Looking for good home budget software

ThePythonicCow

[ThePythonicCow]

I'm looking for suggestions on how to handle a home budget.

It's for a friend, who is a 'people' person, not a 'numbers' person. She will soon be in a tight money situation, including a mortgage and a home business, and is afraid that she won't be able to manage her personal money without getting into debt.

The alternatives I am aware of include good old paper, Quicken, Money, MVelopes.com, and brute force in a spreadsheet. The problems I can see with these alternatives in this case are:

• Paper and pencil requires doing the calculations by hand, or calculator - way too tedious.
• Quicken can show you by category what you've been spending, but its future budgeting is weak.
• Microsoft Money might work; I don't know, as I tend to avoid buying Microsoft when I can. In this case, if it was the best answer, I'd recommend it to her.
• MVelopes.com is pretty cool, but a bit odd, hard to figure out, and its flash based interface clunky.
• spreadsheets are way to geeky -- technically challenging in this case.

Any suggestions?

[ThePythonicCow]

I'm seeing good reviews for You Need A Budget Pro - Personal Finance Software Program .

Has anyone heard of that one?

[Gay State Conservative]

I’ve used Money for about 10 years and like it a lot.

[ThePythonicCow]

What are some of the good things about Microsoft Money?

[beancounter13]

I, too, have used MS Money for quite some time. I have not really used the ‘budgeting’ side of it, but I have used the expense tracking and investment tracking sides to great effect. I am also using MS Money to track business expenses reported on schedules C, E, & F.

As you might gather from my handle, I can certainly offer more expensive alternatives, but I think Money is good enough for a start-up. The key is setting up the g/l accounts in a manner that makes filing the returns very easy.

It works well enough, and it came pre-installed on my last two laptops so it did not cost me anything.

[Gay State Conservative]

What are some of the good things about Microsoft Money?

The thing I like most about Money is that it uses the ability to "right click" quite extensively.That,IMO,gives it a good deal of flexibility....a degree of flexibility that I don't recall Quicken having had during the short period that I used it.

[ThePythonicCow]

Aha - an accountant, I gather.

Unfortunately, my friend doesn't think at all like an accountant. She's a people (and cat) person, not a numbers person.

Good chance that there is near zero overlap between those programs that you (or I, for that matter, who would have been wearing a green eye shade if they hadn't invented computers needing software) would find useful, and those programs that my friend could make any sense of.

[beancounter13]

Perhaps, but I will say that Money is about as easy to use as any other package out there. Of course, if one does not set up the accounts appropriately, the package will not matter —GIGO, you know.

[voiceinthewind]

One of the homeschooling blogs I read just posted about a Budget Calendar. It’s software with a 30 day free trial.
http://www.mishell.ca/

[ThePythonicCow]

thanks