently been researching alternative software to get me back to the same functionality as I had with Microsoft Money but for my Mac. The top two these days seem to be MoneyDance and iBank. I have looked at both for a trial period, and they are both excellent software products. However, they still don't get close to Money.
MoneyDance is full featured and very popular. But, its not Mac software and I find the interface non-intuitive and quite frustrating. iBank is much more Mac-like and easier to use. Both handle foreign currency accounts in the same interface, both allow for management of portfolios and investments, and both import data just fine. They all do budgets and credit card tracking and all the basics. I feel that MoneyDance has the edge in reporting and I do like the idea of using plugins to get prices and rates so you can change the source. iBank has the edge in just plain usability although it does seem to have some rough edges and odd interface inconsistencies too.
So what is stopping me from leaving Quicken behind and switching? Well, MoneyDance fails my esoteric view that I want a Mac-like program, and iBank does not handle investments in more than one currency (nor do both store historical prices which I do use in Quicken to see portfolio performance). Microsoft Money on Windows is still the leader in personal financial management software and until hell freezes over and Microsoft releases it for Mac or Quicken, MoneyDance or iBank get a matching feature set, I'll save my money and use what I have got. Or write my own...
BTW Virtual PC, Windows and Money was tried and rejected ages ago! Costs too much!
The hiltmon has left the website...
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