Category — Software

After trying Microsoft Money and being disappointed I decided to try one of the the new players on the block: Mint. Mint is part of a new generation of Web 2.0 personal finance applications and is currently in beta. On the website, Mint claims that setup takes under 5 minutes. I had my primary bank account configured in about 2 and had added two additional accounts in under 10. I considered this to be quite acceptable.

Once I had the accounts configured, I spent another 30 minutes fine tuning the categories assigned to my spending. Overall I found this to be acceptable as well. Mint did a great job of categorizing the majority of my transactions and for several of them, I know why they were categorized incorrectly, but give them props for the tool being smart enough to do even do that. I had 3 transactions where the display name for the transaction included the words “Membership Fees”. Mint categorized them accordingly, though for me they actually fall under education (it was the monthly tuition payment for my son to attend Paul Green’s School of Rock). The number of uncategorized transactions was relatively small and the UI made it easy to apply the same categorization to all transactions of the same type.

Mint is off to a great start, but isn’t quite a complete financial management platform. Here are a few of the shortcomings, though by listing them here I am by no means saying they should necessarily be deal killers depending on your needs.

• US institutions only
• No custom categories
• Doesn’t support 2 factor authentication
• Can’t import historical data from other applications
• No support for other account types (car loans, student loans, investment accounts)

Some of these limitations aren’t the deal killers for me they might be for others. Even if they seem to be deal killers, I encourage you to check out this application. The clean UI, ease of setup and reporting features are worth taking a look.

While this may not become my primary tool for managing my finances, at the moment I am leaning towards continuing to use Mint on a periodic basis to see basic snapshots of my spending and budget. It was so quick and easy to set up that I don’t anticipate it taking more than 10-15 minutes a month to maintain. With something that quick and easy to use, it’s worth logging in occasionally to see if their unique way of looking at my finances yields any insights.

Summary: If you haven’t used another tool to track your finances in the past, have just a few accounts and want a free tool to track your spending and budgets Mint seems to be a great place to start. As they add more features Mint may become even more compelling.

This year I decided that I would spend some time investigating new ways to track my finances. In prior years I’ve used everything from paper and pen to simple Excel spreadsheets. For 2008 I thought I’d go all high tech and so far it’s been interesting. Here’s my first review:

Microsoft Money Plus Home & Business
According to Microsoft’s website the price of this software should be $59.99**. I have no idea what a ** is, but apparently it translates to roughly $30 additional US dollars.

Strike #1: Don’t play around with pricing on products for people who actually care where their hard earned dollars go. I tried to buy the software from Microsoft’s website and imagine my surprise when the shopping cart had a mysterious $30 Microsoft tax associated it it.

I downloaded a 30 day trial figuring if it was worth it I might bite the bullet. After installing the software I tried to connect to my bank and download my statement. Apparently to use Bank of America online I need to pay a surcharge. While technically this is a BofA problem (one I will be rectifying shortly by switching to a new bank… I’m tired of them and this is just the last straw), I didn’t see anything anywhere in the product summary which hinted that there might be a problem.

Strike #2: Whatever problem Bank of America has with Money and it doesn’t appear to have with some other financial management applications; so either Microsoft failed to use its monopoly powers to benefit the consumer here or more likely they are taking a cut of this new revenue stream from the bank. Either way at $9 a month to use Microsoft Money with my bank, I’m not impressed.

Online I can download a copy of my statement in a Microsoft money compatible format and import it. I tried this and couldn’t get it to remove the other account or really work with it in any meaningful way after nearly 30 minutes of trying. I’m sorry, I want something to make my life easier when it comes to managing my finances and I didn’t see anything here that would do that.

Strike #3: I manage complex enterprise level networks and applications serving in excess of 2 million users. I understand computers. I’ve been using the Internet since before there was a Word Wide Web. If I can’t figure out how to open your financial management application and use it like a simple check register in under 30 minutes who in the hell is your target audience?

So Microsoft Money has struck out. It has been uninstalled and deleted. Sadder still, I could have gotten a copy for free if I actually liked it.Even at free, I don’t see this as being better than other applications I am testing or for that matter, better than pen and paper.

I’m sorry this review is so short (both in length and in terms of technical and functional detail). But life is short as well, and I wasn’t going to waste another second on this <searching for a word I can use in public> application. This thing makes Microsoft Bob look like a brilliant piece of programming. Sorry Microsoft, I’d prefer managing my finances in PowerShell to this.