OK I am Officially Fed Up with Quicken - Moneydance anyone?

[RonBoyd]

The specific list I was referring to is the stock list that comes up when I want to manually update a price.

Ah! I see what you mean. This is when using the Extension (Plug-in) "Security Price Entry," I assume. TBH, I had never used that prior to two weeks ago when trying to find a solution to the Yahoo issue. I found it a little time consuming when working with all the securities in a portfolio. (That was the only time in 10 years that I had to manual update price for other that an individual security; which I did -- very rarely -- within the Portfolio screen.) Shortly after that, my copy of MD , upon opening the first time each day, began automatically updating the pricing to the previous days close. That is good enough for me until they (Infinite Kind) get the problem completely solved. (FWIW, my portfolio is 100% ETFs.)

In any event, this is a Plug-in and (from what I understand) open-source. The real solution would be to talk one of the many programmers who subscribe to the previously mentioned Forum that this is important enough to fix for you... or do it yourself. <chuckle>

 

[ejman]

I know I'm not "getting it" but this urge to update to the latest really befuddles me. I've been using Quicken since the early DOS days (started in 1992) and am currently using Quicken 2010 on a linux mint system in an old computer. This version doesn't nag me and works fine. Being retired, I have a dozen funds I track - 3 credit cards and one checking account. I update once a week which means I manually enter all transactions for the prior week and price updates for my funds. This takes me about 30-45 minutes a week at most. I know if I get the latest and greatest Quicken (assuming I can get it to work under linux) I could do the updating electronically but considering the volume of transactions I actually have what's the point for that and what am I missing?

 

[JoeWras]

I could do the updating electronically but considering the volume of transactions I actually have what's the point for that and what am I missing?

You are missing the privilege of being hounded every time you open the program to update, the privilege of having to sign on every now and then to get quotes, and the privilege of eventually paying a yearly subscription.

If all of that sounds exciting to you, please, by all means update ASAP.

 

[24601NoMore]

Check out FundManager for portfolio management instead. Q* should ideally only be for income, expense and budgeting.

FundManager blows Q* out of the water in every way for PF management and they have a purchase ($95 IIRC) model vs a ransom-ware (err.."subscription" model).

 

[RonBoyd]

vs a ransom-ware (err.."subscription" model).

This makes sense if you are like ejman (above) and purchase a program and never, ever, under any circumstances wish to change -- for better or worse. (full disclosure: I am in sympathy with that position but have never found it to work out the way I imagined.)

So the other two options are to:

1. Pay full price (or if applicable, an upgrade reduced price) every 12-18 months to get the most current version.
2. Pay a monthly Subscription fee (that in most cases averages out to less than the upgrade price) in order to have the most current version at all times.

I can see both sides:

1. What if I don't want to upgrade in 18 months? I want to do it every 36 months instead because the new "improvements" are not that important to me. I will simply wait for a "major" upgrade.
2. The company thinking: That in order to employ all these people and guarantee them a future, I need to have a steady source of income. The Bank is more accepting (sympathetic) of a steady monthly income than a "possible" future lump sum.

I lean toward the second choice primarily because I wish the Publisher to remain in business so I don't have to go through, what most likely would be, a steep learning curve for some new experiment. Which brings me full circle to the reason ejman's position has rarely worked out for me. YMVV.

In any event, in the long run, option #2 is financially better for most folks. But, admittedly, not all. Those that it doesn't make sense for, however, should not shame those that are better off making that choice... or vice versa.

 

[ejman]

This makes sense if you are like ejman (above) and purchase a program and never, ever, under any circumstances wish to change -- for better or worse. (full disclosure: I am in sympathy with that position but have never found it to work out the way I imagined.)

Sorry if I came across as a total Luddite - that was not my intention - I actually enjoy futzing around with techie things it's just that I'm having a very difficult time understanding the urge to update Quicken when the old version works fine and the time requirement to do manual updates is not that great (again I'm retired so time spent doing something I actually enjoy is not a minus even as some one else may look at it as a PIA). However, I'm certainly willing to consider an upgrade if there are real benefits to doing so. I just don't know what they might be in the case of Quicken.

 

[RonBoyd]

Sorry if I came across as a total Luddite - that was not my intention ...

I'm certainly willing to consider an upgrade if there are real benefits to doing so. I just don't know what they might be in the case of Quicken.

Me either. But, on the other hand, I gave up on Quicken a long time ago as being inadequate to my needs. But that is quite another story. <chuckle>

(FWIW, I didn't think of you as "totally" ancient. lol)

 

[aja8888]

I'd like to try Moneydance, but I'm fearful I'll just end up with the same issues Quicken had (I ended up returning Q for a refund and deleting all my files).

The different log-in requirements for different accounts - some requiring multiple security words, numbers, images - just flummoxed Quicken. Vanguard and T. Rowe Price loaded pretty reliably, but Q. couldn't even find my credit union or some other accounts, nor could it find all my credit cards. And if I'm going to have to manually input 75% of my transactions, what's the point of financial software?

Except for using my Quicken 2006 to maintain a check register, I don't track anything else these days. No need to since all spending habits are under control and I don't need to be able to see how much I spent at Walgreens in 1992.

 

[OldShooter]

The common element in all these subscription conversions (Windows subscription is coming, folks) is that the vendor is no longer willing or no longer able to develop and offer upgrades that are attractive enough to motivate users to pay. Decoupling revenue from development leaves the vendor free to invest as much or as little as he cares.

The subscription-based vendor's only serious motivation to invest is the threat that the subscription hostages will jump ship to a competitive product. That threat depends both on what competition is out there or coming and on the users' switching costs.

A serious risk in all these subscription scenarios is that user data is held hostage by the vendor. Want to access the encrypted Quicken data on your computer? "No problem, sir, but you will have to buy a Quicken subscription with a minimum term of one year." "The old copy of Quicken 2017 you have been keeping on your computer had a poison pill that disabled it two years ago."

There is AFIK no current example of a vendor holding user data hostage but it is an obvious possibility, especially if a vendor has chosen to abandon development and harvest the product, thus doesn't care what people think of his business practices.

Switching cost is most of what we are talking about here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switching_barriers Switching cost is not just dollars to buy the alternate software, it is things like the hours of manually correcting import errors, the time and aggravation to learn a new interface, and the loss of any features that the subscription software offered but the replacement does not.

Switching cost is the main thing that keeps us using the software we already have, something that Quicken is counting on.

 

[FIREd]

I ditched Quicken and went back to spreadsheets. I don’t miss it one bit.

 

[CoolChange]

What is Superior in Quicken, Moneydance, etc. to Spreadsheets?

I love just doing my own thing in Excel. (Well, actually in the Excel knockoff spreadsheet available in Open Office, because it is free). But I might feel differently if my portfolio or personal finances were not extremely simple.

Like W2R, I just use spreadsheets currently.

While I have used not only Quicken and Moneydance but also Microsoft Money in the [distant] past, I have always returned to my spreadsheet approach for easy of data entry/import, ability to easily see what is happening behind the scenes, etc. (For whatever it is worth, I prefer Moneydance to any of the other software packages mentioned; I just I like my own spreadsheets even better.)

Other than automated account updates, I am wondering what functionality people are using in these packages that beats spreadsheets: Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice/LibreOffice, Google Sheets, etc. Like several others here with IT and/or accounting backgrounds, I am not linking my tracking ledger (Quicken, Moneydance, etc.) to any of my accounts for automated updates.

The main question in my mind is whether I am missing something useful/valuable by foregoing one of these packaged solutions.

 

[RonBoyd]

Other than automated account updates, I am wondering what functionality people are using in these packages that beats spreadsheets: ...

The main question in my mind is whether I am missing something useful/valuable by foregoing one of these packaged solutions.

Good question and one I am interested in hearing the answer to. I have a fairly sophisticated Excel spreadsheet that I use for asset allocation assistance. Other than that, every thing else is done in Moneydance. I hadn't thought of investing the time to developing a home-grown alternative to MD. I guess I, too, don't know what I don't know... and now I am curious.

 

[braumeister]

I prefer Moneydance to any of the other software packages mentioned; I just I like my own spreadsheets even better.

I have a fairly sophisticated Excel spreadsheet that I use for asset allocation assistance. Other than that, every thing else is done in Moneydance.

Same here. Although I'm a fan of Moneydance, I'm equally a fan of my highly customized spreadsheet. I use Apple's Numbers (equivalent of Excel) and it has no problem automatically downloading the last closing prices of securities, which is a blessing given the current state of Yahoo's shutdown of that functionality.

 

[ZMAN]

I have been using Quicken since 1995 or so, first on a Mac and since Y2K on a PC. I actually experienced a Y2K problem at the turn of the millennium when my Quicken would not make the transition. I had to migrate my info to a PC as best I could.

Since then I have used Quicken to track family expenses and since 2008 my solo part time law practice income and expense.

In the last few years Quicken has become too dumb and unstable. It fails to categorize known transactions and sometimes loses the file, informing me that there is no file and acting as if I was just starting out. Since I run my business on it, this is particularly unnerving. I always back up after my monthly downloads and categorizing so I always have 2 copies of the latest file. But my stress levels soar during the hour or so it takes me to update my info.

Anyway I am switching to Mint as of the new year. I have been using Mint for a couple of months now getting it customized with sub categories and seeing if it meets my needs. The good part is the seamless capturing of my bank and credit card data and the ease of categorizing on a daily basis. The bad parts are the limitation in categories as compared to sub-categories and inability to have ready made custom reports.

But as I only need income and expense information and do not track investments (I do that on Vanguard), I believe Mint is the answer for me. And of course it is free.

It is ironic since Quicken is/was an Intuit product as is Mint. Intuit seems to have let Quicken decay before deciding to sell it off. I think this is part of the broader trend migrating away from desk top applications. I found the same problem when the vendor for my desk top legal billing system closed down saying he could no longer compete with cloud based billing systems. I promptly found a very simple cloud based billing system which is much better, cheap at only $100 per year, and accessible across all platforms, like Mint.

IMHO desktop based applications are becoming a thing of the past.

 

[cranberryjoe]

Thanks. The specific list I was referring to is the stock list that comes up when I want to manually update a price. MoneyDance support has confirmed that there is no way to "hide" items on that list. I assume there will be other situations like this on other pages but I am not far enough into the exercise to have found them.

The best support suggestion was to rename the old items with something like an "x" prefix so it sorts to the bottom of the list.

Here's how I've been manually updating stock prices in Moneydance since the Yahoo interface broke. The Moneydance Summary page (first page you see when you launch MD) shows a list of stock prices. It shows only the ones I own. I click on the price and it pops up the price history window where I can enter the current price. I never see the hundreds of stocks I used to but no longer own.

If it shows stocks you no longer own, click on the stock, click Edit, then uncheck "Show on Summary Page".

 

[OldShooter]

Here's how I've been manually updating stock prices in Moneydance since the Yahoo interface broke. The Moneydance Summary page (first page you see when you launch MD) shows a list of stock prices. It shows only the ones I own. I click on the price and it pops up the price history window where I can enter the current price. I never see the hundreds of stocks I used to but no longer own.

If it shows stocks you no longer own, click on the stock, click Edit, then uncheck "Show on Summary Page".

Thanks much. That's very helpful.

 

[cathy63]

... The main question in my mind is whether I am missing something useful/valuable by foregoing one of these packaged solutions.

There is nothing that I do in Quicken that I couldn't also do in Excel if I were sufficiently motivated. When I was working, I didn't have the time and energy to create my own financial tracking system and now that I'm retired, I find I just have other things I'd rather do. Just like it's worth it to some people to pay a service like Blue Apron to do their meal planning and shopping, it's worth it to me to pay someone else a reasonable amount (which I define as under $100/year) to build and maintain a tool that helps me track my finances.

I will give you a list of some of the Quicken features I find valuable, but you will probably say that you have either already invested the effort to ryo, or that these are things that aren't relevant for your situation. Similarly, if somebody comes along and says that some other tool does everything I do with Quicken and it's free so obviously I should switch, I will just laugh, because the value of the time I would spend on having to resolve data issues and learn a new tool is worth far more to me than the actual cost of Quicken.

So all that said, here are the main features I use that I can think of off the top of my head:

- automatic downloads of bank, credit card, investment account transactions (I have a lot of accounts and transactions, this saves me at least a couple hours of manual entry every month plus it prevents typos that are hard to find later)
- automatic categorization of all downloaded transactions for tracking spending
- easy manual recategorization of individual transactions from the default with 2 or 3 keystrokes (e.g. to move a restaurant meal from dining to travel:dining)
- tax reports, especially for Schedules A and E. I also use the B and D reports for tax planning late in the year.
- various portfolio views help me decide what to sell and what to hold
- scheduled credits and debits
- lifetime planner
- track the cost basis for home and rental properties
- research (what year did we replace the windows? what store did we get that little table from?)
- as the treasurer for both HOAs where we own condos, I also keep the finances for each association in their own Quicken files and produce annual budgets and cash flow reports for the other owners as well as the report that is input for the HOA tax returns

 

[sengsational]

MoneyDance is open source? But the trial version is crippleware? Does purchase get you all future versions?

I'm still using MYM (anybody remember that?). Andy Tobias, the financial author, repped for it. NationsBank (now BofA) bought it out, and later abandoned it. None of the online syncing works any more of course. I'd need to write my own macros to enter historical transactions if I migrated. Right now, I need to run it in a WinXP virtual machine... won't run directly in Win7. But it still works. Not perfect, but it's the devil I know.

 

[CaptTom]

I'm still using MS Money. Believe me, I've tried to find a replacement. Moneydance is pretty high on the list. But the old MS product just keeps working and I'm too lazy to change.

The thing about MS Money is that it was originally created in the days when programmers cared about ease of use. By that I mean, once you got used to the product, everything was done with minimal effort. One key, or one click. Now products are designed to be easy for first-timers to figure out. That's a different thing. It's not unusual to have to click, drag, open, reply to a prompt, type, etc. just to do one step. Even if you do that step a hundred times a day.

The last version of MS Money I have (97) started going down that path. Every time I click to "balance" (reconcile) an account, it pops up a window explaining to me all the reasons I might want to do that. Even if I've done it 1,000 times before. They also dumbed down the reports, making it easier to just pick a canned one, and harder to develop your own.

That said, there are things I still like. Screens open up where you left off. Fields are pre-filled with the most likely data from recent entries. You can do addition, multiplication and subtraction in any dollar-amount field. You can hit + or - in any date field to change the day. There are tons of tiny features like this which you just don't see in any product today. It's so much easier to hit + a couple of times than to wait for a calendar window to display, move to the day and month you want, and then close the window.

I never did any automatic downloads or uploads, so I don't care if that works or not. I like to keep my own records, then reconcile with the monthly statement.

The only thing that's missing would be the ability to make entries on my cell phone. But I don't want to store my financial data on any cloud service I don't control, so that's probably out of the question for any commercial product anyway.

 

[rbmrtn]

MoneyDance is open source? But the trial version is crippleware? Does purchase get you all future versions?

I'm still using MYM (anybody remember that?). Andy Tobias, the financial author, repped for it. NationsBank (now BofA) bought it out, and later abandoned it. None of the online syncing works any more of course. I'd need to write my own macros to enter historical transactions if I migrated. Right now, I need to run it in a WinXP virtual machine... won't run directly in Win7. But it still works. Not perfect, but it's the devil I know.

MoneyDance is a commercial product, not opensource.

I think MYM was one of the first financials programs I used.

 

[Senator]

I just bought the 27-month subscription to Quicken Home, Business & Rental Property 2018 Release for $95.

It was higher last week.

 

[audreyh1]

I'd like to try Moneydance, but I'm fearful I'll just end up with the same issues Quicken had (I ended up returning Q for a refund and deleting all my files).

The different log-in requirements for different accounts - some requiring multiple security words, numbers, images - just flummoxed Quicken. Vanguard and T. Rowe Price loaded pretty reliably, but Q. couldn't even find my credit union or some other accounts, nor could it find all my credit cards. And if I'm going to have to manually input 75% of my transactions, what's the point of financial software?

Most of my accounts I download the transactions by importing a QFX file. I much prefer this approach as I don't have to enter a password via Quicken,

 

[audreyh1]

I admit I don't let it download anything because I would never give one bit of software the password for another, so I enter transactions manually. I don't mind that a bit; it's one of the advantage of being retired.

Can't it import QFX files? Then it can get the data without passwords.

 

[bobandsherry]

There is nothing that I do in Quicken that I couldn't also do in Excel if I were sufficiently motivated. When I was working, I didn't have the time and energy to create my own financial tracking system and now that I'm retired, I find I just have other things I'd rather do. Just like it's worth it to some people to pay a service like Blue Apron to do their meal planning and shopping, it's worth it to me to pay someone else a reasonable amount (which I define as under $100/year) to build and maintain a tool that helps me track my finances.

I will give you a list of some of the Quicken features I find valuable, but you will probably say that you have either already invested the effort to ryo, or that these are things that aren't relevant for your situation. Similarly, if somebody comes along and says that some other tool does everything I do with Quicken and it's free so obviously I should switch, I will just laugh, because the value of the time I would spend on having to resolve data issues and learn a new tool is worth far more to me than the actual cost of Quicken.

So all that said, here are the main features I use that I can think of off the top of my head:

- automatic downloads of bank, credit card, investment account transactions (I have a lot of accounts and transactions, this saves me at least a couple hours of manual entry every month plus it prevents typos that are hard to find later)
- automatic categorization of all downloaded transactions for tracking spending
- easy manual recategorization of individual transactions from the default with 2 or 3 keystrokes (e.g. to move a restaurant meal from dining to travel:dining)
- tax reports, especially for Schedules A and E. I also use the B and D reports for tax planning late in the year.
- various portfolio views help me decide what to sell and what to hold
- scheduled credits and debits
- lifetime planner
- track the cost basis for home and rental properties
- research (what year did we replace the windows? what store did we get that little table from?)

Agree with you 100%. Just picked up 2 year Quicken Premier "subscription" for $60, that's $2.50/mo. Even as frugal as I am, I can afford that and think it's quite a bargain. The alternative is spending time converting/reconciling accounts into something new, manipulating stock quote entries, creating spreadsheets, etc. And at the end of all that I end up with something that is functionally subpar compared to Quicken and I'm not even sure it's any less expensive option. I now have a new assortment of issues to troubleshoot and resolve (as they say I'd rather deal with the devil I know than the devil I don't). PASS!

I did financial analysis and created complex spreadsheets for almost all of my career. I retired from w*rk just 2 years ago so sitting in front of a computer screen to build something that cost me $2.50/mo just doesn't make sense to me. With the time I save by keeping Quicken I'll more than make up by better management of my investments along with better understanding of taxes, how to save on health care costs, etc. On top of that I have more time to things that are FUN!

 

[JoeWras]

Agree with you 100%. Just picked up 2 year Quicken Premier "subscription" for $60, that's $2.50/mo. Even as frugal as I am, I can afford that and think it's quite a bargain.

I will probably do the same. Even after having swallowed the red pill, I think this is the best course of action. I waste more money on other subscriptions (a trade magazine for my hobby, but don't have time to read) that I can and should cut out first.

Get this, I saw all the hints about this 2 yr good deal and almost did it! But first I checked my Quicken, and it is 2016. That means it is good until 2019, usually April. I almost bought something I didn't need, just out of the excitement of a good deal.

Now, only 18 more months of clicking through that upgrade reminder...