Microsoft Money 2004 Standard

Thanks, but NO Thanks Microsoft. What a way to force users to upgrade to Quicken or some other competitior. Won't be long until your copy of Windows will stop booting 2 years after you installed it.

"Online services valid two or three years from first use. Online bill pay, downloading transactions from your financial institution, downloading stock quotes, and the ability to synchronize with MSN Money Plus or MSN Money expire two years from first use of Microsoft Money Standard or September 1, 2006, whichever is earlier. Online bill pay, downloading transactions from your financial institution, downloading stock quotes, and the ability to synchronize with MSN Money Plus or MSN Money expire three years from first use of Microsoft Money 2004 Premium or September 1, 2007, whichever is earlier."


Nice improvement over previous versions   October 15, 2003
 16 out of 22 found this review helpful

I've used every version of MS Money since Money 97 (off and on) including Money 99, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003. There definitely was always room for some improvement but that's true of everything. Money 2004 seems to be a major improvement. Fast, easy, down to earth, but not "too stupid" for a normal person. I have a nice graphical display of all my bank and credit card accounts in an easy to understand and useful format. This program has come a long way and is one of the coolest that I've used in a while. Way to go Microsoft! :) (Good price too on Standard Edition, anyway)


Ability to import online statements -- lies, lies, lies!!!   October 12, 2003
 9 out of 14 found this review helpful

One of the real values of these products is to import or autmatically update your transaction history for various accounts. There is more support for Quicken than MS-Money. Even though MS-Money claims these can be converted, it isn't by any means consistant. Wanna buy my MS-Money version, I switching back to Quicken?!


Problem with bond fund calculations   September 25, 2003
 9 out of 11 found this review helpful

I wanted to update my old Quicken software because it has a clunky way of editing your entry errors. Quicken does calculate correctly. I purchased Money 2004 Deluxe edition and installed it. It imported my data from the Quicken files correctly. However, when handling bond fund transactions, it does so incorrectly. To make the values turn out correctly, it has to fudge the numbers (number of shares and prices) because it assumes you are holding individual bonds rather than shares in a bond fund. I talked this over with the Microsoft person over the MSN chat room and got a stupid answer. In going to their old help files, I found this was a problem with Money 2001-it appears to still be a problem. Quicken does this correctly--I am going to trade in the Money 2004 for an new version of Quicken. This is a serious problem.


We Are Microsoft, We Know What Is Good for You   September 10, 2003
 17 out of 25 found this review helpful

As with many other Microsoft software products, it appears that some software who hasn't used the program decides that some feature or interface that has been around forever long is now passe or that a new and different feature is just the thing that everybody wants (Bob, Clippy, etc.). Microsoft Money is a prime example of a strange new interface.

Some things I like, but I am doing extra work to get results.
In Quicken, budgets could be entered in a spreadsheet format so you could see budget categories on the left and months across the top with totals for each month and each category AND you could decide exactly what the budget should be. Does Microsoft follow this simple and effective approach... Nooooo? You mark an item as recurring and it automatically with no "should-this-be-part-of-your-budget" question. Theoretically this seems like no big deal, but it doesn't work right. I spent most of a Sunday afternoon trying to stop paychecks from appearing twice. It isn't just items appearing twice, it's my monthly parking that simply refuses to show up even though I've done exactly the same steps as my paycheck. I guess I'll stay with it, but I will be trying Quicken.