Home Financial Software

I've been using Quicken (currently on 2007 Basic) for a while for my home finance... nothing complex, just two credit cards, savings, checking, student loan and the truck loan. However, my version is getting pissy every time I want to download transactions, and handling loans is a pain.

Before I upgrade to the new version or do something else, I thought I'd see what your guys are using.

Should I upgrade to the latest Quicken? Try some online thing like Mint.com? Swap to Microsoft Money?

The number one thing I need is for it to handle downloading my transactions. I admittedly suck at keeping up to date, so having the downloads makes it... fun(?) and keeps me on track.

 

I'm pretty young but am anal about my expenses. I use Quicken Online tied with Quicken on my iPhone.

 

My husband does the finances...but we have Quicken Deluxe 2008.

He only uses it for our Checking/Savings accounts. We have automatic withdrawels from certain accounts (mortgage, car payment, some utilities).

When it comes to our financials & accounts - NOTHING is done online. We actually have separate accounts for certain withdrawels just because we don't want it tied to the main accounts.

 

I hope those of you using financial software. DO NOT list account numbers or your Soc security number in the software, on an internet PC. That is a big no no! Hackers can access that info.

Some viruses sole duty is to look for that info on PCs & sends it back to the host.

 

I have been using Quicken since 99 and did the upgrades every year up until 2007 and then found with each new version Quicken was wanting to do too much useless shit for me like offering loan rate searches, trying to sell me checks or whatever so I haven't updated since then and have blocked it from any online access, just use it to keep account balances straight and I enter all that info without doing downloads.

As far as Hackers, just add a digit to each of your account numbers, they don't have time to try and figure it out

 

Mint.com works great for me. It takes a bit of time to set it up and make sure everything is right, but it's got some solid tools to help manage spending and keeps updating it self.

 

That doesn't really help since any hacker worth his salt would make his program grab the first 10 characters, strip off extraneous data, then search for the next index of an account. If you've padded the front end with characters or both ends, it may make things more difficult, but not impossible. Once the program is created and sent out, the hacker isn't doing any more work, the program is.


I took a look and really liked the idea of mvelopes, but screw paying a monthly fee.
Quicken online was much like their offline product - lots of show, not enough go. There's no way to do splits either.
I also found that Microsoft said, 'screw this, your bank does good enough, MS Money is dead."

Decided to go with mint for now

 

Can they really access your data through firewalls, anti-virus, scotty winpatrol, spybot, don't you need to download some kind of virus so they can scan your computer for the files?

 

Welcome to the club...Use their forums and you'll get tons of ideas and stuff.

 

Most people consider themselves more interesting than they really are. The average joe is going to be hacked by a virus. If you are someone who is regularly on TV, you would have more cause for concern.

It's possible for someone to directly attack you, and there's never such a thing as "complete protection". You just make things harder or invent something one step ahead of the other guy. Think of it like car theft, only the criminal wants to put something IN your car and the criminal can send 50 hojilliion requests for you to kindly leave the door unlocked with the keys on the seat.

 

Good analogy, I know I'm not more interesting than I really am plus I'm not on TV so I think I'm safe. But if anyone did get to my quicken account I am screwed.

I just migrated from microsoft money to quicken and it's way way better. At least most of my accounts are able to update automatically, never could with MM. The only annoying thing I notice so far is that if one of your accounts throws and error, that stupid box keeps popping up telling you to correct it. Anyone know how to disable it?