Personal Money Management Software – Decide What You Want

When thinking about what software you need for personal money management, keep in mind what you really want out of it. Do you merely want a replacement for your paper checkbook? Do you want to use it to create budgets based on your past spending habits? Do you need to track investments? Will you want something that’s comprehensive enough to allow you to maintain a complete and accurate net worth?

There are several different kinds of personal money management software available too, like software that is based online and keeps your records online, or software that runs from your hard drive and keeps your records on your computer.

What Type of Personal Money Management Software is Right For You?

When deciding which type of personal money management software you prefer, remember that having your files on your computer gives you the ability to keep backups. Using an internet based service, however, gives you the flexibility of accessing your files from nearly any computer and possibly even your smart phone, while still maintaining the security of your files.

My own personal preference leans toward independent software that runs on my computer. I feel secure knowing I can access my files even when my internet connection is down, although I admit this rarely happens to me, and it also allows me to make regular backups, which I do very often. I’ve always preferred the control I have over software that runs on my computer and files that are housed in my hard drive. Many other people much prefer the ease of using online internet based software. This really is a personal choice.

When it comes to the other features of personal money management software, personal choice also plays a major role here. I use a paid program, specifically Microsoft Money, which unfortunately has been discontinued. I’ve been a user since 1994 and I’m not looking forward to moving to another program. My intention, though, is to move to Quicken when I can no longer get Money to work with my computer. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this will be several years off.

Let’s answer the questions I brought up at the start of this article.

What Features Do You Want in Your Personal Money Management Software?

Do you merely want your personal money management software to be a replacement for your paper checkbook? If that’s the case, the open source, free GnuCash program might be all you need. It allows you to set up a complete set of financial accounts, but easily accommodates just a checking account. You can then decide after using it for a while if you want to branch out and add other accounts to the software to track. If you prefer an online option that doesn’t cost anything, and your bank offers online access, you can try Mint, which was bought out by Quicken last year. Mint did not work for me when I tried it out because my local rural bank was not accessible through Mint. Although I have internet access and can even download my checking transactions to Money, my bank’s service does not work with Mint. You might run into this same issue if your bank isn’t a larger bank. Although not a free option, Quicken can also work well for you.

Do you want to use personal money management software to create budgets based on your past spending habits? Again, Mint has a budgeting feature, to my knowledge it doesn’t forecast your cash flow into the future. Since in my opinion forecasting is an essential part of budgeting, I don’t think any program is complete without that feature. Quicken does forecast and budget quite well. GnuCash does budget and allow for automatic entry of scheduled transactions, but it does no forecasting either.

Do you need to track investments with your personal money management software? Mint.com is not appropriate for this. Quicken has several versions, and at least two versions of the program allow for tracking of investments. GnuCash can also track investments, but the interface isn’t as user-friendly as the commercially produced Quicken.

Will you want personal money management software that’s comprehensive enough to allow you to maintain a complete and accurate net worth? Because GnuCash is full-featured double-entry accounting software, it can handle generating and maintaining a full set of accounts that will lead to a complete and accurate net worth. Quicken can be trickier in that respect, because it doesn’t actually implement double-entry accounting. If you have a set of books for your business, you’ll understand how important it is that your software use double-entry accounting principles. The Mint.com service isn’t a fully-featured personal money management software solution.

Resources

Quicken works with Windows and Mac. http://www.quicken.com
Gnucash works with Windows, Mac, and Linux. http://www.gnucash.org
Mint.com is run from your internet browser window. http://www.mint.com

There are other free personal money management software programs available that I didn’t mention in my article above because I haven’t used them. However, I’m listing them here for your reference.

Buddi http://buddi.digitalcave.ca/
Grisbi http://www.grisbi.org/
Home Bank http://homebank.free.fr/
jGnash http://sourceforge.net/projects/jgnash/
Money Manager Ex http://www.codelathe.com/mmex/
Desktop Budget Lite http://www.desktopbudget.com/desktop-budget-lite/
Budget Pulse http://www.budgetpulse.com

There are also some other good personal money management software options that you can purchase.

Moneydance http://moneydance.com