I didn't like Microsoft Money's budgeting software because it was missing to many features that I needed and I didn't need much. Maybe they made it better by now. I'd have to try again and see.

Of all the business softwares available in the market, Microsoft offers the best software - Microsoft Money. This software is easy to use & quick. The balance sheet can be well maintained. And thus the finances are in control. I would recommend this software to every finance professional.

Quicken was not able to download data from Chase.com. Money is great because the reports and summaries are easy to use and undertand. I tried Quick Books and had to return it. This is way better than doing spread-sheets. Their Tech Support is free and very helpful. Worth every penny and then some.

Generally Money does what it is supposed to do, but it has some yucky bugs. It amortizes incorrectly, for example, which causes all kinds of headaches. Some of my mutual funds have been classified as stocks, and thus I cannot record LT cap gains on them as such. A window keeps popping up saying "Operation Not supported". And now (this is 2003) my copy has "expired" and no longer allows me to update my stock quotes. There is a lot of garbage in the program like links to "shopping" and such.

I find I am working around a lot of the issues that Money throws at me. Unfortunately I had similar problems with Quicken, so I'm looking for a more advanced package that will actually work correctly.

I find the downloading of statements and balancing of my chequebook quite easy. However, it is quite inflexible with transactions that don't fit into their specific categories. In particular, in writing a cheque to myself or transferring money between accounts, it has to be qualified as income or expense, thereby throwing off the data on what I really earn and spend. (Hmm. If that's all I have to do to increase my net wealth...) I use Money 2000 for a while, and then end up deleting it, waiting a year and then trying again.

Really helpful credit card checking investment tracking were pretty good. And the software is easy to navagate. To start tech support was fantastic.After about the fifth or sixth tech suppport all my calls were sent to india and they weren't very helpful I blame cheapskate microsoft for not training them well. I began to have problems dowloading investment statements and after hours on the phone with india and not getting help I have deleted the software and am going to try quicken.

Money does all of the basics one would expect from this type of software. I use it for electronic billpay and rarely have to send any bill via postal service. Most of my credit card statements download right into the software. The checking statement is always up-to-date. No excuses for not having a balanced checkbook!

For the price (FREE), it does a great job at the homeowner level. If you need more than a checkbook keeper, like AR, AP, etc., look elseware, but if you just need to keep your household $$ under control, this works great. All it really lacks is a good EXPORT utility for file formats other than QIX....

bad bad bad!