tag archive: money

At last. I’m free of Microsoft Money, and therefore very close to being free of all my old proprietary applications. I’ve settled on KMyMoney2 as a capable free-as-in-freedom bookkeeping replacement. It doesn’t do everything that I was able to do in Money, but I can live with that while hoping some of my “wants” find their way in to later versions. And in the meantime I appreciate the more streamlined look and feel of KMyMoney. It does the necessary tasks for me and doesn’t feel as heavy as Money. And it’s free. Did I mention that?

One obstacle in moving away from Money is the amount of data I have squirreled away in there. Twelve years worth, going back to 1995. I didn’t look forward to migrating all of that to GnuCash or KMyMoney (the two main candidates for this move). The solution turned out to be simple: let it go. Start out fresh with the new application. …

Update, 10 January 2008: See “related” below for the latest on this topic.

I found myself facing a moral quandary yesterday. I considered using proprietary software for a job that has lots of free software alternatives. You see, I have these doubts and reservations about the free options.

The gravitational pull of 12 years worth of Microsoft Money data has me continuing to run that program on my laptop. I really like MS Money; it’s worked great for managing my finances from when I was an underemployed drop-out living in my Mom’s basement through going back to school, moving out, having a real job and investments, getting married, and buying a house. It has great reporting features: you can really slice and dice the data.

Another potential problem I’ve created for myself is to use classifications in MS Money. (I wrote about this in the linked post.) They’re good for breaking some things down like gas and repair …

Update, 10 January 2008: I ended up going with KMyMoney. See “Moving from MS Money to KMyMoney”. I had to give up classifications as described below, but still, KMyMoney is an excellent replacement for Money.

One of my bigger challenges with moving to GNU/Linux from Windows will be to migrate eleven years worth of MS Money data to GnuCash. (Apparently, GnuCash is the financial application to use, but please let me know if there are good alternatives to evaluate.)

With .QIF exports and imports, it may not be too excruciating to move the data, but I think getting the reports I want will be a challenge. I haven’t fully explored GnuCash reports yet, but so far I don’t see what I want.

I’m using classifications with MS Money and hope I’ll be able to find something similar with GnuCash. For example, in the automobile category, I have gas, maintenance, and repair subcategories. …