Evening folks, I'm after your recommendations for money management software. Microsoft Money springs to mind for me, but are there any good free alternatives. How about websites? I found Mint.com, any thoughts on that? Thanks,

mint.com worked pretty well for me. It wouldn't grok some of my loan accounts (although it took the checking/savings accounts from the same bank just fine), and it's feedback for when it fails is pretty poor. It won't differentiate between "your authorization is bad" and "we don't support this account/bank/etc yet."

But mostly I didn't intend to use it is a full-fledged 'track my net worth' kind of application, where it would be important for it to record all my accounts. Instead I used it for its reasonably good categorization and pain-free, simple process of setting up simple budgets so that, in conjunction with their iPhone app, I would know when I went $50 overbudget on coffee for the month.

I want to get quite fine-grained with my finances. I probably want to the basics, though im not sure what that is since i have never properly managed my finances before. What i'd like to do is collate my statements into categories so i can get a better idea of what i spend on what. So anything that lets me do that is ok.

I recently started using YNAB (stands for You Need A Budget), and have since gotten into a much better cash-flow situation. The software itself is pretty simple (and costs a one-time $50 I think), but the software is just a clean implementation of the methodology. The real value is in learning the methodology and sticking to it.

To get a good overview of the methodology, you should read the whole front page of their poorly-designed website, including watching the little demonstration videos. The basic idea is to live off the money you earned the previous month, and have a system in place for budgeting large future expenses.

Quote: I found Mint.com, any thoughts on that?

Mint.com looks neat, but it's strictly US-only.

girlfriend uses quicken, i use notepad

horses for courses, as long as in > out

I used Quicken before, but the only real benefit of the software was the reconciliation of my bank accounts statements, and I found Quicken was very poor at it, especially when I made transfers from one account to another.

Anything else (net worth, investments, etc), a few excel spreadsheet can do as well.

I have a few simple rules that work well for me:

-I keep enough money in my checking account to cover a full month of recurring expenses (rent, phone, gaz, car payments, insurance, etc)
-Savings & Investments are automatically taken out of my paycheck
-I spend everything else on my credit card and I pay back the whole thing every pay check I get (never pay any interest on these...)

there is also gnu cash, but i still haven't got around really using it.

Yeah, I just tried to get the HBCI (the standard German bank interface) feature of GnuCash working. No luck.

I have to agree that Google Spreadsheets / OO Calc / Excel is probably more than enough for most people.