Personal finance software

[zespri]

Guys, can you recommend a personal finance program that you used and liked. I used Microsoft Money and AceMoney and I tried half a dozen of others. MS Money and AceMoney I do not like and the others are hard to understand if they are any good without investing several hours into them first.

What I usually find cumbersome is things that are not your stock personal finance software functionality. For example refunds. Almost every month I have some transactions that qualify as refunds. I was overcharged at a shop and they refunded me. I got reimbursement for something that I purchased for work, etc. These money show up in the "income" section in monthly reports. I don't what them to. These are not income, I'd like these to be subtracted from the expenses, not added to income, but I can't find a way to achieve this with AceMoney. This is just a single example. There are a few more, where you want to do something slightly different from what the developer intended it to and you can't.

If you have very nice and smooth experience with a personal finance software please share!

[Cyborg]

Quicken was the last personal-finance software that I used, and that was awhile ago. Online banking has progressed to the point where it's really quite functional. My bank allows me to export information into spreadsheets (on those rare occasions where it's necessary). If a spreadsheet cannot do the job for you, you must be running a small business.

[eRe4s3r]

Same here, i do all that via openoffice spreadsheets, or excel for your windows variety..

It takes some effort to get going but its a lot more dynamic. Your bank might or might not offer a data feed though. If it doesn't it takes some typing effort.

[Cyborg]

Same here, i do all that via openoffice spreadsheets, or excel for your windows variety..

It takes some effort to get going but its a lot more dynamic. Your bank might or might not offer a data feed though. If it doesn't it takes some typing effort.

Or a Perl script, if you are so inclined.

[keith.lamothe]

Personal finance was where I learned to love pivot tables.  Now when I pick up a new game or try a new hobby or whatever, it's usually a matter of hours or minutes before I've made a spreadsheet or pivot table collecting and analyzing data about it.

So yea: spreadsheets.

If you don't like writing it all that yourself, Mint.com is interesting, not sure what I think of it yet.