Microsoft Money 2004 Standard [OLD VERSION]

by Microsoft

Product Features

• The simple and powerful set of tools makes personal finance easy -- step-by-step tools help you balance your checkbook, and track your budget
• Save time organizing and managing your finances -- download checking, credit card and other transactions from your bank automatically
• Consolidate your financial information from multiple institutions, for a better look at your overall financial health
• Create a budget and track your spending with monthly reports to better understand your spending habits

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00009L1HS
• Item model number: 105-00460
• Date first available at Amazon.com: January 2, 2004
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,948 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Microsoft Money 2004 Standard provides a quick and easy way to organize and manage your personal finances. Balance your checkbook, create a budget, and reduce debt, simply and easily.

NEW! Dynamic Home Page provides quick access to the information you want, including an overall picture of your finances and top stories and breaking financial news from the award-winning MSN Money Web site.
IMPROVED! Easy to set up and use. Whether you're upgrading from a previous version, converting from Quicken or using Money for the first time, you'll find it easy to use. The Converter Wizard for Quicken in the U.S. version of Microsoft Money 2004 will convert files from Quicken U.S. versions 4 through 10, Quicken 2002, and Quicken 2003.

Product Description

Easily organize and manage your personal finances

Product Information

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 **

The simple and powerful set of tools makes personal finance easy -- step-by-step tools help you balance your checkbook, and track your budget.  Save time organizingand managing your finances -- download checking, credit card and other transactions from your bank automatically.  Consolidate your financial information from multiple institutions, for a better look at your overall financial health.  Createa budget and track your spending with monthly reports to better understand your spending habits.


** The Converter Wizard for Quicken in the U.S. version of Microsoft Money 2004 Standard will convert files from Quicken U.S. versions 4,5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Quicken 2002, and Quicken 2003.


Product Highlights

Easy to set up and use
Whether you are upgrading from a previous version, converting from Quicken**, or using it for the first time,Money is easy to set up and easy to use.

Get a consolidated view of your finances
With the Dynamic Home Page, you can view and access your financial information and news from one place.

Save time
Downloadyour banking, credit card, and brokerage transaction - you don't even have to type them in! *

Point, click, and pay
It's easier than ever to set up and pay bills online.*  Stay ahead of bills with customizable alerts.

See where your money is and where it is going

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

91 of 97 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars BEWARE: Microsoft Money 2004 Online Services Policy, November 6, 2003

By 

"mgonzales" (Raleigh, NC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Microsoft Money 2004 Standard [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

...Basically, Online services are now a "SUBSCRIPTION" service and will self destruct (ie stop working) after a period of time and FORCE you to upgrade to a new version.

Thanks, but NO Thanks Microsoft. What a way to force users to upgrade to Quicken or some other competitior. Won't be long until your copy of Windows will stop booting 2 years after you installed it.

"Online services valid two or three years from first use. Online bill pay, downloading transactions from your financial institution, downloading stock quotes, and the ability to synchronize with MSN® Money Plus or MSN Money expire two years from first use of Microsoft Money Standard or September 1, 2006, whichever is earlier. Online bill pay, downloading transactions from your financial institution, downloading stock quotes, and the ability to synchronize with MSN® Money Plus or MSN Money expire three years from first use of Microsoft Money 2004 Premium or September 1, 2007, whichever is earlier."

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best in Class, but not perfect, February 12, 2004

By 

M. Tillman (Maryland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft Money 2004 Standard [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

In comparison to the competition, MS Money 2004 is really a superior product. I had been a Quicken user for years, and the change was easy and refreshing. I am not a financial mogul, nor am I an extremely diversified individual, but the features in Money go far beyond my needs. I'll be perfectly honest, I bought the program to have an updated checkbook register, and I have come to find the other features almost as useful.

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.

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fair Financial Software, August 4, 2004

By 

Bosco Hoggins (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Microsoft Money 2004 Standard [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

I purchased Microsoft Money to keep track of my monthly budget and a couple of small investments that I had. While there is some good stuff there, Money has quite a few shortcomings which make it much less than what I expected.

The Good
- Connects directly with financial websites such as Ameritrade to download stock portfolio information and banks to get check information which is then seemlessly integrated into your budget/analysis/etc. Very useful.

The Bad
- Confusing interface which was hard to transfer from one view to another
- No financial tools to analyze your holdings. No ROI, no NPV, no aggregate betas, nothing beyond stocks current price.
- No way to aggregate accounts of stocks and bonds or to analyze your holdings across accounts.
- The budgeting software was not very effective. It was hard to categorize checks. You had to do it one-by-one in a process that takes a pretty long time.
- If there was an automatic bill-pay mechanism, I didn't figure it out.

Overall
For my needs, I would not buy this product again. I thought about upgrading to the professional version, but did not see that it addressed the problems of the standard version.

There is really nothing in Money that you can't do just as easily in an Excel worksheet and a Yahoo! Finance portfolio. In many ways, Yahoo's free web service is superior to Microsoft's software.