Microsoft Money discussion

Banking and Saving strategies, maximizing interest rates, budgeting, GICs, HISAs.
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adrian2
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Re: Microsoft Money discussion

Post by adrian2 »

leoc2 wrote:
like_to_retire wrote:Learn Excel and write your own finance software and you won't have to worry what some software company is doing to you every few years.
This is what I do too!
Taking it one step more, you can do it with a 4 operations calculator, or even with a pencil and paper.

Instead of this forum, we could have a list of addresses, write our messages on paper and mail it to all other members.
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Re: Microsoft Money discussion

Post by like_to_retire »

adrian2 wrote:
leoc2 wrote:
like_to_retire wrote:Learn Excel and write your own finance software and you won't have to worry what some software company is doing to you every few years.
This is what I do too!
Taking it one step more, you can do it with a 4 operations calculator, or even with a pencil and paper.

Instead of this forum, we could have a list of addresses, write our messages on paper and mail it to all other members.
Sarcastic humour aside, I find that retail packaged software written for rather simple tasks as budgeting or cost base tracking to be unnecessarily complicated and generalized to one-size-fits-all.

It's fairly simple to create excel macros that do everything you would need. I wouldn't really compare it to bear skins and knives as you've inferred.

ltr
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Re: Microsoft Money discussion

Post by steves »

adrian2 wrote:
Bylo Selhi wrote:Money is discontinued and will never be enhanced.
For a longer time view, think how long the application will run on current PC's (16 bit vs. 32 bit vs. 64 bit vs. ...).

I have started using Quicken (16 bit) since I came to Canada 17 years ago. 16 bit apps are not supported any more beginning with Windows 7, hence I've finally migrated to Quicken 2011. One more future iteration to 128 bit may leave Money (32 bit) not runnable.
Not so.... Windows7 Pro and Ultimate, both will run 16 bit apps.
Live Rich, Die Broke (but not too soon).
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adrian2
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Re: Microsoft Money discussion

Post by adrian2 »

steves wrote:Not so.... Windows7 Pro and Ultimate, both will run 16 bit apps.
In XP emulation mode... but for both of the OS versions one has to forge extra dough.
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Re: Microsoft Money discussion

Post by rogernick »

like_to_retire wrote:
adrian2 wrote:
leoc2 wrote: This is what I do too!
Taking it one step more, you can do it with a 4 operations calculator, or even with a pencil and paper.

Instead of this forum, we could have a list of addresses, write our messages on paper and mail it to all other members.
Sarcastic humour aside, I find that retail packaged software written for rather simple tasks as budgeting or cost base tracking to be unnecessarily complicated and generalized to one-size-fits-all.

It's fairly simple to create excel macros that do everything you would need. I wouldn't really compare it to bear skins and knives as you've inferred.

ltr
That sounds really exciting. So do you mean we can do all the tasks that these software do? If yes, how should I create an excel sw for myself? Would be waiting to read your instructions :)
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Re: Microsoft Money discussion

Post by like_to_retire »

So do you mean we can do all the tasks that these software do? If yes, how should I create an excel sw for myself?
To learn Excel is fairly simple. You can make your programs as simple as a basic spreadsheet or more complicated if you take the time to learn programming techniques. Even if you know nothing of programming you can use recording features of Excel to write the programs for you.
Get Excel and start learning. :)

ltr
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Re: Microsoft Money discussion

Post by zeno »

Seems Microsoft finally turned off the stock quotes update for MS Money in the last month or so.
I've been using MS Money since its introduction, and despite Microsoft's decision to stop selling it, I've stuck with it. I no longer use it for day-to-day finances, but I'm still using MS Money 2006 to track my investment transactions. With 15 years of transaction records and 6 investment accounts and 2 broker switches it's one my consolidated electronic archive. Since it was still updating stock quotes, it also tracked my investment returns, something that with dividends, reinvestment, splits etc. is more than basic Excel.

Now that the electronic updates have gone I'm facing a decision:

A. Keep tracking things in MS Money, entering stock values manually. (I have to do this anyway for bonds.)
B. Switch to Quicken or some other still supported tool.
C. Rely on a mixture of the RBC Direct website and spreadsheets.

I'm leaning towards option A. since I'm reluctant to abandon that historical archive of transactions, but is there anything to be gained by B?
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Re: Microsoft Money discussion

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zeno wrote:Now that the electronic updates have gone I'm facing a decision:

A. Keep tracking things in MS Money, entering stock values manually. (I have to do this anyway for bonds.)
B. Switch to Quicken or some other still supported tool.
I've been using Quicken since 1994 and have never used electronic updates.
IMHO, by continuing to use option A, your biggest problem will be the obsolescence of the program itself, in a not too distant day.
Remember 16 bit vs. 32 bit vs. 64 bit?

In not too many operating system cycles, you may find that your 12/15/20 year old app cannot be run, unless you go through heroic hoops.

In kind of a similar fashion, when I moved to Canada from South Africa, 19 years ago, I brought with me a stash of backup floppy disks (5 inch and 3.5 inch). How many modern computers can read them now?
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Re: Microsoft Money discussion

Post by DenisD »

Don't suppose Quicken can import all those Money transactions?
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Re: Microsoft Money discussion

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DenisD wrote:Don't suppose Quicken can import all those Money transactions?
That would be my first choice to pursue. Perhaps Zeno should peruse the Intuit/Quicken forums for answers to this.
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Re: Microsoft Money discussion

Post by CrookedFork »

adrian2 wrote: In not too many operating system cycles, you may find that your 12/15/20 year old app cannot be run, unless you go through heroic hoops.
If you have the operating system installer, it's not too difficult to create a virtual machine. The learning curve is not very steep.

So you can run a virtual Windows 98 or Windows XP machine inside Windows 7 or 8 or future versions of Windows.


I'm not sure if this is considered jumping through a heroic hoop, but it's a pretty good fix for the problem. And it only needs to be done once.
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Re: Microsoft Money discussion

Post by zeno »

[quote="CrookedFork"][quote="adrian2"]
In not too many operating system cycles, you may find that your 12/15/20 year old app cannot be run, unless you go through heroic hoops.[/quote]
If you have the operating system installer, it's not too difficult to create a virtual machine. The learning curve is not very steep.

So you can run a virtual Windows 98 or Windows XP machine inside Windows 7 or 8 or future versions of Windows.


I'm not sure if this is considered jumping through a heroic hoop, but it's a pretty good fix for the problem. And it only needs to be done once.[/quote]

I have some experience with VMs and honestly I don't think it's worth it to keep MS Money alive. It's working fine now in Win7. I think I'll persist with it at least until it's time to replace the current PC. Perhaps by then I'll care less about 15 year old transactions. Like I said, I'm hand entering bond values now. Entering a few ETF values isn't going to kill me.

At some point I'll have to bite the bullet and migrate. At that point I would probably export and save as QIF files for historical purposes, but only import the last five years. I see some text editor work in my future.
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Re: Microsoft Money discussion

Post by newguy »

zeno wrote:At some point I'll have to bite the bullet and migrate. At that point I would probably export and save as QIF files for historical purposes, but only import the last five years. I see some text editor work in my future.
http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#Q:_How ... t_Money.3F
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Re: Microsoft Money discussion

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Resurrecting an old thread, and this may have been discussed elsewhere, but I just happened to run into this year old link from another source that suggests those who have been using legacy Microsoft Money might be interested in the "Sunset" version of Microsoft Money. It does not have online services but presumably it is an update to the creaky old versions some users may be on. YMMV

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/hel ... lus-sunset
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