"Steve" <sjcohen730[at]aol.com> wrote in message
news:1156779171.425624.193720[at]75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
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Hey guys, the boycott thing was supposed to be humorous. Obviously, the
miniscule group of knowledgeable Money users who might boycott based on
MSFT's marketing approach or the program's core limitations is so small as
to be irrelevant.

And, as I said before, I regard Money as indespensible, it does more for me
than any other program by far, including the market analysis software that I
used to trade stocks that cost many thousands.

I am not upgrading because, having tried all the newer versions except 2007,
the "upgrades" are worse than what I already have. But I still want more
and certainly wish some competent developer would produce a truly
professional level personal finance program.

And Steve is right, most Money users don't understand basic accounting and
they seem unwilling to read help files and/or study Money's behavior to
learn how to accomplish various tasks.

Regards

Bill Wood

"William R Wood" <secret[at]???.net> wrote in message
news:ud0X7IryGHA.3496[at]TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
- quote -

If there was a successful boycott, it would probably result in MS dropping
the product completely.

Bruce.

A grain of sand between the toes of an elephant.

"William R Wood" <secret[at]???.net> wrote in message
news:ud0X7IryGHA.3496[at]TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
- quote -

William R Wood wrote:
- quote -

Bill,
I'm not into the silly boycott Money business. I think each of
us long time users have found a way to get the most out of Money for
each of our individual needs. We use it in a way that is most important
to us. Some of the stories I read about here, and the TIME people spend
trying to fix problems, is sad. I truely believe 70% of the real
problems described are caused by people doing things wrong in Money
because they don't understand basic accounting. Whenever I want to do
some new or unusual transaction involving investment or something
special, I usually have to "play around" with it a bit to make Money
report it the way I want. Not everything in Money is automatic and
correct. You have to THINK for yourself sometimes. That is why so many
of these problems are reported. JMHO. Steve

"Steve" <sjcohen730[at]aol.com> wrote in message
news:1156772994.499246.258180[at]p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...

- quote -


I agree and that is basically what I did back in 2002 after upgrading every
year since Money came out. I bought and fully tested Money 2003, 2004 and
2005. I ran 2002 side by side with the test programs so I could easily
revert back to 2002. I found that the newer versions were worse than 2002
so I returned each of them for a refund. I downloaded the 2006 trial
version and ran that side by side with 2002 for several months on a separate
computer. I formatted the hard drive on that separate computer to
permanently and absolutely get rid of 2006 which I detested. I refuse to
even test 2007 based on what I read about it on this forum.

So I am using 2002 under the assumption that it will never be updated. I do
download my credit card transactions because there are at least a hundred
every month. My wife shops a lot! And I also download my checking
account transactions which include many preauthorized debits and credits.
But I manually enter everything else including all investment transactions.
I was a full time stock/options trader for 5 years after I quit work at age
50 and I entered all of my hundreds of trades manually as well and Money
handled them fine.

I fully intend to use Money 2002 forever unless someone actually makes a
better program, and I am not holding my breath. I am not a MSFT hater but I
will never upgrade Money unless MSFT radically changes its current approach
and improves Money substantively and gets rid of the silly fluff.

[By the way, you cannot run any report you want with Money. Reporting is
Money's greatest weakness - the program needs a good report writer. I am
forced to export data to Excel to get really useful reports. Some of
Money's built-in reports are ok but none of them are exactly what I want.]

Based on what you said, I hope I can count on you to boycott Money going
forward. Keep 2007 forever, or, better yet, upgrade to Money 2002. Let
MSFT feel some pain since they royally deserve it!

Regards


Bill Wood

Bruce Chastain wrote:
- quote -

If Money stopped updating today, and I had to live with Money 2007 from
now on, I think I could do it without much problem. I would have to
manually input my investment prices either daily or weekly depending on
my need. Other than that, everything else I'm doing is manual. I pay
all my bills directly thru my BOA bill pay for free or from certain
vendors who directly charge my bank. I schedule these same bills in
Money and click enter them each month at the appropriate time. I daily
reconcile my credit card and bank balances against what Money says. I
do the same with my investment data in Money verses my broker website.
The whole effort is a few minutes a day and the benefit is I have 11
years of detail data in Money to run any kind of report I want about my
financial history and utilize the Money projection capability within
Lifetime Planner. I think I'm OK for years to come. Comments? Steve

"William R Wood" <secret[at]???.net> wrote in message
news:edk1eBqyGHA.1268[at]TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
- quote -

I have to agree with that. Given the critical role MS Money plays in my
life and future, a working and stable money management program is worth much
more to me that the current cost of Money.

But only if it works, and only if they issue fixes more than once a year.

Bruce.

Don't know if its too late to go back to an earlier version.

You might be able to export your data into Qif files and import them back
into an earlier version like 2002. I don't know if this works but it might
be worth a try. If I were me, I would find a way to do it even if it meant
re-downloading or typing in years of data in 2002 or older version.

I exported all of my 2002 data into Qif files and imported it back into a
new 2002 file a year or so ago just to clean out all the ghosts and gremlins
that creep into Money files. It was a major pain but it worked and gave me
a smaller, faster file that worked perfectly again.

The unfortunate situation you are in is actually far worse than you
currently think! I am suggesting that MSFT has no incentive improve Money
or fix bugs because they already have you trapped - as you just admitted.
Thus, the most significant problem you face is that new versions will make
Money even worse - not only will MSFT never fix your current issue, they
will likely introduce more "bugs" or disable features that you use and
change the interface in ways that you do not like.

The only way to reverse the current course that MSFT and Intuit are on -
which is a plan to milk submissive users for ongoing revenue - is to stop
buying new versions of Money and Quicken.

There are lots of improvements I want to see in Money. When MSFT or Intuit
or some other developer offers a better program I will gladly buy it. I
would gladly pay 10 times what Money costs for a personal finance program
that actually did everything I want.

If I knew what I was doing I would program my own software.

Regards

Bill Wood


"Bruce Chastain" <bachastain[at]XNOSPAMXsbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:urHHE%23jyGHA.2300[at]TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Unfortunately each bug that needs fixing has an associated cost including
"how many users are affected". If it costs a LOT of bucks in developers time
and only a very few users are affected then "don't hold your breath". :-(

--
Regards
Bob Peel,
Microsoft MVP - Money

For UK tips & fixes see
http://support.microsoft.com/default...d=fh;EN-GB;mny.


I do not respond to any emails that I have not specifically asked for.

"Bruce Chastain" <bachastain[at]XNOSPAMXsbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:urHHE%23jyGHA.2300[at]TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
- quote -

"William R Wood" <secret[at]???.net> wrote in message
news:%236IuEniyGHA.4796[at]TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Unfortunately for me, it's way to late for 2002 to be an option for me. So
I'm stuck waiting for MS to fix the bug, whether they do or not.

Bruce.

Don't get your hopes up.

In 2003 and 2004, after trying the then new versions of Money, I went
through the same process that you described all the way up to top level
support on 2 different occasions with a different issue that was also
confirmed as a "bug". I wrote many detailed emails and had several extended
telephone conversations with upper level support people. Assurances that
the matter was referred to product development people and that the issue
would be addressed were sincere. But nothing has ever happened and the
problem still exists in Money 2003,4,5&6 and probably 2007. The fact that
the 2003 change in report logic totally destroyed my budget reports that
worked perfectly in Money 2002 was not a sufficient concern apparently
because not enough other Money users complained.

I believe what others have said is true. Very few Money users actually know
how to use the program in depth. Thus they never see the real bugs and
limitations in Money. MSFT probably will not commit the resources necessary
to fix a problem like you reported. You just probed too deep into Money's
logic.

As I noted before I still use Money 2002. That version does not have any
significant bugs that I know of and I use most features to the limit. I
have complete data going back into the early 1980s and it is still rocket
fast except when creating multi-year net worth reports or Jan-Dec monthly
budget reports. Best of all MSFT cannot disable downloading as far as I
know and every bank I deal with still supports transaction downloads
directly or via active statement. I believe banks will always support
manual transaction downloads for legacy Money users because it is easy and
makes business sense. Even if banks do abandon legacy Money users, I bet
somebody will come up with a translator that will let me import my
downloads. If worse comes to worse, I will type the transactions in myself.

What I won't do is pay MSFT for "upgrades" that are worse than Money 2002
and attempt to trap me into bi-annual upgrades that are completely without
substance.

Like others I am amazed at the general lack of interest in personal finance
software. I regard Money and Quicken (up to about 2002 anyway) as the
absolute best, most indispensable software on Earth. I used Quicken for
many years and then Money since it came out. Nothing has helped my
financial health more and I certainly could not imagine going without it
even for a day.

Regards

Bill Wood


"Bruce Chastain" <bachastain[at]XNOSPAMXsbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:OO9xyigyGHA.4232[at]TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
- quote -

In microsoft.public.money, Michael J. Blazin wrote:

- quote -

I see Microsoft Money as a smorgasbord of home finance. Few use the
majority of features, but for many even one good use makes it
worthwhile. For me that would be tracking the basis of funds/stocks
and preparing the info for the income tax return if I sell. Keeping
track of checks and credit card expenses turned out to be a very
useful secondary task. The portfolio view including quotes has been
very nice too.

I think that's a lot of the issue. Ask 1,000,000 consumers if they'd like to
use their home PC to manage their personal finances and you probably get 80%
positive. So you go off and invest a lot of money building and selling tools
for them to do so. (The situation for Microsoft and Money through, say,
M988/99.) Give 1,000,000 consumers a tool to actually do it and 999,000 will
find it just too hard or, as you put it, they just won't want to face it.
(The reality they are seeing today.)

Whatever would make you think the rest of us are the most anal retentive
nitpickers assembled?

"Michael J. Blazin" <mjblazin[at]swbell.net> wrote in message
news:fKhIg.12375$1f6.4397[at]newssvr27.news.prodigy.net...
- quote -

UPDATE:

MS called me on a Sunday and we talked for quite a while!

He was able to duplicate my test file and demonstrate that this was NOT a
problem in 2006 and IS a problem in 2007.

He wasn't able to commit to a fix date, but my main goal of getting it
reported an in the process towards a fix has been accomplished.

I can only hope that it will be fixed some time soon because right now my
budget and lifetime planner are useless.

Bruce.

I've been a Money user for 11 years now, having updated each year. I
think my experience has been generally positive because I DO enter my
transactions manually and confirm my balances in key accounts like bank
and credit card daily via phone or on line. My investment prices are
automatically downloaded. As a retired accountant I can see how the
average user can screw up Money unintentially if they don't fully
understand accounting or they don't enter all the important data. (ie)
To do it right, you need to have a CASH account to reflect the in's and
out's of spending cash from ATM's, etc. You need to "balance" that
account periodically to the actual cash you have on hand. My financial
history is supported by my Net Worth report which is accurate. I KNOW
what I own and what I owe. The supplemental information that the Money
program provides to me such as cash flow make it well worth the $30 or
$40 a year I shell out for the program and the few minutes I spend each
day inputting data. I use the budget as a small tool for my planning,
knowing it is broken, but utilizing the features that work. JMHO. Steve

MS Money is the SAP of retail software: an incredibly powerful tool whose
benefits are only truly realized if you commit a lot of start up effort and
alter your day to day processes. If not, it becomes a glorified checkbook.
Only a tiny minority of consumers spend that kind of effort. It's not a
question of net worth. I've seen the resistance to track expenses and plan
investmentments at all levels. How you spend your money is an important
part of your and your family's life. But very few people want to face it.
It doesn't help that the people that actively use the software are, by their
self-selected nature, a cadre of the most anal retentive nitpickers
assembled. Many of the people in this forum seem to lack an understanding
of how banks, information services firms, etc make their money and what the
$25 they spent on a CD really buys. When a bank or IS firm does somethng
that alters a service or disregards our needs, it's very unlikely that they
are stupid or don't understand the potential. It's much more likely that,
in a universe of competing interests, we just didn't make the cut.

"Anna" <rhodesbiz[at]bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:1156684779.489034.80710[at]i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

I think the biggest mis-conception about Money is that you "have" to put
your "financial data out there". Absolutely not true. I personally never
have and never will (and like Dick I have never downloaded).

I agree that MS are somewhat devious about the way they word the "Do you
want to use a passport/password?" question on installing.

Personally although I can use Excel for straightforward tasks, I am afraid I
don't trust my capability to use it for complex calculations and that is
another reason why I prefer Money.

--
Regards
Bob Peel,
Microsoft MVP - Money

For UK tips & fixes see
http://support.microsoft.com/default...d=fh;EN-GB;mny.


I do not respond to any emails that I have not specifically asked for.

"Anna" <rhodesbiz[at]bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:1156684779.489034.80710[at]i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

Hi Bob,
I know you really can't compare. I guess my point is that anytime I
show/teach Excel workshops, everyone jumps on the bandwagon and starts
using it immediately. It is easy to get people excited about what you
can do with Excel.

Whenever I show MS Money, people are either too worried about putting
their financial data out there, think it is too much trouble/work, or
they show a little interest--but then never really get around to using
it. So I can see why it is not a huge money maker for MS.

For me, it is a way of life...I don't think I could do without it. So I
get a bit frustrated when others do not seem that interested. It seems
to me if something like MS Money makes your life easier (even with all
the bugs), then why wouldn't you want to use it? Oh well, just my
thoughts here.

Anna

Bob Peel, MVP wrote:
- quote -

PMBI but don't forget the size of MS. Office is produced by a completely
separate part of the organisation to Money and each have their own P&L and
budget.

Also as others have said there is the Marketing/image area and they will
have their 2 cents. (Particularly Marketing)

--
Regards
Bob Peel,
Microsoft MVP - Money

For UK tips & fixes see
http://support.microsoft.com/default...d=fh;EN-GB;mny.


I do not respond to any emails that I have not specifically asked for.

"Anna" <rhodesbiz[at]bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:1156647794.603296.205970[at]p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

All of this makes me think that MS Money might someday be a thing of
the past. If they are not profitting from the program, then they have
little reason to support it, fix it, or improve it. It is kind of
depressing really. I have been a MS Money user since 94 too. In fact,
MS Money is the reason I purchased my first computer. A salesman showed
me the program in Radio Shack and I got so interested that I went and
purchased my first computer THAT day (but not at Radio Shack). I've
been using the program ever since.
However, none of my friends or family use the program, but most all of
them use Microsoft Office programs daily. So I can see that your
summary of the problem is pretty much on the money.


Dick Watson wrote:
- quote -