Microsoft Money 2004 Standard [OLD VERSION]

Microsoft Money 2004 Standard provides a quick and easy way toorganize and manage your personal finances. Balance your checkbook, create a budget, and reduce debt, simply and easily.  Microsoft Money 2004 Standard saves you time while organizing your budget.

• Organize Finances
• Track Checkbook and Spending
• Convert from Quicken **

I'll summarize my favorite items:
1. The budgeting feature that allows you to customize and categorize your weekly, monthly and annual expenditures. This is really a handy feature for trying to stay within a budget, and the program clearly ties the outcome of the budget to savings goals.

2. The reporting features. At first, the sheer volume of report types that you can generate is a bit intimidating, but after a few times of working through what was available, it became clear the select few that I liked. Another handy feature is the fact that Money will save the settings of each report independently. I find that the best report is the monthly report, as it tracks your top expenditure categories, how you are doing on your savings, and how your net worth and investments are changing over time. Really a pretty useful thing to look at once a month.

3. The debt reduction feature. If you have a lot of loan, credit card or mortgage debt, this feature will be a great tool. You can select debt accounts that you want included in the calculation, tell Money how much you want to spend each month, and it will calculate the most effective way to make monthly payments for each of the loans to get you out of debt ASAP. Really a nice feature, and the best part is that you can run several scenarios very easily so that you will get a quick feeling for how much money you will save in the long run if you pay 500 a month vs. 250.

4. The feature that ties it all together for me is the monthly bill pay feature. While it is possible to use Money to get your account balances and pay your bills on-line (if your bank will let you), this feature will simply let you create a list of all of your monthly bills, paydays, and other recurring expenses/credits. Then, you can see what bills to pay in between what paychecks, and maximize the use of your money for a given period of time. Of course, the debt reduction feature is integrated into the bill summary, and the bill summary outputs to the monthly budget! Really a nicely done and tidy little package.

Before software like this existed, I used to do all of the same tasks, but keep them all on a MS Excel spreadsheet, which required a lot of extra work on my part, and really didn't look as good at the end of the month. Suffice it to say that MS Money 2004 really gives you more data, and more options, than you will want, but doesn't clutter up the program by making you wade through them. The interface and data entry methods are all very clear and straightforward.

That being said, often times people have a certain way that they like to do their finances. You may like to transfer money between accounts, or you may have odd types of accounts. In some cases, the program doesn't easily recognize what you are doing. For instance, I would make weekly savings deposits, but the program kept telling me that I should start making savings deposits or else I wouldn't meet my savings goals! I tried everything but eventually just learned to live with it (and then for some reason it started working). I think that the documentation for the program (all in the form of a help file) is good, but misses a lot in how to completely customize the program to capture the nuances of your financial plan. Despite that, I wholeheartedly recommend this program to both the financial fanatic and the average person with a checking account.


Nice improvement over previous versions   October 15, 2003
16 out of 22 found this review helpful

I've used every version of MS Money since Money 97 (off and on) including Money 99, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003. There definitely was always room for some improvement but that's true of everything. Money 2004 seems to be a major improvement. Fast, easy, down to earth, but not "too stupid" for a normal person. I have a nice graphical display of all my bank and credit card accounts in an easy to understand and useful format. This program has come a long way and is one of the coolest that I've used in a while. Way to go Microsoft! :) (Good price too on Standard Edition, anyway)


Microsoft Money   December 7, 2007
A. Pickul (Hammonton, NJ)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

I love Microsoft Money. I bought this version to save money. It is compatible with Windows Vista. Easy to use and keeps me organized. I have been a faithful Money user for years. I only use it to track personal finances so the low key, easy to nagivate program is perfect for me.


Microsoft money 2004   January 3, 2007
Gerald D. Ziglar
I was very pleased to find the product I was looking for on amazon. com. The price was right, the service was fast, and the product works fine. Thank you very much for being there for me.
Gerald (Jerry) Ziglar
Columbus, OHio


good banking software   March 4, 2007
mmc
this is old, yes, and i probably wouldn't buy it now (i got it used 2 years ago) but it definitely gets the job done without many quirks. i don't like TOO many bells and whistles in my software, because they just confuse me and i don't end up using them anyway. and this was good for that--it was the perfect balance.