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Microsoft Money Premium 2004 | List Price: $19.99
Discount Price: $2.45
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Platform: Windows XP
Brand: Microsoft
Binding: CD-ROM
Release Date: 2005-02-17
Features: - Easily download checking, credit card and other transactions from your bank automatically, for up-to-date information
- Consolidate your financial information for an accurate overall view of your business' health
- Optimize your investments with the automatic trade decision tools
- Maximize tax-savings opportunities and handle IRS Schedule D reporting with a click
- Get year-round capital gain or loss calculations
Glad it's not just me.... [Posted on 2004-08-31]
Microsoft just continues to top itself year after year with the continual poor quality of it's software. In that one regard, Money 2004 does not disappoint.
As other reviewers have noted, many previously functional parts of the (mostly well-designed) program have been crippled, or do not work at all. A prime example that I can site is the Debt Reduction Planner... the whole point of the tool is to allow the user to create a program to automatically pay-off the highest interest debt first. It no longer does this--- or much of anything else! When you set up a debt program, the tool used to schedule all of your payments in your Bills and Deposits listing to present an accurate cash-flow forecast. Now it only presents the most immediate payments... USELESS!!!
Add to this sporadic unexplainable data corruption and a complete absence of I/O load balancing in the "background banking" sub-app and you get a software tool that destabilizes and imperils your critical financial data. Oh yeah, and you're paying out the nose for that privilege!
MS Money used to be the only reason I stopped thinking about switcing to the Mac. At this point, Quicken is beginning to sound appealing.
I recently was subjected to inane blather from a financial number-cruncher about how MS is going to eventally conquer everything and everyone in the distributed computing arena.... I say it won't happen. They are committing the one sin that all companies have paid for eventually... arrogance and distain for the needs of their customers. Yeah, Windows will still be around in 30 years. But not much else... and who knows if MS will still be the owners.
better than the Money/Quicken 2005 crop [Posted on 2004-10-13]
Been using since 2003 because it has better customized graphing/reports than Quicken.
MS Money 2004, despite its major and minor quirks, is at least still usable everyday without much fuss.
The debt planner is fairly useless except to schedule payments, and to "guess" when you'll be out of debt, unlike Quicken 2003. Mortgage accounts don't allow you to switch between arbitrary frequency of payments per month, as well as always predicting the WRONG interest/principal payment split.
However, I still like the fair ability to customize; from page displays to reports although I prefer Quicken's more modal interface over Money's free flowing "browser" interface.
Looking forward, Money 2005 is a horrible new product that doesn't carry over any of the "it just works" philosophy of 2004 especially with the even more "browser" interface that leaves huge tracts of white screen space (in advanced mode) compared to 2004. Combined with the huge amount of complaints about Quicken 2005's new 'forced' "upgrade" features, Money looks golden.
Stay with 2004.. it's the lesser of many evils. Until maybe 2006.
it won't run on xp [Posted on 2005-03-24]
I installed the product. and it won't run on my XP professional!!!
don't waste your money.
having problems converting Quicken files [Posted on 2005-04-19]
I'm a longtime Quicken user, but because of the sunset on Quicken 2001 I decided to take a look at Money 2004. Money converted my Quicken files, but ALL of my accounts (bank, IRA, mutual fund, brokerage) had errors.
Money outputs a word file saying there were problems, but gives no details. The file only says "Your Quicken file contained invalid transaction types". It does not list out what transactions had problems. Other accounts have the wrong balances and no explanation at all. Some transactions are missing for no apparent reason.
OK, so I resigned myself to stepping through each account to try and find the problem transactions. I found the problem in one of my mutual fund accounts: Money defaults to average cost basis for mutual funds, and I had used FIFO in Quicken. It was a challenge to find a way to correct this. Just reentering the transaction doesn't work. Even though the program allows you to select the lots to be sold, it still calculates the account basis using average costs. After much searching, I found that going into the security detail page and changing the tax lot accounting there would correct the problem. Not an obvious place to find a solution to a transaction problem.
Now, when I change my "home view" to "Investing", the program crashes. There's probably some way to tiptoe around to make the program happy, but I don't really want to invest the time. Luckily I had a backup I could restore.
Money 2004 has many nice features, but I need a stable product.
Note that Money 2004 Deluxe has a sunset in Sept 2007. Money 2004 Standard has a sunset in Sept 2006.
The Utlimate Spyware/Adware Combo [Posted on 2005-04-23]
This is the worst software purchase I have made in the past 2 years! The password protection -- Passport vs. standard -- is extremely confusing. The fact that the software talks with Microsoft gives me the creepy feeling that it's collecting data on me. I do not like the idea of an institution like Microsoft having complete access to my monetary data. This idea of remote access is rubbish. In my entire life I have never ever needed to check how my investments were doing while in the middle of a busy day. Not only does it have all my information, it also has a nice little banner that cheerfully asks me to Upgrade Today to Microsoft Money 2005. I paid for this software, and I'd appreciate that, if Microsoft wants real estate on my desktop it should pay for it!! The amazing thing is that, while it uploads my most materially important information to MSN.com and forces an advertisement in my face, the anti-adware/spyware softwares do not even detect this hellish piece of trash. I'm seriously considering going back to Money 99.
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