Fuzzy’s Financial Blog

While I have tried MS Money in the past I always had issues with it and my banking institutions. I could connect to some but not others, so trying to get everything in one spot. Now it appears MS Money is going away according to Tom over at The Sun’s Financial Diary in his post Alternatives to MS Money.

In Tom’s article he mentions that with MS Money leaving the desktop software scene it only really leaves Quicken’s line of Financial software. I never did try Quicken’s desktop software but I did try their online version and found that to be good.

I have also used GnuCash, but I never really got it completely setup. I like the fact that it is free. It seems like you can do alot with it, I had just started using Yodlee Moneycenter online and was able to easily get everything setup.

One popular online service is Mint which I have tried but just did not care for as I had found Yodlee. Mint actually uses yodlee on the back end and adds what is supposed to be better user visualizations and interactions. Your decision between these too are up to you, I just find Yodlee to be much more powerful and not as diluted as Mint. Mint does have some interesting features though, like seeing if the average person around your zip code spends about the same amount of money for various items. The data used from this is pulled from other users accounts and is completely anonymous and may not be a total representation but it does give you an idea of whether our spending is inline with others.

More online tools seem to be popping up everyday, raising the risks you will find ascam site that is just looking for your information. Or that a completely legitimate site gets hacked and your information stolen. Hopefully neither of these things happen, but the chance is about the same as getting your bank hacked in my opinion as long as you stick with the more legitamate online sites.