Using Money 2005 and Quicken 2005. I have been a Money user for years.
My goals in using the packages are to keep track of my checking
accounts, investment accounts and credit cards and to watch my budget.
I use my brokers free bill pay system and various outside services for
investment decisions. I have been frustrated for some time with Money
with their system for setting up and classifying categories and the
continued inability to download transaction from my local bank and one
of my investment brokers. I found the budget process very cumbersome.
So I decided to try Quicken starting on the 1st of the year.
The download took about 20 minutes on my DSL line. I was able to set up
and download my local checking account, all my credit cards and both
brokers in 4-5 hours. I had to make a few adjustments in my broker
accounts for positions that were created prior to the dates I was able
to download.
What I like about Quicken is the fast downloads of all my accounts, the
ability to set up classifications using the names I want and the budget
set up (so far). I do not like the screens as well as the ones in Money
2005.
It is too soon for me to tell if I will keep Quicken or not.