Knight of the White Rose ([info]macademician) wrote in [info]macosx,
@ 2008-06-30 13:33:00
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Personal Finance Software
I'm a college student about to separate my finances from my parents', and I'd like to be able to track them on my Mac, so I'm looking for personal finance software.

My finances are relatively simple: a Checking account, a Savings account, and no stocks yet, though I'm contemplating investing, etc.) and I use Bank of America.

Searching google and this community came up with three candidates:

Quicken for Mac 2007
 iBank
 and GnuCash

Does anyone have any direct experience with any of these three programs?

Edit:

MoneyDance has also been suggested. Any thoughts?

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[info]madbard
2008-06-30 05:37 pm UTC (link)
Quicken is horrible on the Mac, but reportedly they're working on an all-new version rewritten from the ground up.

When I last looked at iBank, it had a beautiful UI, but became unusably slow when used on data sets that weren't small. They may have fixed this in subsequent versions.

I use (and like) MoneyDance. The interface is not Mac-like at all, but it's solid and reliable, and inexpensive.

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[info]hiromasaki
2008-06-30 06:50 pm UTC (link)
MoneyDance is seconded.

The fact that it's cross-platform is why I like it. (My tower is a PC.)

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[info]trywhy
2008-07-01 09:35 pm UTC (link)
I think moneydance is awesome! (Of course I am biased.)

We're working on making the interface more and more mac like everyday.

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[info]superconnected
2008-06-30 05:50 pm UTC (link)
Seconding that Quicken for Mac is kind of crap, which is unfortunate because Quicken for Windows is excellent (and cheaper, I think). I actually use it in a windows vmware, which is kind of embarassing.

It's great because it can download all your data from the banks automatically without having to manually enter information.

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[info]macademician
2008-06-30 05:52 pm UTC (link)
If I read iBank correctly, you can use it to do the same thing, although for Bank of America you must either download the file manually for free, or pay $10/month for automatic updating.

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[info]rainbear
2008-06-30 06:04 pm UTC (link)
I use iBank, and it's pretty decent. I don't like how it appears to handle credit cards, but all-in-all it does the job.

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[info]macademician
2008-06-30 06:12 pm UTC (link)
Do you link up with your bank to download transactions?

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[info]rainbear
2008-06-30 06:41 pm UTC (link)
My bank's not supported (Credit Union), but they support Quicken downloads, which iBank supports fine.

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[info]littleant
2008-06-30 07:04 pm UTC (link)
I use Cha-Ching. It's super easy and user-friendly.

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[info]herbie
2008-06-30 08:16 pm UTC (link)
There's also Cashbox which is free might suffice, but isn't awesome (yet?). Of course you can try it out and see if it works for you.

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[info]brother_art
2008-06-30 08:44 pm UTC (link)


More options:

http://www.snowmintcs.com/products/budgetmac/index.php
Budget, from snowmintcs.com. Uses the "envelope" method of budgeting.
Native Mac version available. Could use better reports, but otherwise pretty good.

http://moneydance.com/mac
Moneydance - no personal experience, but as it is Java based, it does run on the Mac.

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[info]greck
2008-07-01 12:02 am UTC (link)
I've been using iBank for years... it works well enough. If you keep it showing "recent" transactions, it is as fast as you'd want it to be. With several years of data, switching to "all" makes every single click take full seconds, it's seriously intolerable. That said, I keep it on "recent" and continue to chug along.

I recent became aware of Squirrel, which I have been meaning to give a shot.

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[info]macademician
2008-07-01 01:08 pm UTC (link)
Are you using iBank 2 or iBank 3?

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[info]greck
2008-07-01 02:13 pm UTC (link)
I'm still using 2... I just finally upgraded to Leopard like a month ago and 3 requires it, so I was stuck at 2. Now the issue is "upgrade to 3 or switch to a different app?" I guess my coasting along for so long with 2 is a good indication of how I feel about it... yep, it works. Is it great? Nope. But it works...

I guess the one good thing I should say is I like the real-time expense pie chart. I'm not terribly good at budgeting, but I am good at noticing that a piece of the pie is getting too big and cutting back accordingly, so that works for me.

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[info]greck
2008-07-01 02:15 pm UTC (link)
I guess I should almost mention, I love gnucash... it is by far the most "serious" app in the list. I used it for a long time in my pre-Mac days, but now I'm kind of an elitist and prefer native apps, otherwise I'd be all over it.

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[info]andrewg
2008-07-01 03:19 am UTC (link)
If your finances are that simple, what exactly are you tracking? Wouldn't the Bank of America web site serve the same purpose?

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[info]macademician
2008-07-01 01:10 pm UTC (link)
I want to have a way of keeping records independent of my bank, so that if there's ever any error (which happens, at least with BoA, occasionally), I can have my own record-keeping system to dispute it.

Further, I'd like something to help me budget money amongst rent, food, savings, and a small amount of discretionary spending cash.

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[info]geekosaur
2008-07-01 04:29 am UTC (link)
Another one that's out there is HomeBank. Haven't tried it yet.

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[info]sciamachy
2008-07-02 11:36 am UTC (link)
MoneyDance has all the capabilities of GnuCash (double-entry book-keeping etc) but with the complexity hidden by default & a nice UI. I think it rocks, personally, well worth the paltry sum of money I paid.

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