Microsoft Money 2003 Deluxe
Price:$43.76
Amazon.com Review
Microsoft Money has helped individuals organize and streamline their financial dealings for a half-decade. The latest iteration, Money 2003, may be the most impressive upgrade in some time, with several new amenities designed to make your personal status even clearer, and your decisions and future planning even easier. Before you invest in Microsoft Money 2003 Deluxe, you should ask yourself if you really need it. If you’re fortunate enough to have a simple financial… More >>
Related Items:
Posted in Amazon Buys
I have been a quicken fan for many years. Money has some nice additional features. One reason I will not go with Money is they will not allow you to define and assign my own group. Microsoft defines the groups and will not let you change tham. I want the advantage of definging the groups that make sense in my life and run reports based on these groups.
Rating: 2 / 5
I have been using the Money software for years. I find it to be an excellent tool for those who like to manage, as well as budget their finances. It is excellent as a personal money manager. It allows you to see and know what monies you have coming in and going out. I use it for budgeting, online services (bill pay)reconciling bank statements, planning for retirement and future goals, such as: a wedding,purchasing a car or home,or getting a loan.I love the debt planner. This feature allows you to set up a payment plan to get out of debt. An excellent tool for home or business.
Rating: 5 / 5
I’ve had Money 2003 now for a few months, and it’s been up and down. Some of the features like when you type in a payee and Money usually figures out the correct category– example, type “In-N-Out Burger”, and Money puts in “Food:Dining Out” as the category– are nice, if not a little scary (how do it know?).
But since installing it, I’ve had to rebuild my entire database from scratch. I was having dialogue boxes pop up all the time saying “That command is not allowed” when I wasn’t trying to do anything but select a transaction to work with. I’d hit “OK” on a couple of dialogues, and it was fine until I selected another transaction. This was such an annoyance that I reinstalled Money, only to find out that it did the same thing with my backup file. So, I had to reconstruct my file. Bummer.
The other major gripe that I have is the difficulty that I have in just doing basic things. Money has so many wizards and so many “user-friendly” (read: handholding) kinds of features, that I as a self-assessed poweruser find that I just can’t do things very easily. I set up a loan, but I couldn’t change the loan amount without deleting the loan and starting over. Sometimes the wizards are very helpful, but there is just a lot of stuff that Big Brother does for you. I hate that feeling. It’s like that little wink that Clippy (the Office assistant) does when you close his window. Just go away! Don’t wink at me just to get the last word!
I bought Money because it was onescore less two American samoleans at Costco after rebates. I didn’t have any previous installs of any financial SW (even Quicken), so I thought Money would be pretty good. It’s mostly been a frustration.
Rating: 2 / 5
It is only a couple of days I am using this software so I just want to add something that nobody said so far.
Like another user I am still using PocketMoney for Palm
and I gave MsMoney a try because I got it for nearly nothing…
I red some negative comments about the management of a Flexible Spending Account but I was able to set it up manually.
Automatic update with banks/financial institutions? Not too bad: unfortunately my AmEx Corporate is the only one that is not part of the integration, my 401(k) account (Principal) neither. Yes, you can still download a file to import but still… I guess the more users there will be around the more Microsoft and banks will collaborate. The integration with ING Bank or Wachovia is great.
Finally one thing that somebody else said: it is TOTALLY customizable.
Rating: 4 / 5
I brought this product for 1 main purpose. I wanted a software which can automatically download my account statements once a month. That is the first step in any planning. Guess what. The software does not support half the financial institutions. For a few like Wells fargo Bank the login information expected by software and bank do not match, so you will not be able to download the statements directly, however you can import them. You have to enter the opening balances on your own, that is sometimes hard to calculate. The importing functionality makes
it better than just plain spreadsheets.
I would like to add some more information after I used this product. Here is summary.
1. Does not support automatic downloading of statements for all the claimed institues (as stated earlier).
2. Most institues will provide an export functionality. The Money could easliy file this information into appropriate account.
3. The starting balance has to be entered, For some I do not even know myself, so have to sit and calculate.
4. You can see all your accounts at one place which is good.
5. You can view your transactions offline at any time which is good.
6. For your investments you have to enter the purchase price, if you update it regularly its good, you do not have to scratch your head looking for purchase price at the end of the year.
Some manual work upfront, but potentialy may provide benefit. I got it with taxcut, so my price after rebates was good. All in all I would upgrade my recomendation a bit.
Rating: 3 / 5