I have just purchased Money 2007 at Costco and loaded it with no
problems. I now have 11 years of detail financial data in Money. I
started to look at the NEW saving & spending budget. My first
inclination was to go back to my advanced budget but I'm trying now to
get some input from some experienced users of the Money budgets who had
used recent editions (2005 or 2006) of the advanced budget and have
checked out the NEW saving & spending budget. Do you see advantages or
disadvantages with switching? I realize it is early with analysis, but
I would appreciate any input. Thanks.
Steve

- quote -

It works out better for me. There was a bit of additional overhead in
setting it up, but if that's only an annual thing, than I can deal
with that (i.e. a really big spreadsheet of estimated paychecks and
spending allowances to get it to fit to the monthly breakdown since I
think more weekly/bi-weekly).

Love how I can specifically track savings. The only hitch is that it
also includes interest in the "net contributions" so the budget
yells at me for contributing more (larger expense) than budgeted. Oh
well, not the end of the world.

Because of the way my deductions are handled my paychecks are one of 2
amounts each month. This only causes a problem in the two months where
there are 3 checks. Because of the way Money was tied to bills in the
past (and the way I handled paycheck scheduling), this previously
resulted in inflated numbers sometimes.

I sometimes use bills as a way to help with data entry (i.e. weekly
grocery shopping has a bill and so does gasoline). But when things were
tied to bills I couldn't say I want to spend X total per month on
groceries. It would adjust to whatever I actually spent, not leave me
the rest of money left over.

I really wish it would carry over the unspent money in a category from
one month to the next. For example, I pay for car insurance every six
months. I set aside money with each paycheck so that it's not a huge
shock when I get the bill. It'd be helpful it Money said, you
didn't spend that amount of your income this month but may use it
next month instead of restarting the clock. OR, give me a way to say
I'm paying for this from a savings account. Note I said income and
not expense because when I pay my car insurance it looks like I've
spent total more than I earned for the month. True yes, but since I was
planning for the expense, I didn't overextend myself. I looked at
adding the transfers in from an account to the income section, but it
didn't list the account I needed. I could probably fake it by not
putting that bill/category in my budget and then using a savings
account not in my budget to stash the month, but I think I can just
make this work for now.

I wish I could change the budget groupings (add, rename, etc). I made
the current setup work for me by putting regular paycheck deductions in
that committed expense group, irregular expenses as my monthly budgeted
stuff (food, gas, etc) that I put limits on and then used fun for all
my miscellaneous spending that I cap by group not by individual
categories. For example I only want to spend $X per month total on
anything from books, DVDs, clothes, etc. I don't limit what I spend
specifically on each category because each month it could be different.
Also, by not connecting the bills to the budget, I don't have to play
around with the numbers. Those annual bills for magazine subscriptions
count as part of my monthly $X allowance, not in addition to it.

I think "reallocate funds" went away with this budget. Or it's
still staring me in the face and I just didn't touch it yet. If it
is actually gone, I think I may miss that.

All in all, the new spending/savings budget is definitely fits my way
of managing my money than the previous version. There are a few things
that could still be changed to help me work better, but the improvement
was beneficial for me. Can't say I've looked at the cash flow
estimates or some of the larger picture stuff. I'm more week-by-week
looking with annual savings goals.


- Cara

What experience does anyone here have with it? One thing I found is that
it's better at track savings. It's weaker in other ways. It doesn't link to
scheduled bills and, as others observed, the effect on the cash flow
forecast seems dubious. I think it also makes the LP expense estimates less
reliable.
--
Chris Cowles
Gainesville, FL