Looking for money management app

[SnowCrocodile]

I just gave up on financial apps altogether and am maintaining a spreadsheet where I download banking info weekly. I can then slice and dice it any way I like.

All apps without exception that I ever used require way to much maintenance and are expensive and result in vendor lock in. Might as well just allocate two hours a week to maintaining a few tabs in a spreadsheet.

 

[padams35]

I too am looking for an expense tracking / budget application so I pulled up pricing on everyone's excellent suggestions.

It looks like Quicken is only cheapest if either using the web app or if only looking at 1st-year introductory rates?

Subscription Options (automatically connect to financial institutions and import your data for you)
Quicken Simplifi (Mobile/Web app): $48/year (50% off 1st-year)
Banktivity: $50/year
MoneyWiz: $50/year
Moneydance: ~$53/year (5year average of $65 + $40/year)
Quicken Classic (Mac desktop): $60/year (50% off 1st-year)
Copilot: $95/year
YNAB: $100/year

Non-subscription Options (manual import required)
SEE Finance 2: $25
Banktivity: $50 (simply don't renew direct access subscription)
Moneydance: $65


It looks like Banktivity is the best/cheapest of all worlds for someone like me considering starting with a subscription who might switch to non-subscription later.

 

[svenmany]

I too am looking for an expense tracking / budget application so I pulled up pricing on everyone's excellent suggestions.

It looks like Quicken is only cheapest if either using the web app or if only looking at 1st-year introductory rates?

Subscription Options (automatically connect to financial institutions and import your data for you)
Quicken Simplifi (Mobile/Web app): $48/year (50% off 1st-year)
Banktivity: $50/year
MoneyWiz: $50/year
Moneydance: ~$53/year (5year average of $65 + $40/year)
Quicken Classic (Mac desktop): $60/year (50% off 1st-year)
Copilot: $95/year
YNAB: $100/year

Non-subscription Options (manual import required)
SEE Finance 2: $25
Banktivity: $50 (simply don't renew direct access subscription)
Moneydance: $65


It looks like Banktivity is the best/cheapest of all worlds for someone like me considering starting with a subscription who might switch to non-subscription later.

Moneydance offers a subscription to connect to financial institutions, which you don't need to buy ($4/month or $40/year). Without that subscription, direct download works if the institution supports it. None of my institutions do anymore.

Moneydance lasts forever. I bought the 2010 version. $25 to upgrade to the 2017 version. It was a free upgrade to the 2020 version, which I'm currently running. I've never bothered upgrading further since everything just works. I should really upgrade to the 2023 version; it's only $25.

Moneydance runs on Window, Mac, and Linux. They even have iOS and Android apps.

I did check out SEE. Moneydance seems more capable, but I only looked at SEE for about 30 minutes.

 

[deepspacecowboy]

I too am looking for an expense tracking / budget application so I pulled up pricing on everyone's excellent suggestions.

It looks like Quicken is only cheapest if either using the web app or if only looking at 1st-year introductory rates?

Subscription Options (automatically connect to financial institutions and import your data for you)
Quicken Simplifi (Mobile/Web app): $48/year (50% off 1st-year)
Banktivity: $50/year
MoneyWiz: $50/year
Moneydance: ~$53/year (5year average of $65 + $40/year)
Quicken Classic (Mac desktop): $60/year (50% off 1st-year)
Copilot: $95/year
YNAB: $100/year

Non-subscription Options (manual import required)
SEE Finance 2: $25
Banktivity: $50 (simply don't renew direct access subscription)
Moneydance: $65


It looks like Banktivity is the best/cheapest of all worlds for someone like me considering starting with a subscription who might switch to non-subscription later.

The reality is, subscriptions are here to stay. They make a lot of sense from a business perspective. Having steady/predictable cash flow allows a business to operate more efficiently and successfully and provide better customer service. Pushing back on subscriptions at this point...you might as well push the river. It's a better model for everyone.

My issue with subscriptions is when developers grossly overvalue their products and I think a lot of developers do this. Some of the yearly app subscription prices I see are laughable. Those developers ruin it for everyone. On the other hand, some developers value their software fairly. Parcel is a great example. It's a simple app that tracks deliveries. It costs $5/year. Money well spent!

I'm a Banktivity user and I really like the app. I didn't always like it. I thought iBank was pretty poor. Once it got the Banktivity makeover (rewrite, I suspect!), it quickly matured into a great personal finance app. I pay $69/year for it (silver level) and it's worth every penny to me. I use it daily. If I wanted to import my transactions manually, I'd spend close to thirty minutes logging in to numerous sites, downloading files, and importing them. Since that process is time-consuming, I wouldn't do it daily, so I wouldn't really stay on top of my financial picture. Having everything (automatically) download in a minute or two saves me an incredible amount of time and allows me to always have an accurate financial picture. To me that's worth the subscription alone.

FYI, Banktivity still supports OFX connections for free. If your bank still uses OFX, you can connect without using the direct download service.

 

[deepspacecowboy]

Moneydance offers a subscription to connect to financial institutions, which you don't need to buy ($4/month or $40/year). Without that subscription, direct download works if the institution supports it. None of my institutions do anymore.

Moneydance lasts forever. I bought the 2010 version. $25 to upgrade to the 2017 version. It was a free upgrade to the 2020 version, which I'm currently running. I've never bothered upgrading further since everything just works. I should really upgrade to the 2023 version; it's only $25.

Moneydance runs on Window, Mac, and Linux. They even have iOS and Android apps.

I did check out SEE. Moneydance seems more capable, but I only looked at SEE for about 30 minutes.

I wanted to like SEE. It seems like a very capable app. I honestly couldn't get over the super dated UI. Everything about it felt clunky to me.

 

[chabig]

I wanted to like SEE. It seems like a very capable app. I honestly couldn't get over the super dated UI. Everything about it felt clunky to me.

Yeah. It did require an period of acclimation.

But on the other hand, it has been very stable. They don't chase the latest trends. They don't pester with annual updates, fees, or advertising. I actually don't know how they stay in business. I first switched when it was in beta maybe seven years ago? And there has only been one paid update since. Minor updates, when they rarely occur, are free.

It does what I need, which is just to track accounts. I don't need AI "advisors" helping with decisions. And all of my data is local, not in the cloud.

 

[Weaselboy]

My issue with subscriptions is when developers grossly overvalue their products and I think a lot of developers do this. Some of the yearly app subscription prices I see are laughable. Those developers ruin it for everyone. On the other hand, some developers value their software fairly. Parcel is a great example. It's a simple app that tracks deliveries. It costs $5/year. Money well spent!

I too am not a fan of subscriptions in general, but I don't mind when the app involves some sort of backend service the dev. supplies. Banktivity, for example, uses a third party service (Yodlee) to pull down the transactions from all your banks and import them into the app. I assumed Banktivity is paying a fee for that, so I don't object to that cost being passed along.

 

[diane143]

I'd been a Quicken user since the 90s (along with MacInTax which became TurboTax). I stayed on v2007 on an older machine for years while Quicken was sold off. Around 2017 I tried it again, even becoming a beta tester but so much of the functionality I was used to was gone. Reports were a mess and many things didn't even have keystrokes. It was too mouse-centric for me and I went back to my old Quicken. Now it's subscription and that's pretty much a deal breaker for something I have to relearn.

2 years ago I switched to SEE Finance. A new version had just come out and the developer was responsive for about 6 months. I find the reporting there to also be clunky (can't double click on a total to bring up a detailed report, something I use a lot). It has not been updated since I bought it (not a requirement but I got the impression he was working on some new features) and I haven't gotten responses from the developer since early on.

I just switched to Moneydance. They have a very generous trial period. I was able to do imports from SEE and really get my data in there to test it out. It's only been a couple of months but I'm reasonably happy.

I still miss the old Quicken though. And I bought every version until it ended.

 

[svenmany]

For all you that provided recommendations, do you know if the product provides projected cash flow? For example - I provide projected income over the next year and expenses, and it will tell me how much I add or subtract from my bank account? It was something that was missing in nearly every product I looked at several years ago. Seems basic to me.

Moneydance provides a software development kit which you can used to write extensions in Python. The company and its community contribute extensions. I see an extension call "Balance Predictor" from the company with "community contributions". I've never used it, but it's described in this way:

"This extension attempts to calculate and graph the future balance of an account based on past transactions and scheduled reminders."

 

[Macbookey]

I’ve been using MoneyWell for over a decade. It has seen ups and downs over the years in terms of development, when its creator left to work at Apple on the Apple Notes team. It was revived last year in proper and is available for an annual subscription. It uses the envelope budgeting system really well. However, I do everything manually and I am not sure of how the Direct Connect banking features are. It syncs via iCloud now, and is an Apple device only application that includes a free iPhone app for on the go expense tracking. Since it was neglected but remained functional throughout many versions of macOS, it does still need modern features like TouchID and FaceID as an example. There is a free trial period limited only by number of transactions (200), and is not time based. This makes it super easy to see if it suits your needs or not, and is available on the Mac App Store.

I should mention that I have used Apple Numbers since its inception to plan my budget, and then use MoneyWell to execute that plan. MoneyWell allows me to manage account balances, my savings plans, and future pending transactions as well as ongoing expenses. I use them in tandem, so I do not use the budget planning features that MoneyWell provides. There is no web component, and if you have Windows/Linux PCs or Android devices as a part of your workflow, this application is not right for you.

 

[Pyrotechnic]

I have used MoneyDance for the past 7 years and got tired of the UI which just looked dated. Moved across to MoneyWiz just a few months ago and imported all my MoneyDance years across. Took a bit of getting used to but it now works flawlessly. I only subscribe to the basic and don't connect to my bank as they allow me to download all my transactions which I import once a month into MoneyWiz. Works great.

 

[DigitalAR]

I too am looking for an expense tracking / budget application so I pulled up pricing on everyone's excellent suggestions.

It looks like Quicken is only cheapest if either using the web app or if only looking at 1st-year introductory rates?

Subscription Options (automatically connect to financial institutions and import your data for you)
Quicken Simplifi (Mobile/Web app): $48/year (50% off 1st-year)
Banktivity: $50/year
MoneyWiz: $50/year
Moneydance: ~$53/year (5year average of $65 + $40/year)
Quicken Classic (Mac desktop): $60/year (50% off 1st-year)
Copilot: $95/year
YNAB: $100/year

Non-subscription Options (manual import required)
SEE Finance 2: $25
Banktivity: $50 (simply don't renew direct access subscription)
Moneydance: $65


It looks like Banktivity is the best/cheapest of all worlds for someone like me considering starting with a subscription who might switch to non-subscription later.

Thank you for putting this together.

 

[Margrave]

Hi.

I am looking for a finance/money management app. What do you all recommend? Would like to be able to balance checkbook, create a budget, keep track of spending, etc. My husband and I use to use Quicken but it seems that they really only support Windows now.

Thanks for your replies!

Ive used Quicken for years, I am not sure but They use to have a free trial period, I do the yearly upgrade, its about $90.00, with continuous updates during the year.
We do very detailed accounting with it, connected to brokerage accounts, bill pay ect.
I tried Banktivity and found to many issues, but that was several years ago, they might be much changed now.

 

[deepspacecowboy]

how is privacy handled by all these apps? i feel like this is handing them the keys to data mining gold

Per Banktivity:

"No financial data leaves Banktivity unencrypted when you use cloud sync. Each cloud document can only be decrypted with the password of your choosing. Keep your password safe, because we cannot access or recover it for you. Unlike many financial apps, Banktivity will never sell or access your data."

https://www.banktivity.com/cloud-sync/

 

[deepspacecowboy]

In case anyone is interested, I just noticed that Banktivity now connects to Apple Card (via Yodelee).

Two observations:

The banking data seems to be coming from Apple, not Goldman. When connecting Banktivity to Apple Card, I had to authenticate via Apple's two factor authentication.

I have an uncleared transaction in my register from the current open statement period. Although Banktivity reports that all transactions have been downloaded, this transaction has not been matched. This leads me to believe that transactions only post once a month when the statement is generated.

 

[deepspacecowboy]

I tried Banktivity and found to many issues, but that was several years ago, they might be much changed now.

Back when Quicken more or less abandoned the Mac platform, I tried all of the Mac money management apps. There were some promising ones that fizzled out (anyone remember Cha-Ching?) as well as numerous mediocre apps that did one thing quite well and pretty much failed at everything else. Ultimately I went back to Quicken, the Windows version.

I bought iBank 1.0 and tried to use it. I upgraded it a few times, but it was always problematic. When it was rebranded as Banktivity and given a complete facelift, I hoped it would finally be a solid alternative to Quicken. Nope. Not version 5. But version 7...that's when it really hit its stride in my opinion and I switched.

 

[pletopia]

Any recommendations for an app that JUST shows at a glance various accounts (bank accounts, credit cards, etc) without all the additional budgeting, AI, reports ....

I just want a simple way to see all my accounts at a glance instead of visiting 10 different websites.

I'm assuming all the subscription ones can do that so would Banktivity be best since its the cheapest per year ??

 

[AZhappyjack]

Budgeting and money management app all Mac, iPhone and iPad

Banktivity is the MacOS/iOS-based financial app that lets you budget, plan and better manage your money. Our money management tools help you reach all your financial goals faster.

www.banktivity.com

I've been happy with Banktivity.

Subscription? No thanks.

 

[DDetloff]

Any recommendations for an app that JUST shows at a glance various accounts (bank accounts, credit cards, etc) without all the additional budgeting, AI, reports ....

I just want a simple way to see all my accounts at a glance instead of visiting 10 different websites.

I'm assuming all the subscription ones can do that so would Banktivity be best since its the cheapest per year ??

I use SEE Finance 2 because all I needed was a place to manage my bank accounts, credit cards, etc without any extra bells and whistles It works fine and is a one one time purchase ... no subscriptions. I was a Quicken user a long time ago and then Banktivity for several years. SEE Finance 2 was exactly what I was looking for.

​

 

[raythompsontn]

It’s overkill, but I run Windows 11 in a VM using Parallels on my Apple silicon Macs in order to run the Windows version of Quicken

I do the same. I run Windows on a desktop where Quicken primarily resides. I can convert the Quicken files to the Mac version, but I cannot convert the Mac version back to Windows. The conversion is one-way. If I could do the conversion from Mac to Windows with quicken I would eliminate Parallels.

The only difficulty I have had in running Quicken under Parallels is that updates cannot be done with the Quicken file residing on the Mac. The Quicken file has to reside inside a folder in the Parallels environment.

I found the Mac version of Quicken, strange, in relation to the Windows version. Especially when dealing with investments. A lot of that may be "muscle memory" as I have been using Quicken since 1998 with a DOS version. At one point I had transactions back to 1998 but recently trimmed back to just transactions from 2010 forward.

 

[pletopia]

I use SEE Finance 2 because all I needed was a place to manage my bank accounts, credit cards, etc without any extra bells and whistles It works fine and is a one one time purchase ... no subscriptions. I was a Quicken user a long time ago and then Banktivity for several years. SEE Finance 2 was exactly what I was looking for.

​

I was looking at this one too. I like the one time price (especially right now its on 50% off for only $25) but as far as I can tell you have to manually load in the account info, it can't pull it from your various accounts by itself. Is this true?

 

[AZhappyjack]

I was looking at this one too. I like the one time price (especially right now its on 50% off for only $25) but as far as I can tell you have to manually load in the account info, it can't pull it from your various accounts by itself. Is this true?

If you can export your current data into the quicken format, you can import it into SEE from there...

and you can download the app from their website for a 30-day free trial.

SEE Finance

Personal Finance for MacOS and iOS.

scimonocesoftware.com

 

[AZhappyjack]

I have to say, I've been testing SEE Finance on my Mac for a couple of days, and am pretty impressed with it. It does some things differently from the tool that I've been using, and muscle memory is a hard task master, but I am working through that. Exporting all of my data (over 13 years of history across 10 accounts) from my old tool and importing that into SEE went extremely well... and right now, I am having to enter financial transactions into two separate systems as I test it is a bit cumbersome, but necessary so as to not lose any data.

So far, my emails to support have gone unanswered (2 days+ now)... may or may not be an issue, depending on what issues/bugs/annoyances I discover as I move through the next 27 days (30 day trial)... there's a lot of information tucked away in their online help/FAQ, but it's not organized particularly well, so it's almost a scavenger hunt for some of it... and next on my list of tasks is looking at the reporting - how customizable it is (or is not)...

A big plus is the iOS app - not necessarily for entering data (though that appears to be possible), but just for viewing the data... it's another $5 USD, but if this tool gives me what I need/want, that's a nit overall.

Is anyone else using it? Would be curious about the reporting side...

 

[pletopia]

I'm assuming with SEE Finance there is no way for the app to pull the transactions directly from the banks? You have to manually enter them or at least manually download a report from the bank's website and load it in yourself.

 

[AZhappyjack]

I'm assuming with SEE Finance there is no way for the app to pull the transactions directly from the banks? You have to manually enter them or at least manually download a report from the bank's website and load it in yourself.

It does import of the quicken formatted files, so I assume you can download the transactions from the bank and then import it... haven't attempted that yet, but that was pretty much how I did the original set up (exported as QIF from my previous tool and then imported the QIF)... and that's how I do two credit cards currently, so when I get the statements I will know for sure.

Unfortunately GS/AppleCard does not do that, so those have to be entered manually (regardless of which tool you use)...