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I still miss MS Money. It did everything I needed and I didn't hand over my account passwords to a cloud service like Mint. It's kind of mindboggling that this

I still miss MS Money. It did everything I needed and I didn't hand over my account passwords to a cloud service like Mint. It's kind of mindboggling that this got ever accepted as the way to do things.

jmisavage 3y ago
I still have a copy that I run in a VM. Doesn’t do as much as before, but I’m surprised how bad most of its replacements are at the basic feature level.
heywire 3y ago
You can still use Microsoft Money sunset edition completely offline. I did this myself until about 2 years ago, when I broke down and wrote a simple web app to fill the need.
Dennip 3y ago
I think they cancelled it in 2023, but MS did release for a while an Excel template replacement for MS Money - I think it even had some advanced stuff like bank integration via plaid.
cashsterling 3y ago
I'm using YNAB desktop edition which still works great. Cost me ~60 USD about 8-9 years ago for permanent license. YNAB decided to go to a subscription based model, which is fine, but the annual cost of this software service seem ridiculously high for how simple the software is overall. Applies to monarch money too... 100 USD is a lot for simple personal accounting software.
- dangus 3y ago
  I pay for the YNAB subscription product. To me the value is in bank synchronization, which is a big ongoing cost for the service. I can centralize all my financial information across accounts. The habit of checking my transactions in a centralized place and categorizing them has led to me catching fraudulent transactions multiple times. I might have never noticed them without YNAB. That alone has paid for years of the subscription. I know some people find that manual transaction entry helps them control their spending better but to me that’s just not practical. I don’t have time for that, there are too many transactions. I also value the mobile app and automatic synchronization. It’s nice to be able to share a budget with multiple people and not fiddle around with local files or having to get on my desktop computer. I use YNAB on mobile 95% of the time. If I give it a negative it’s not really the price, it’s that I’d like to see more progress on the software. I know they are still a small company but I’d like to see more ways to visualize without needing rely on external tools, and I’d like to see an overall a faster pace of feature development.
ryandrake 3y ago
Yes, the terrible "upload your banking credentials to some cloud" model was what kept me away from Mint. Sadly, the main Quicken product has been moving in this direction for years with their so-called Express Web Connect Plus[1], but at least they're doing something oauth-like with some token rather than your actual credentials. They're really pushing this shit on their customers. I don't want to be dependent on TheCloud. I want my local device to communicate directly with each bank and keep my credentials and "tokens" on devices I manage. Is this so much to ask for? 1: https://www.quicken.com/support/how-quicken-connects-your-bank https://www.quicken.com/support/how-quicken-connects-your-ba...
- rqtwteye 3y ago
  Totally agree. There should be a standard that uses access keys and provides APIs to access the data. If that existed I could easily cobble something together with some python scripts and a database.

jmisavage 3y ago

I still have a copy that I run in a VM. Doesn’t do as much as before, but I’m surprised how bad most of its replacements are at the basic feature level.

heywire 3y ago

You can still use Microsoft Money sunset edition completely offline. I did this myself until about 2 years ago, when I broke down and wrote a simple web app to fill the need.

Dennip 3y ago

I think they cancelled it in 2023, but MS did release for a while an Excel template replacement for MS Money - I think it even had some advanced stuff like bank integration via plaid.

cashsterling 3y ago

I'm using YNAB desktop edition which still works great. Cost me ~60 USD about 8-9 years ago for permanent license. YNAB decided to go to a subscription based model, which is fine, but the annual cost of this software service seem ridiculously high for how simple the software is overall. Applies to monarch money too... 100 USD is a lot for simple personal accounting software.

dangus 3y ago
I pay for the YNAB subscription product. To me the value is in bank synchronization, which is a big ongoing cost for the service. I can centralize all my financial information across accounts. The habit of checking my transactions in a centralized place and categorizing them has led to me catching fraudulent transactions multiple times. I might have never noticed them without YNAB. That alone has paid for years of the subscription. I know some people find that manual transaction entry helps them control their spending better but to me that’s just not practical. I don’t have time for that, there are too many transactions. I also value the mobile app and automatic synchronization. It’s nice to be able to share a budget with multiple people and not fiddle around with local files or having to get on my desktop computer. I use YNAB on mobile 95% of the time. If I give it a negative it’s not really the price, it’s that I’d like to see more progress on the software. I know they are still a small company but I’d like to see more ways to visualize without needing rely on external tools, and I’d like to see an overall a faster pace of feature development.

ryandrake 3y ago

Yes, the terrible "upload your banking credentials to some cloud" model was what kept me away from Mint. Sadly, the main Quicken product has been moving in this direction for years with their so-called Express Web Connect Plus[1], but at least they're doing something oauth-like with some token rather than your actual credentials. They're really pushing this shit on their customers. I don't want to be dependent on TheCloud. I want my local device to communicate directly with each bank and keep my credentials and "tokens" on devices I manage. Is this so much to ask for? 1: https://www.quicken.com/support/how-quicken-connects-your-bank https://www.quicken.com/support/how-quicken-connects-your-ba...

rqtwteye 3y ago
Totally agree. There should be a standard that uses access keys and provides APIs to access the data. If that existed I could easily cobble something together with some python scripts and a database.