Do any of you use any software packages to manage your money/accounts/etc? I just recently tried out ms money but I hate they way it asks for a ms net account to do anything decently useful.
Are there any other useful tools out there for just simple book balancing and making sure you can keep an eye on everything.
Try Quicken
I use MS-Money for about 3 years now and it works ok. Quicken also is good (I used to use Quicken before switching to MS because I got MS free with someother package).
You don't need MS net account. I don't have one but can use all online features also. Just register your email account (whatever email you have) at www.passport.com (which is a MS service I think) and that's it. Once you done this registratin which is free, you can use lots of useful things (I use MS Carpoint etc) where content is VERY GOOD.
whats MS carpoint? I am still trying out the features and its pretty cool where the online services are available.
However I am having a hard time setting up a portfolio watch where I can just see how stocks or other equity instruments have been performing.
Oh. Carpoint is one of the free services from Microsoft. When you register your email address with www.passport.com, it opwns up free access to a number of MSN services, including Carpoint, MoneyCentral etc. I use MoneyCentral.com everyday for all stock research etc and after having tried everyother finance site, I liked MoneyCentral. Best part is MS-Money ties into MoneyCentral so that even if you don't have your computer with you, you can check much of your balances, bills etc from MS-Money by going MoneyCentral. There's lots more there but I haven't tried it all.
You can setup portfolio watch in MS-Money but setting it up in MoneyCentral works a lot better. They both are (your choice) connected anyway, so you only maintain it in one place (if you so want to).
We've used QUicken for ages..
I started over a year ago and my husband has used it for about 3 years now..If well organized you can really track your savings/spending and what you're spending on....
Call me prehistoric but Im nto comfortable with something set up monthly.
I usually pay differnt amounts and stuff. How is it helpful for my situation?
I think he is referring to online bill payment where you can go to your bank account and have them send out a check for your rent, mortgage, car lease, utilities etc. For those steady payments such as mortgage you can set up monthly payments while for the other bills you can go in and make the payments when you recieve the bill, such as credit cards.
It is better cause your payment gets there on time, you dont have to buy stamps or write out checks and you can do it from anywhere as long as you have online access. Going one step further you can set further you can even recieve the bills online so all you do is long it and send them a payment, you dont even get the paper bill. the only problem with this is if they dont send you a bill in say pdf format you would have to print it out each time if you want to keep it in the books for the future cause most electronic bills are only kept for 6 months.
Re: Financial Management Tools
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*Originally posted by hmcq: *
Are there any other useful tools out there for just simple book balancing and making sure you can keep an eye on everything.
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Any other tool? I think many married men would agree - who needs a software to manage their finances when they have a wife.
Ah, shadi khana abadi (or is it khana kharabi?) :)