My Quicken Subscription Just Expired, - Could not be happier with ....

[ShokWaveRider]

MoneyDance.

I have been using it for 6 months now and it works great for us. No more annual shafting charges from Intuit. I even used the TurboTax Free File this year, so a double savings.

 

[Sojourner]

MoneyDance.

I have been using it for 6 months now and it works great for us. No more annual shafting charges from Intuit. I even used the TurboTax Free File this year, so a double savings.

Could you briefly explain how/why you use MoneyDance on a daily/weekly basis, and why it's better than using Quicken (or better than nothing at all, which is what I use). IOW, I'm curious to know what benefit you're getting from regularly using software like this. I have never used any sort of financial software, and I feel that my personal finances are quite healthy and robust. What am I missing compared to Quicken / MoneyDance users such as yourself?

 

[audreyh1]

Me too!

I’m limping along with an old Quicken for Mac. It works, and is fully functional except for some of the downloads including Quotes! Fortunately QFX files still import fine in spite of an error message. So I have to do more and more manually.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

I just set up all my accounts. DL QFX data from each Account once a month. Check to ensure all expenses are good and actually incurred by us.

Keeps tabs on all Checking, Savings, CC etc. Accounts. I do not use it for Stocks or Complex investment.

One Glance Dashboard for Net Worth, Account Balances. Etc.

Plus because I like to.

 

[pb4uski]

I have all of our financial account defined and linked in Quicken and can update everything in a few minutes using One-Step Update and then reviewing and accepting any imported transactions.

I also have all of my significant income and bills defined and use the Projected Balances:Next 90 Days for our checking account as a cash management tool.

The last shafting that I had from Quicken was $31 to extend my subsctiption for 12 months... given the utility that I get from Quicken it is well worth $2-4/month to me.

 

[tulak]

I use Moneydance, and before that Quicken and MS Money.

The biggest benefit I get is a single view of all my finances in one place (assets, liabilities, cash flow).

I download and reconcile/categorize all my transactions. I’m able to forecast cash flow for my checking account, which lets me know how much I need to transfer from saving accounts. I can run reports that let me see how much I’m spending overall in different categories. I’m not hardcore in this, only looking for ballpark figures. This lets me look at trends year over year and allows me to estimate how much money I need to get through a year.

Moneydance is nice that it allows me to access all my data in python, so I gave a few custom scripts I’ve written to give me custom reports.

Basically, it’s a tool to make managing my finances easier. I can’t imagine what it would be like without some kind of way to track finances.

 

[OldShooter]

... The last shafting that I had from Quicken was $31 to extend my subsctiption for 12 months... given the utility that I get from Quicken it is well woYrth $2-4/month to me.

You're lucky. I just renewed at, I thought, the $31 rate but during the PayPal transaction, Quicken jacked it to $55.90 and took that amount. My complaint to PayPal was denied even though Quicken did not respond to the complaint in any way.

I hate to lose all my history but I may start with MoneyDance on 1/1/22 sans import. I tried the import function a couple of years ago and it had too many problems/too hard to correct.

 

[pb4uski]

Is it really worth the hassle of changing and losing your history for less than $5/month?

As I like to say even knowing that I am as guilty as the next guy is that "there is a very thin line between frugal and cheap".

 

[OldShooter]

Is it really worth the hassle of changing and losing your history for less than $5/month? ...

Truthfully I rarely use my history and it will still be available by simply firing up Quicken. What I lose is the online downloads from banks and brokerage houses.

But my unhappiness is mostly based on principle rather than economics. Quicken and Intuit have for years specialized in screwing their customers with high prices of for add-ons and disabling features so they could force customers to "upgrade" simply to restore what Intuit took away. When I a buy a hammer at Home Depot I am not required to contribute to the hammer's manufacturer ad infinitum. Quicken is simply a tool. If I need new features or bug fixes it is fair that I pay for them. But I'm not interested in paying for nothing.

 

[skipro33]

I love my Quicken; one stop download for all my financial accounts; from car loans to ROTH IRA's, I get everything and I usually download and reconcile daily. This is the single best way to be sure my credit cards are not being stolen or my bank accounts compromised. I've used it to search for stuff I bought many years ago too. I can pull up reports or chart/graphs on all sorts of stuff from groceries to gifts to each of my two sons. (Gotta try to keep things fair and square, ha!) The cost for the program is inconsequential as far as my budget goes. Saves me many times over what I pay for it.

 

[pb4uski]

Truthfully I rarely use my history and it will still be available by simply firing up Quicken. What I lose is the online downloads from banks and brokerage houses.

But my unhappiness is mostly based on principle rather than economics. Quicken and Intuit have for years specialized in screwing their customers with high prices of for add-ons and disabling features so they could force customers to "upgrade" simply to restore what Intuit took away. When I a buy a hammer at Home Depot I am not required to contribute to the hammer's manufacturer ad infinitum. Quicken is simply a tool. If I need new features or bug fixes it is fair that I pay for them. But I'm not interested in paying for nothing.

I understand, but I think the reality is either say, $48/year and continued ability to do uploads and get a smidgen of improved functionality occasionally.... or $0 and no future update abilities because they just give up and close the doors and it becomes like MS Money Sunset edition. Given those alternatives, I pay the $48 but will also shop around to try to get it for less (like I did to get it for $31).

I probably don't get the screwing thing you talk about and I've been a Quicken user for 30 years or more. I remember in the early years I bought the new version every so often because of the improvements in the software (adding investment accounting capability for example). I also recall buying dot printer check stock and printing checks with Quicken. I also recall using their BillPay product early on... IIRC it was $10/month for up to 25 payments and it would have cost me half that to mail checks, not to mention the cost of checks, printing, envelopes, etc. Later, I would buy the new version every few years for the electronic update capabilities. I resisted the new subscription model for as long as I could... but its not so bad IMO.

I guess if I was desperate to save $48/year or so I could import QFX files from ebsites of vendors I deal with, but it isn't worth that effort to save $48/year.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

I never lost my history, it did take a little effort, but I had all the time in the world.

 

[Kwirk]

The transition from Quicken to Moneydance was a bit challenging years (5+?) ago. But, after that initial difficulty, I've been able to download data almost daily from our bank, our most frequently used credit cards, and Vanguard. I don't do individual stocks but I think that would be possible. I use reminders to roughly predict expenses 3 or 4 months in advance. I don't use any budgeting features.

 

[tulak]

Moneydance supports automatic downloads. Same functionality as Quicken.

Moneydance does well when there are issues. I’ve hit bugs in their product and the company has always been responsive to getting them fixed.

I started from scratch with Moneydance, except for manually entering some investments for history. I did the same when I transitioned to Quicken. If I need Quicken/MS Money data, then I can always load the old file and look it up. But I’ve only had to do this once in the last two decades.

 

[Montecfo]

I just transitioned to a clean quicken file 1-1-21, keeping my old file with 25 years or so of history. I do love how easily I can tell when I made major purchases or anything time based. I have used the old file a lot.

I do not use the investment features of quicken so that part just gets in my way. Might be a good time to try MoneyDance with a limited transaction set.

 

[Ramen]

I have never used any sort of financial software, and I feel that my personal finances are quite healthy and robust. What am I missing compared to Quicken / MoneyDance users such as yourself?

Same here, except for TurboTax online once a year. If your finances are simple, why complicate things with software. I've looked at a couple of programs and got a headache from all the features. I track monthly spending in a leather notebook and monitor everything else on my Schwab accounts summary page.

 

[RetiredAndLovingIt]

My Quicken subscription just expired on the 26th and for now I will just manually update it bank downloads no longer work. I've just suffered to many problems since they went to the subscription model. Constant multiple duplicate transaction downloads and twice my credit card statement would not balance even though it was correct. I see other complaints of this in Quicken and their answer is balance adjustment.
I cringe every month when it downloads an auto update, I never know what might happen.
I can easily manually update and I only use to keep track of my account balances and no investments so for now no replacement. If it becomes a hassle, I will probably move to Money Sunset Edition or maybe MoneyDance.
This is not about the cost, I've been a user since the 90's with zero issues until the last year or so but I just can't take this crappy program any more. It's simply more trouble than it's worth.

 

[OldShooter]

I ... I think the reality is either say, $48/year and continued ability to do uploads and get a smidgen of improved functionality occasionally.... or $0 and no future update abilities because they just give up and close the doors and it becomes like MS Money Sunset edition. ...

False choice, although that is what all the subscription vendors would like you to believe.

The reality is their choice is between (1) working hard and getting paid for it by selling upgrades, maintenance agreements, and entirely new products and (2) charging a subscription fee and relaxing because their revenue is no longer coupled to their technical performance. No way we'll ever know,but I'd bet that Quicken R&D expense went down substantially with their subscription success.

 

[pb4uski]

Well, whatever you want to think, but the reality is there's been no quantum leap in functionality for 25 years

 

[RetMD21]

IOW, I'm curious to know what benefit you're getting from regularly using software like this. I have never used any sort of financial software, and I feel that my personal finances are quite healthy and robust. What am I missing compared to Quicken / MoneyDance users such as yourself?

At one time I used Quicken, downloaded files from financial institutions and reconciled them but I gave it up. Now I just look at monthly statements to confirm that the charges are ours. Optimizing transfers from "high yield savings" to checking became moot when interest rates on both became near zero. For my purposes the effort involved didn't justify the benefit.

 

[pb4uski]

The functionality that I rely on the most is the 90-day projected balances for my checking account as a cash management tool. Also the investing function is helpful in monitoring my preferred stock portfolio because I have it spread across three different IRA accounts, two traditional IRA accounts and one Roth IRA. Finally, the One-Step Update is a convenient feature and helps me monitor what's coming through on my credit card transactions, including any DW spending.

 

[Cobra9777]

I used Quicken for over 10 years, but stopped around 2010 when they started removing functionality to force "upgrades" that were really just the same buggy software as before.

But more importantly, it just wasn't relevant to how my process had changed over the years, which included a lot more online banking, real-time tracking, automatic bill-pays, no check register to reconcile, push notifications, etc. Quicken just felt like a throw-back to the days before all that functionality existed, when I needed an offline set of books to track stuff in real time.

So I haven't used any financial software since then. I go through phases where I dabble with account aggregators like Personal Capital and Fidelity Full-View. But I really only use them on an ad-hoc basis to help answer a specific question.

The reality is, our finances are on auto-pilot. I get real-time notifications of all CC transactions. Our pensions and dividends are direct-deposited. All bills are on auto-pay. I monitor and validate all this activity from my smartphone as it happens. We keep sufficient cash in the CMA to cover lumpy stuff like when insurance renews once a year.

Bottom line, I just don't want to spend time checking and rechecking all the minutiae that rarely change month to month. I'd rather focus on the one-offs, unusual trends, and things like shopping the insurance every year. All our investments are at Fidelity, so monitoring that on their website is super-easy. But that too is on auto-pilot. I rarely tinker with it.

 

[RobLJ]

My Quicken subscription runs out next month, but like a few others, I'm renewing because
1) the One Update updates stocks and bank accounts in about a minute, offering a complete overview of ..... everything.
2) My data goes back to '95 from a money/investment software (I can't even remember the name), then Microsoft Money, all imported into Quicken.

And I'm lazy; over the last year it's off about 10k in two large investment accounts so when I get really bored I'll figure out what didn't download (I made some rebalancing sales and purchases in Jan/Feb so it's probably there).
Power to all of you who are willing to write your own scripts in Python for MoneyDance or are willing to monthly or weekly look up every account online! I'm lazy and it seems worth a dinner check per year so I can watch more baseball.

 

[ejman]

My Quicken subscription just expired on the 26th and for now I will just manually update it bank downloads no longer work. I've just suffered to many problems since they went to the subscription model. Constant multiple duplicate transaction downloads and twice my credit card statement would not balance even though it was correct. I see other complaints of this in Quicken and their answer is balance adjustment.
I cringe every month when it downloads an auto update, I never know what might happen.
I can easily manually update and I only use to keep track of my account balances and no investments so for now no replacement. If it becomes a hassle, I will probably move to Money Sunset Edition or maybe MoneyDance.
This is not about the cost, I've been a user since the 90's with zero issues until the last year or so but I just can't take this crappy program any more. It's simply more trouble than it's worth.

I've found this update mania perplexing. Perhaps it is really worth it if one has a plethora of accounts and a mind boggling level of monthly transactions and very little free time. Well, I've been retired for over 20 years so I have some time available for such frivolous things as keeping track of one's finances.


I have used Quicken 2010 since, well 2010. I know how this program works, there are no unwanted "updates", it does everything I need it to do. I update manually, it takes me a few minutes to do so since my investments don't quite match the frantic trader profile. I'm happy. My only worry is that eventually it'll stop working with Linux Wine but maybe I'll be long gone by then since old windows program seem to work a long, long time with Linux Wine.

 

[FlaGator]

I've found this update mania perplexing. Perhaps it is really worth it if one has a plethora of accounts and a mind boggling level of monthly transactions and very little free time. Well, I've been retired for over 20 years so I have some time available for such frivolous things as keeping track of one's finances.


I have used Quicken 2010 since, well 2010. I know how this program works, there are no unwanted "updates", it does everything I need it to do. I update manually, it takes me a few minutes to do so since my investments don't quite match the frantic trader profile. I'm happy. My only worry is that eventually it'll stop working with Linux Wine but maybe I'll be long gone by then since old windows program seem to work a long, long time with Linux Wine.

Well, I have:
-2 checking accounts
-3 savings accounts
-5 investment/IRA accounts, including 2 custodial IRAs
-HSA account
-2 credit cards, one of which has 3 users
-1 kid in college, one in HS
-college savings accounts for 2 kids, one being drawn down

None of the above include the retirement, savings and credit card accounts of the new wife.

Yes, there is an argument to consolidate accounts and simplify other aspects of our lives, but this is about right for my life at this point. It will be less complex in a few years as the kids get older.

Well worth $40-50/year to get a daily snapshot of spending and balances.