"sixstring" <smrybacki[at]yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1124216039.232445.55650[at]g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

Stay with Money 2003 or revert to 2002 if you still have it. I am retired
and track all of our income, expenses, investments, budget, net worth etc in
Money 2002. It will handle extremely complex finances. I have tried every
new version of Money from 2003 to 2005 and none of them are better than
2002, in fact, all are unusable to me because they introduce horrific bugs
or omit features that I use every day in 2002. MSFT is crazy for ruining
Money. I am watching Moneydance and plan to switch to that program when it
is more mature. Quicken is worse than Money. I assure you that Money 2003,
or better yet 2002, will handle your finances perfectly if you learn its
basic features. The main thing is that you must enter data for all of your
income, expenses and investments. No program can help you if you do not
take the time to input data and categorize every transaction.

I don't know what you mean about an overall view of market trends. That is
not a function of personal accounting software and to the extent that MSFT
tries to make Money into a financial adviser they are wacko. Use Money to
display what you have accurately. To be financially secure you must know
exactly what you have by way of income, expenses, assets and liabilities.
Money will show you that in complete detail accurate to the penny if you
input all the data and learn how to use the report features. Once you know
where you stand, you can plan for the future and modify your investments or
your spending behavior as appropriate. For info on market trends read the
Wall St Journal and visit the many financial information sites on the
internet. Some financial advisers are very dangerous in my view. I have
interviewed many and they are generally lazy and incompetent. Most FAs are
out for themselves and they give advice that is not in your best interest.
I have seen that personally on repeated occasions. FA advice is not useless
but it should never be taken as gospel. Talk to an FA but do your own
homework and check everything out before you invest. You need an FA that
does not have a conflict of interest with you - to me that is someone who is
not working on commission basis or otherwise benefiting directly from
his/her advice to you. Think for yourself, you are your own best investment
adviser if you take the time to learn basic investment skills and there is
plenty of good information in the Wall Street Journal/Barrons and on the
internet. Even the MSN Money site has some good stuff


- quote -

What you want is exactly what I want and I do it all with Money. In
order to do it RIGHT you first have to decide whether you are willing
to invest enough of your TIME with Money. Nothing in life is free and
if you want good financial data you need to input that data into Money.
Since 1995 I have entered all my credit card and checking data into
Money. I have a cash on hand account which I balance to actual every
month end. I have all my accounts adding up to a REAL net worth which I
monitor. I use cash flow and to some extent the faulty budget within
Money. You will need to spend time understanding all this and then
DOING it for at least a year. You can use Money 2003 until you are
comfortable and THEN upgrade to get some of the online features now
available. Good luck. Steve

Thanks for the reply. I have considered what you are saying in regards
to a FA, but I actually do want to track all of my investments myself.
I am not a day trader nor do I buy stocks outright. I simply have a
pair of IRAs we purchased to avoid excess taxation by the government a
few years back, a 401K (mine), 401B (my wife's) and a few other
accounts like a key advantage loan (against our home's equity) and a
high yield savings account. Are the facilities within Money 2003
suitable for these tasks, provided of course I dig in and learn them
thoroughly or is an upgrade in order?

I will seek the advice of a professional as well, if only to properly
adjust our 401 plans to meet our goals for retirement. What I am
really looking for in Money 2003 (or whatever) is a good daily view of
where I am today, as well as a view of overall market trends so I know
enough to call my advisor for an appointment.

Does this make sense to do things this way in your opinion(s)?

Here is my opinion based on what you said. I would recommend you stay
with Money 2003 because you are familiar with it and it does what you
want. You recognize that financial planning is more than what you are
doing, but you don't want to deal with all the other aspects of your
financial life within Money. So I recommend you also see a financial
adviser who can help you through your middle age financial planing.
Some people like to do it themselves with the help of Money. Others
don't want all the "headaches". Anyway, managing your checking and
credit card accounts in Money 2003 is not much different than doing it
in Money 2006. As far as all the downloading of data from the banks, I
do it manually and find it less time consuming. Good luck. Steve

Folks, I have been a Money user since 1999 when it was free. Prior to
that I was a Quicken user and I am currently using Money 2003 Deluxe.
I have read through many of these threads in this newsgroup via Google
and I realize a few things:

1. Many people in this NG use this program to extents WAY beyond what I
do currently and have knowledge of it's capabilities and liabilities.
2. It seems that each succeeding version of Money gets bigger and more
bloated while simultaneously getting less stable and useful overall.

I am getting older each year like everyone else, and I would like to
get a better, more controlled grasp on my personal finaances for my
wife and I as we travel through middle age. On the other hand, I don't
want to be a slave to my financial planning software. Money 2003 is
fairly easy to use for us, although we haven't really delved into the
"deep end" of the program really -- IE no on-line banking, investment
tracking or any of that beyond basic checkbook balancing and credit
card tracking. In all honestly then if I want a simple, easy to
understand, stable and efficient application that will let me track my
checkbook, savings accounts, IRAs, 401x packages and maybe a Christmas
Club account, would Money be the better choice or perhaps is Quickens
latest offering more suited to my modest needs? Or, is Money 2003
suitable to my tasks in today's environment? I realize this is a Money
newsgroup, but I'll take my chances anyway on this question.