A year or so ago, several of you were really helpful when my partner had to go into a care home and I needed power of attorney over her affairs.
www.car4play.com/forum/post/index.htm?t=28154&m=610809&v=e
Her brother and I can act independently, but in practise I do most of the work involving 9 financial institutions.
I’ve used MS Money for personal finance since the early 90s when I wanted to know whether I could afford to retire early (I could and did). I’ve also used it to look after my partner’s finances since 2006 although she didn’t start living with me until 2012, after her Parkinson’s diagnosis.
We’ve got to the point where I’d like her brother to be conversant with MS Money so that he can take over if necessary. The problem is that it won’t install on his new Win10 Pro laptop. The error message is along the lines of “cannot be installed on 64-bit version of Windows”. It’s installed and working on my older PC and laptop (both 64-bit Win10 Pro), so I assume I will eventually have the same problem.
It is MS Money 3.0 and I know there was probably a later version. I also know it has been discontinued, but I can’t see an obvious alternative. Any suggestions, please, for a way forward?
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As an alternative why not try Quicken? I've used it since I got a free copy with my first PC in 1996 and I have been more than happy with it.
It is no longer available as a UK version, but has a facility to work in most currencies instead of the dollar. I found it more intuitive to use than Money.
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The internet tells me that if you run the install as administrator it will work.
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Thanks, RoR and Smokie. I'd dismissed Quicken because I knew there was no longer a UK version. The US version is quite expensive though, so I'll pursue Smokie's suggestion first. I'll be able to do that in a week's time when brother-out-law will be here.
In the meantime, I would be curious to know what everyone else uses to manage personal finance.
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>> Thanks, RoR and Smokie. I'd dismissed Quicken because I knew there was no longer a
>> UK version. The US version is quite expensive though, so I'll pursue Smokie's suggestion first.
>> I'll be able to do that in a week's time when brother-out-law will be here.
You may get it running, but there's no guarantee it will stay running. Probably time to bite the bullet I feel.
>> In the meantime, I would be curious to know what everyone else uses to manage
>> personal finance.
>>
I have not the slightest idea personally, but this will give you something to read with your coffee.
wallethacks.com/best-quicken-alternatives/
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Depends what you mean really.
SWMBO takes care of the day to day expenditure, and any (rare) receipts. She is an ex-banker and reconciles every statement to the penny, which is a good practice and doesn't usually take her too long, though she does always like me to ask for receipts when I use a card - and I'm finding in the places I trend to do the spending (pubs particularly :-) ) and I use the wireless method they no longer do receipts by default, and often seem to be unable to produce one anyway - not that bothering really though.
She does use Excel, all transactions are entered and tallied. It is quite handy as once in a while we want to know when we spent something - bought the washing machine, went on a break to somewhere etc and it can be a quick lookup.
For personal financial planning I have a fairly complex spreadsheet which contains details of all investments and values. It includes providers and account numbers so will be useful in the event of our demise. That bit is updated whenever something changes. There are also tabs in it with projections of our income and expenditure to age 90, which I did initially to ensure we had enough money to retire but now we update every six or so months just as a sanity check (it uses data from the actual savings data). There are also tabs where I track my drawdown pensions - events, how much, how much LTA left etc etc. All in all it's fairly comprehensive and, dare I say, smart.
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I don't know anything about personal financial programs, so this might be a stupid question but could you just use an excel spreadsheet?
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>> I don't know anything about personal financial programs, so this might be a stupid question
>> but could you just use an excel spreadsheet?
>>
I'm afraid I'm not good enough at Excel to do that, Sooty.
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Quicken needn't be expensive, this is the final UK version and guaranteed to run on W10.
www.ebay.co.uk/itm/272495417777?hash=item3f71fe19b1:g:0zEAAOSwI59aBiPU
Last edited by: Robin O'Reliant on Sun 5 Dec 21 at 15:28
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>> Quicken needn't be expensive, this is the final UK version and guaranteed to run on
>> W10.
>> www.ebay.co.uk/itm/272495417777?hash=item3f71fe19b1:g:0zEAAOSwI59aBiPU
>>
I'll bear that in mind, RoR. I like that it's PC-based, rather than online. Plus the eBay feedback is really good.
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I went through a period, probably about 2 years, where I downloaded our monthly current account statement to excel and checked off every transaction and coded each one depending on what the expenditure was eg groceries, car, utilities etc.
After 2 years I realised that
A. I never ever came across any errors in the transactions and
B. I already had a good enough idea of where our money was going.
I don’t have any “investments” as such.
So now I just have a spreadsheet that I update monthly with end of month balances of the various bank accounts with a comments box to note any untoward purchases eg holiday, car service, new white goods.
As I say, my finances are not complicated (sadly). For my 4 pension pots I just updated a spreadsheet with the annual statements when they come in.
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And as an addendum to the above, and relating to the OP, my wife has no interest in the finances and it does concern me if I dropped dead tomorrow she wouldn’t have a clue where to start. I therefore also have a one page excel with all relevant details split by bank / insurance/ utilities etc with relevant account numbers, passwords etc
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I put in about as much effort as Bobby for very similar reasons.
>>B. I already had a good enough idea of where our money was going.
My day to day credit card gives me a rolling 30 day expenditure report split by category - hotel, fuel, restaurant, utilities etc. etc.
I am sure it's not entirely accurate, but it's probably close enough.
I find the report little surprising sometimes. I obviously spend too much time in bars, for one.
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I don't pay much attention to it all, just keep half an eye on the monthly balance, and if it's about the same month on month, I'm happy.
On another level, sister in law asked me to help her with a credit card application last night. All was well until it asked her (approximate) annual income and turned out she had no clue in all the world. As her sister (Mrs C) never knew hers when she was earning either, doesn't know how much her pension is now, nor did/does their mother, I don't know why I was surprised. None of them have ever opened a payslip in their lives.
She seemed astonished I couldn't make a suggestion.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Sun 5 Dec 21 at 18:22
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Never budgeted, a 6th sense to know what I could/could not afford even at the times when the kids were young.
I was lucky in having a "good salary" and lived basically on my annual salary, we were never short & bought what we needed - no HP, no CC debt. I earned bonuses/commission for most of my working life which could be 50%+ of basic pay in a good year.
I have a small spreadsheet listing "all assets" but rarely look at it / update it as it is primarily for the 3 boys to pull together when "THE DAY" comes around. The estate can be divided easily and no danger of anything being missed - that said I know 2 of them will blow their share (they have substantially better off that I ever was or am currently), one will think carefully about what to do with it - he budgets.
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MS Money - Robin O'Reliant
