The demise of Microsoft Money

Microsoft's announcement this week that it would discontinue the sale of Microsoft Money leaves just one main player among downloadable personal software products: Intuit's Quicken. Microsoft says Money downloads will no longer be available after June 30 of this year, and that customers must activate the software by January 31, 2011. Click here for more details on what Microsoft will continue to support, and for how long. 

In the June issue of Consumer Reports Money Adviser we reviewed both downloadable and online personal finance software, focusing how how well they tracked spending and budgeting. We found Microsoft Money Plus Deluxe and Quicken Deluxe 2009 both pretty similar, and pretty good. Microsoft Money had many of the same features as Quicken, but was easier on the eye. Both provided lots of different ways to display transactions, trends, and the like. Indeed, for those folks who will be switching over, Quicken has all the bells and whistles you'll need.

If you just can't abide going with the market leader, there's another downloadable competitor, AceMoney. It's a little more reasonably priced: $30 versus the $40 we paid for the others, plus no additional fee for later upgrading. While it offers a number of the same functions as Money and Quicken, we found its graphics rudimentary. It also lacked the variety of reports for analysis that the other products offered. But you can check out a free, more limited version, AceMoney Lite, and see how you like it.

Reducing the number of entries in this field isn't good for consumers, who benefit when like products compete. But with the advent of free, server-based products, such as Yodlee Money Center, Mint and Geezeo, maybe Microsoft determined that the days of the download were numbered. (Quicken still sells both a downloadable version and a CD.)

Perhaps Microsoft will take a cue from Intuit, which recently launched Quicken Online, an admirable free online service we found easier to use–though less comprehensive–than traditional Quicken. We also reviewed Yodlee, Mint, and Geezeo. We found ad-free Yodlee most comprehensive. And while the much-publicized Mint offers much to like, at this point in its development it doesn't let you input checks that haven't yet cleared, as the other three do. So unless all your transactions are electronic, you can't really know how much is left in your account to spend.

All of that means nothing to folks who balk at parking their financial information on a server. For them, the loss of old-style personal finance software–as if any software can be considered old-style–is a letdown. Hail and farewell, Microsoft Money, a worthy competitor.–Tobie Stanger

Comments

[Jake]

Are the online financial services secure enough to protect my personal financial information?

[Steve]

Take a look at YNAB - You Need A Budget (www.youneedabudget.com).

It is tightly focused on budgeting and expense tracking without the feature-bloat of Quicken or Money.

(I have no affiliation with YNAB except as a user.)

[John Doe]

Just to let you know, Mint uses Yodlee services in background. So far Yodlee has held itself from entering retain/public space, they target more enterprise clients (aka banks) to sell their services through APIs

[Lucia]

@Jake-
Yes. Security is top priority for these types of online services. I work with moneyStrands and we employ the latest security measures in line with banking and investment websites. Company policies and procedures are based on industry best practices (e.g. ISO27002), secure coding and data encryption. We do not sell or share user information.

Hope that helps!

Lucia
www.moneyStrands.com

[CRM Software]

I think MS generally provides good software in market.

[E. Nowak]

I use Quicken 2006 for Mac, and I've used it for years. And I used to use the online bill payment feature, too. UNTIL I read their license agreement and their privacy agreement (which, by the way, I had to find it on the internet).

According to their privacy agreement: "When you use our product or services, we collect the following types of information: Financial Information that you enter into online services such as Quicken Bill Pay (including account numbers, logins, passwords and transactional information). Your financial information is confidential. It is not used for anything other than providing and maintaining the service you have requested."

Sounds "ok" since I AM using their site for that purpose. But if you read further on: "We may use publicly available sources outside of Intuit to verify or supplement the information you give us. For example, we may obtain address updates from the U.S. Postal Service or demographic information from direct marketing companies. We use this data to help us maintain accurate records and to improve the products and services that we deliver to you."

Whoa!!! Basically they are saying when I use their online site, that they are going to not only collect my financial information, but they are THEN going to go out and find out even more about me! I'm sorry, but I think this is a HUGE invasion of my privacy! Do I believe that this is really to "maintain accurate records and to improve the products and services that we deliver to (me)"? NO! It's so they can give it to their "subsidiaries" within their company to try to sell me something.

Oh, and by the way, if your info gets stolen from them for some reason? They offer NO protection there. There are no laws governing if my info gets stolen. I can't sue Quicken. And really, who's really making sure the Quicken isn't selling my info anyway?

Also, according to the license agreement, "If and when you connect to the Internet to update your data, Intuit may also include Intuit Software updates (i.e., service
information, help content, etc.) in the update transmission." It's the "etc." that bothers me. That could be anything. But it probably means they are monitoring where you are going on the internet. Once again, they are snooping and collecting more and more info about you THAT IS NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS. No privacy there!

I absolutely object to anyone "uploading" anything from me without my consent or knowledge. (I now use a program called "Little Snitch" that alerts me when a web site or program surreptitiously does this. I think most people would be surprised to see how many programs or webs sites -- including this one -- "uploads" information from your computer to their sites.)

All of these "agreements" means that Quicken has very powerful snooping tool that they can find out an awful lot about me. And what are they going to do with this information? I have no control over what they are going to do with it. While I know that surfing the net is anything but private, and that huge amounts of information have already been collected about each and every one of us, I really resent it. And I don't understand why Americans are so complacent about this?

I will continue to use the software, but I will do everything I can not to use their online site or even update my software. (Which by the way, from what I hear, they don't do a lot of updating.)

[Doctor Gonzo]

As a very long-time user of Quicken (more than ten years), I say stay away from Quicken like the plague. It is the only software I know of where each successive release makes the software worse. Intuit makes sure you have no choice when it comes to upgrading: if you want to be able to download transactions from financial institutions into Quicken, you have to use a version from within the past three years. So like clockwork, I’ve upgraded every three years, and like clockwork, each step, from 99->2002, 2002->2005, and the latest, 2005->2008, have been a profound disappointment. The software gets buggier, slower, and features disappear. I’m giving up on Quicken after this. Now I just need to find something that will allow me to keep my 13 years of data that I’ve collected.

[Jen]

I'm with Steve -- take a look at YNAB. After using Quicken for 10+ years, we made the switch & have never looked back.

[Jim]

I endorse what Doctor Gonzo wrote above on June 19. Quicken 2009 won't download from one of the largest mutual fund companies in the world, American Funds. Yet Quicken in essence forced the users of Quicken 2006 to buy Quicken 2009 by a date certain, even though there were bugs in the new version. Planned obsolescence is ok - not really, but what the heck are we going to do about it? - if the new product is at least as good as the old product. But Quicken 2009 is no where near as good as the version we had before. This is not a good business practice, and Consumer Reports ought to be all over Quicken / Intuit in criticism of it.

[Jim]

Dont Rush to use Yodlee.

Because it was listed as an option in the article above, I entered all my account information into Yodlee.com.
(https://moneycenter.yodlee.com)

Accounts load rather painlessly, and the interface looks and feels user-friendly.

The challenge is that the site logs me off every minute, making all of the tools nearly useless.

[JR]

I think Microsoft is making a mistake by discontinuing Money. The online alternatives that I've researched don't even produce a standard income statement or balance sheet. Microsoft's customers, who had put years of personal data into the software, are going to feel abandonded. It makes one wonder if more software discontinuations are on the way. A better solution would have been to scale back some of the features of the program to save costs, and include it with the home version of Office. Or, Microsoft could have turned over the code to the open source community. In the meantime I've changed to the free offering "GnuCash", which is excellent, but does require a knowledge of accounting.