I currently have MS Money 2000. I've purchased Money 2004, but switched back
to 2000 because I didn't feel that much was improved. As I'm investigating
Money 2007, there are still features missing that I believe it should have.
1) the ability to set up bimonthly payments for mortgages, auto loans,
credit cards, etc. Paying bi-monthly can drastically reduce the interest paid
over the life of a loan.
2) an easy-to-use balance transfer/consolidation simulator. it would be
great to simulate projected savings and effective interest rates when
considering balance transfer senarios. For example, it would be nice to
simulate something like, Credit Card A has a balance of $5000 at 8%. Credit
Card B has a balance of $5000 at 0% for 6 months, but a normal rate of 18%.
It would be nice to simulate if it would be better to pay as much as possible
on Credit Card A, because it (temporarily) has a higher rate, or to pay as
much as possible on Credit Card B because all of the money would go to
principle and allow one to reduce the balance as fast as possible. As Money
is now, it automatically picks the highest interest rate, even if a low rate
is only temporary. I'd like to see numbers for both.
3) similarly, regarding no-interest/no-payments offers to set up one "pay in
full" payment at the end of the special financing term, without being
prompted to make monthly payments during the no payment periods. I bought a
fridge at Sears under one of these promotions. Because there is zero
interest, it makes more sense to keep the money in an interest-bearing
account and just pay it off at the end of the promotional period. The ability
to set this up in Money would be useful.
4) the ability to assign multiple interest rates on one account. As with
balance transfers above, different portions of credit card balances are
subject to different APRs. Accurate financial planning requires that Money
account for this.
5) the ability to store scanned receipts or online confirmation pages in an
account ledger. So if I buy a book on Amazon with my checking account. I
would be able to click a link in the checking account ledger to view a copy
of the confirmation page from Amazon. Similarly, if I buy a bag of dog food
at the grocery store, I would like to scan the receipt and be able to view
it. This wouldn't be a bad idea for checks either - you could scan it just
before sending it out. This would eliminate the need to keep paper copies of
everything, and make it much easier to verify the accuarcy of ledger entries.
Downloading things from the bank is useless if it's the bank's amount that
you believe is incorrect from what was originally on the receipt.
Just my two cents.
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