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Personal Finance Apps - TODAY!

steve-p said:
Yes - you can install XP/Vista/Windows 7 on a Mac inside a virtual machine using Parallels, VMware or VirtualBox. Then you can run any Windows program inside it while simultaneously using OS X applications. I'm using Microsoft Money and some Windows genealogy software on my Mac until such time as there is an obvious Mac replacement with the functionality I need.
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Steve--thanks for the quick reply

But is there a downside to using Quicken this way--ie cumbersome; certain constraints in using? etc. Do you import all data and have all your same setups for d/l data from banks and/or credit card companies?

If this is true you have brightened my day considerable as i can go forward with a iMac purchase.

Thanks
 
I was a quicken user under the PC. I really stopped using it when I could not longer connect to my bank directly in Quicken to write check and download transaction data. I had to download by dowloading a file from my banks site and do an import. Too much of a hastle. The other thing was that quicken also did not support my credit union credit card etc.

I pretty much now do all of my transations on the bank website and use Mint.

As has been stated here the drawback to both my bank as well as mint is the inability to enter in transactions in advance. Thus, if you write a check there is no way to enter in in a register, ala quicken or ms money and then have it automatically reconsiled to the transaction once cleared by the bank.

However, I have learned to live with this since we primarily pay everythng via electronic payments or credit card. Yes, I do write a bunch of checks by hand but many of them are fixed amounts each week for a tutor or cleaning lady, etc. I know the handfull of bills that get paid each month and I know when pay day is for me and my spouse. I mainly use one credit card for the majority of purchases and can see that balance daily via mint. I then can pretty much accurately figure my cash flow. Know if I can write this check etc. Is it perfect no. But mint ties into each and every account I have and updates balances every hr or so. Most of these accounts I never had access to in Quicken. If you use credit cards for most of the payments (btw: on many utilities sites like the phone bill etc you can do auto billing to a credit card) you have up to date info. The majority of things are catagorized in mint based on the type of store. I also have daily balance info from my investments etc and can see a full networth.

What mint is good for is budgeting and account consolidation. It allows you to setup budgets and you will be alerted if you exceed that budget or are getting close. It send you a daily summary of your accounts. It will tell you when you get a large deposit or withdrawls. It will tell you if you are being asssessed fee's from your bank and online you can see suggestions of other lower cost banks, cd's etc.
 
ticman said:
Steve--thanks for the quick reply

But is there a downside to using Quicken this way--ie cumbersome; certain constraints in using? etc. Do you import all data and have all your same setups for d/l data from banks and/or credit card companies?

If this is true you have brightened my day considerable as i can go forward with a iMac purchase.

Thanks
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Well, how you get the data and settings in there will be specific to Quicken which I haven't used personally - but in essence, it's exactly the same procedure that you would have to use if you were moving to a new Windows PC.

With MS Money it was easy - I just installed the application in the virtual machine in the same way I would have in Windows on any other machine, and then copied over the .mny file from my old PC. If all of Quicken's settings are in the Quicken file, then it should be just as straightforward.

There aren't any limitations really to doing it this way. It does run fractionally slower than it would on the same hardware compared to if it was just running Windows, but since most switchers are going from an older PC to a new Mac, in practice it probably runs as fast as it did on the old machine.

The downside is the cost of the virtualisation software. VirtualBox is free, and will do the job, but Parallels and VMware have some additional nice features. Also of course you need a licence for Windows as well, although if you are retiring a Windows PC you might be able to install Windows using the media that came with that, in which case it wouldn't cost anything. That depends on the type of Windows install disk that your PC came with.

There are two ways actually of installing Windows on a Mac. One way doesn't need any extra virtualisation software - it uses something called BootCamp. However, if you do it that way, you can only run Windows or OS X at any given time, and must choose each time you boot. Then if you decide you want to run a program on the other operating system, you have to reboot first.

Using the virtualisation software I already mentioned is better for most purposes because you can just boot the Mac normally into OS X and run Windows applications on top of that, which is what most people want to do. You would only really consider the BootCamp route for gaming or something that needs lots of computing power. Otherwise, a virtual machine is the way to go.

A lot of people do it nowadays - it means you can switch to Mac without giving up any Windows software that you still find essential. There's a whole forum devoted to it actually: https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/86/
 
steve-p said:
Yes - you can install XP/Vista/Windows 7 on a Mac inside a virtual machine using Parallels, VMware or VirtualBox. Then you can run any Windows program inside it while simultaneously using OS X applications. I'm using Microsoft Money and some Windows genealogy software on my Mac until such time as there is an obvious Mac replacement with the functionality I need.
Click to expand...

Steve--thanks for the quick reply

But is there a downside to using Quicken this way--ie cumbersome; certain constraints in using? etc. Do you import all data and have all your same setups for d/l data from banks and/or credit card companies?

If this is true you have brightened my day considerable as i can go forward with a iMac purchase.

Thanks
 
Steve P

thanks for all the great information. I actually understood it all.

I will check out the 3 suggested virtualization software; I do have a complete install of XP

I will read the windows/mac forum discussion

Really appreciate your help from the other side of the Pond.

Thanks again.

Mike
 
An alternative to using VirtualBox or VMware or something is just just hang on to your old Windows machine and use it remotely. When I was still using Quicken for Windows I just set up an XP box in my closet with no monitor or keyboard or anything. I connected to it via remote desktop and ran it that way. I found this approach to be marginally less cumbersome than running a virtual machine.
 
ctt1wbw said:
I wouldn't count on online banking being free for much longer, at ANY bank. They will fee you to death to make up the new taxes that His Holiness is putting on the banks.
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That comment was really not necessary. In fact, regardless of what "his holiness" does and/or did, fees will continue to rise. Doesn't matter if its' the Red or Blue team. They are both in run by the Corporatocracy and fees will rise as long as they want them to rise. Regardless of the facade of your political affiliation. The only thing they don't have control over is how you spend and SAVE your money. Do without and see your account grow. Money rules in today's world so the only team or person you should believe and be loyal to is yourself. Oh wait.... wasn't this about personal finance applications? LOL! Did I mention, "YNAB3" for both Windows & Mac? ;-)
 
YNAB (You Need A Budget) 7 day trial?!?!

Went to check out YNAB (You Need A Budget). All you get is a 7 day trial. Are you kidding. Last time I looked I get statements once a month and you want to use a program like you would in real life.

If you have historical information to enter, you may be able to judge its suitability for you but if you are just starting out then the 7 days is totally useless.

What the hell were they thinking. Others have it right where you can capture 50-100 transactions so you can see a timeline and use it in the way you would in real life, ie., access the app only about a dozen times per month not 12 times per day for the next 7 days. Pass on this app, not even worth a download.
 
ep1curus said:
Pass on this app, not even worth a download.
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Are you kidding? I agree with you that the trial is rather short BUT it should take less then seven days to evaluate the application. You can use older data for test purposes. Not to mention that the YNAB website is full of podcast and videos demonstrating of the application. The support and live webcast are WAY more than any other company is doing right now.

I've been using it now for about two months and I absolutely love it. It honestly only took me a couple of days of serious testing to realize that it was what I needed. Again, everyone is different, with different needs but it doesn't take long to evaluate a piece of software. I just think that comment was based on pure laziness.
 
eclipse525 said:
That comment was really not necessary. In fact, regardless of what "his holiness" does and/or did, fees will continue to rise. Doesn't matter if its' the Red or Blue team. They are both in run by the Corporatocracy and fees will rise as long as they want them to rise. Regardless of the facade of your political affiliation. The only thing they don't have control over is how you spend and SAVE your money. Do without and see your account grow. Money rules in today's world so the only team or person you should believe and be loyal to is yourself. Oh wait.... wasn't this about personal finance applications? LOL! Did I mention, "YNAB3" for both Windows & Mac? ;-)
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That comment was completely justified. The banks won't swallow fees and taxes imposed by the cogress and the president without passing them off to the consumer. I haven't found a bank that lets you download statements using a third party program for free in years. The fees are only going to get worse.
 
ctt1wbw said:
That comment was completely justified. The banks won't swallow fees and taxes imposed by the cogress and the president without passing them off to the consumer. I haven't found a bank that lets you download statements using a third party program for free in years. The fees are only going to get worse.
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That sucks for you. My bank doesn't charge any fees for any online access including bill pay. As a matter of fact they recently started doing away with foreign ATM fees. And that seems to be the norm in my part of the country. I haven't paid a bank fee in years. However I agree that if the government gets carried away (like they are now) and the taxes and fee start climbing then we the consumer will pay for them.
 
Very happy iBank user here. Finally ditched Quicken '07 a few months ago. iBank has some limitations, but overall it does most of what I need.
 
I upgraded from MS Money 2003 to MS Money 2006; still running Parallels / WinXP. Still hoping for a good Mac finance program. :(
 
iBank vs YNAB

does anyone have insight as to the differences or benefits of iBank vs YNAB? I downloaded the trials, and I'm still evaluating, but being a newbie, it's a bit overwhelming.

I'm looking to set up a mechanism to track spending. the categories in both seem flexible and adaptable enough. I may also consider the budget portion once I learn more about it. Lastly, I may be interested in paying bills directly through the program rather than going to each credit card's website manually.

I don't mind manually downloading data, but it may be nice to have it automatic (or semi-automatic.)

any experiences with comparing these apps? or is there another that may be more suitable?

I also have an iphone, so coordinating the two may be helpful, though I doubt I would log in every transaction while out and about. most of my purchases are on one card, so I could download everything at once perhaps.

tia!
susan
 
DaveF said:
Your banking stuff is already in the "cloud": it's called the banks' websites. Mint is build on Yodlee, which is a relatively long-lived system for getting direct access to your banks' website.

If mint closes shop, you've seemingly lost nothing: it's all being pulled from your bank directly.

And this is what I don't understand about Mint: it seems to be read only. It's an interface, a window, into your bank accounts. You can see what's happening but can't actually create any new data from Mint. You can't pre-plan, or enter financial transactions ahead of time. And as such, I don't understand how it's helpful. It's only backwards looking; not realtime or forward looking, like is necessary to me.

Or I grossly misunderstand Mint. That's certainly possible. :)
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I have to agree, not only is your information already in the cloud, but a online server with high grade security is way more secure than you hard drive that can be co-opted by on bad email attachment. Especially with a windoz machine.

I have used mvelopes for the las 2 years. I really like their feature set of online bill pay, and auto download of transactions, but their flash interface cannot function on an iphone, and is dreadfully slow. Currently, looking for a replacement and thinking moneywell is the way to go, but I would love to find something more web based.
 
the best app to me

ive been looking for this for a long time, i was even going to build it, but this people bit me. budget planner, pretty cool calendar, i really like how it shows you how much money my account will have in the future. i download it yesterday and finish inputting all my monthly expenses, i mean the regular ones i know so i can see how much money i will have friday to take out my wife and the kids. pretty nice app.
 
That xero quick demo movie looked really good, but it makes no mention of online billpay (which is a must have)...here's hoping.
 
gerberdaisy said:
does anyone have insight as to the differences or benefits of iBank vs YNAB?
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Tried both and I settled on YNAB3. They are very similar but the interface and support for YNAB3 was top notch. Although you can import your bank data, I personally like to enter everything by hand. It allows me to name things and also reinforces what your are spending and ESPECIALLY reinforces all those little charges that you might sometimes over look if your not on top of your finances. YNAB3, is also working on an iPhone app. They don't have a release date but do keep the community up-to-date with progress via their iPhone page

On a side note, I hear everyone speak about having this magical all-in-one application to do it all for them but it really doesn't exist. You need to WORK on your finances. These apps just are tools and aren't meant to do it all for you. I'd rather have a tool box with real tools, instead of a tiny swiss army knife. If you can't make the time to work on a budget because you don't have the perfect tool, then just don't do it anything and see what happens. IMHO.



~e
 
I gave up on native Mac finance apps and upgraded to Parallels 6, Windows 7 Home Premium, and Quicken Premier 2011.

I had my wife, who handles the finances, demo iBank 4, and a couple others. We also bought and tried Quicken Essentials for Mac. They were all inadequate, lacking small and large features we consider standard in a finance program.

It's frustrating that after switching from Windows almost four years ago, I still need it to for household finances. Maybe in a couple of years there will finally be a mature and capable OS X finance program.
 
I personally think iBank although it has its flaws. Its the best Mac Solution to Personal Financing. Especially when you add in the iphone app that allows you to sync with ease.
 
I've been using MoneyDance for several years and really like it. *Then again I don't use the feature to download transactions, I do that manually and have been since Intuit took away the feature from my copy of Quicken 2000.
 
Thrilledge said:
I personally think iBank although it has its flaws. Its the best Mac Solution to Personal Financing. Especially when you add in the iphone app that allows you to sync with ease.
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What sort of personal finance do you do with your iPhone? I've never found a mobile finance app handy, but I'm curious how others benefit from it.
 
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