Fuck You, Ms Money!

The BBQ Pit
1

Yeah, it SEEMED like a good idea to switch from Quicken to MS money when both me and Mr. Athena’s new computers came with it installed. In the past 3 month, though, it’s been nothing but trouble. For some goddamn reason, it won’t allow remote access to the file, even when I so fucking goddman sure that the permissions are right, it’s not open anywhere else, and God himself has given MS Money the goahead to open it.

But this is the worst. I turn on MS Money’s “connect to bank” feature. Oooooh, nice! It downloads all my cleared transactions! Cool! Everything’s great, until I try to balance my statement, only to find that Money has FUCKED MY CHECKBOOK BEYOND ALL RECOGNITION. LAST month, it balanced fine. THIS month, I try to balance, and it says my starting balance is $2K different than the fucking balance was last month when it reconciled just fucking fine. WTF?

I think it has something to do with downloading shit from my bank, but who the fuck knows what it is. And how do I fix the damn thing? Who the fuck knows? All I know is that my checkbook is fucked. Fucked beyond belief. It’s going to take hours to reconcile. I tried going to my backups, but they appear fucked as well.

Life sucks. My checkbook sucks. I think I’m going to go buy quicken and start over with a brand fuckin’ new file.

Fuck MS and fuck Dell who put it on my computer and fuck everything.

2

I thought this was going to be about some rich woman who flaunted her wealth at you, making you feel bad.

3

So did I.

4

I thought it had to do with the love triangle of Ms Money, Mr Monopoly and Rich Uncle Money Bags.

5

I thought it was bad advice recieved from the financial equivalent of Ms Manners…

Grim

6

Well, I also use MS Money and knew what it was going to be about.

7

I just write down what I spend on a piece of paper.

8

You mean like a checkbook? :stuck_out_tongue:

9

I just spend my money. If I run out, I’m sure the bank will let me know.

10

You, too? And here I thought I was the only one.

11

OK, I’ll bite.

I use Money. I have for the last two years. I’d be lying if I said that the program has run completely problem-free during that time, but on the whole, it does it’s job well.

I do not, however, use the auto-reconcile feature. I prefer to have the reconciliation done by hand. About the only thing that I let Money do online for me is get the latest price per share figure for the mutual funds in my 401(k). Otherwise, I do most of the data entry myself.

Zev Steinhardt

12

A college friend had a T-shirt that read, “How can I be overdrawn? I still have checks in my checkbook.”

13

Any time I run out of money I just print more. Hope this helps.

14

Zev is correct. The auto-reconcile feature is available in both Quicken and Money, which sounds great in theory, but doesn’t work in practice. Use the online feature to update stock/mutual fund prices, but that’s about all that’s safe to do. Do not reconcile your bank or credit card statements automatically.

I am trying both programs now, and (it appears to me) Money seems to be a little more robust in the internals (e.g., calculating mortgages), but Quicken has a better interface.

Oh, am I allowed to rant? What’s up with all the advertising for online banks and brokerages? I’ve already paid for your software, you greedy incestuous hosebags, why are you still flashing advertising in my face? :mad:

15

Yeah, that’s lame. But you can turn the ads off.

Zev Steinhardt

16

Ethy, you are so full of crap. :smiley:

Me have MS Money too. Me have prollems sumtimes.

Me throw keyboard thingy out tha winnow.

Me count money with rock. One rock, money. No rock, no money.

17

I have MS Money too, having switched from Quicken late last year. It isn’t perfect, but like Zev and Earthling both said, don’t use auto-reconcile. As a matter of fact, I use only the ‘update stocks online’ feature. I don’t let Money know I even have any banks that could possibly connect with Money. I learned that lesson with Quicken.

Oh, btw, don’t download any ‘MS Money updates’, it don’t do a darned bit of good.

18

Forgot to mention this:

MS Money (and Quicken too for that matter) makes a backup of your file each time you exit. If it’s not too late, you could go back to that. Also, if you follow the default I believe it asks you to make a separate removeable disk backup every 10 days or so, so if all else fails you could use that, but it might involve re-entering some stuff.

19

I tried MS Money for a while, but went back to Quicken because MS Money didn’t have savings goals. Best feature of Quicken, those savings goals. I also prefer to reconcile by hand.

20

Don’t know nuffin bout MS Money, but I have been using quicken for about 4 years, and haven’t really had any problems interfacing with my bank etc. Maybe my bank just has a robust d/l interface? One time the bank changed the way they recorded account numbers (added some leading zeros or something) and that temporarily bollixed up my files because quicken created two new accounts to match the new numbers. So I had to pay US$10 for a customer service call to fix that up.

Also it annoys me that I have to keep buying updated versions (Y2K problems -> bank updates -> now on Q2001) BUT the net benefit of the $$$ info is worth it to me. (Of course I am an engineer so I get a bit geeky about numerical data).

However, topical and current example of the worth of this stuff: currently trying to figger out if Mrs. 'vark can quit work and watch the wee’vark full time. We got scenarios out the yin-yang since all the budget and spending info is right there to be had.

What kinds of problems are the Screaming Masses having with Quicken?