RIP MS Money

Soon after I moved up here to Washington I was given MS Money as a gift to help me maintain my finances. It does budgeting, spending tracking, home inventory, bill tracking and so on. But for the most part I use it so see when Paychecks and debit transactions have been processed and to see the current "actual" balance of my accounts. Basically I'm using it as a check register.

I then copy the transactions into an Excel Spreadsheet so I can see the pretty line graph which helps me understand how much I actually have and what is available since the numbers mean little to me.

Well… My 2 year online update license ends next month and Microsoft has abandoned the entire line stating that as of June 30, 2009 it is no longer available for purchase and those who were able to get the updated version before that date would only be able to use the online resources until January 31, 2011 when they will be taken down. Though I did notice a new note dated August 5, 2009 that there will be a version of Money that will be released that won't require activation, but also won't have online features.

So I'm left trying to figure out what to do. Microsoft is working with the makers of Quicken to improve importing as an option. But I'm not so sure I want to use Quicken.

I have data that goes back to August 16, 2005 (I know, not all that far back but still) data which is no longer available from my financial institutions so what ever I use I want to keep that data.

What are my options?

• Intuit's Quicken. But do I really want a new desktop app?
• Quicken Online. It is supposed to be free using advertizing. Not sure more about what it is though.
• GNUCash, just doesn't look like it is up to handling it all.
• mint.com. sounds like it could work though I'm a little worried about giving them my account information. I can't import old data that is no longer available. Hmm. But it would alert me when the new transactions have completed. Not having the option to download data seems sad.
• justthrive.com. It's supposed to be similar to mint.com.
• wesabe.com They don't require account information so you have to enter it all manually. Sounds like a lot of work. I'm a programmer and therefore am lazy by nature (Little joke) I am the type who will do extra work to automate and simplify to reduce later work.
• clearcheckbook.com. Looks similar to wesabe including ading and importing.

I'm not so sure I want to trial a whole lot of these to find one or a combination that works right.

Then again, what if I just wrote up my own financial software and used some free service to monitor? Eh. Time will tell.