Rating: 
Summary: Great Product!
Review: This has been my first venture into the world of computer finance software and so far I am very favorably impressed.Microsoft Money 2003 is easy to use, is able to connect with every one of my financial institutions, and makes it simple to use only the features you are interested in and to ignore the rest. The menus are intuitive and the presentation is slick. I have encountered NO BUGS and everything has worked absolutely perfectly. This program might be useful for the person with so much money they can't keep track of it all, but I think this program is most useful to the person who lives paycheck to paycheck because after you enter in all of your salary information and recurring bills, you can forecast what your bank account balance will be every day for say the next 90 days and you can easily see what monthly car payments you can afford to make, or you can play around to see just how much more money you will have if only you stopped paying [X] a month for cable just to see Wolf Blitzer reporting, who really isn't all that interesting anyway, or how you would be able to afford that new computer you wanted next year if only you canceled that anoying call-waiting. Bottom line, if you like being able to see the big picture, and you hate call waiting, get this program, or at least download the free trial version and play around with it. It's that good!
Rating:
Summary: Microsoft Money and your Pocket PC
Review: Microsoft Money is easy to use and if you bank with the right banks will download your statements, saves hours of inputing. As an added bonus on the Microsoft website you can download a free version for your pocket PC. This will synchronise with your desktop version. Makes keeping records less of a chore.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Money Tool
Review: I am a former Quicken user but switched to Money after Quicken 1999. Money by far takes full advantage of the internet than Quicken, bringing ones finance data up to date and providing extensive internet money tools and links to finance sites. The ease of balancing and updating one's finance accounts is great. Free electronic bill pay service is a bonus in this version. In addition to MSN billpay, Money will also allow you to use your bank's or some other bill pay service. Help is always only a click away at Microsoft's online support service personnel who have always been very responsive through emails or online chart. Get this product and begin your journey to financial control and independence.
Rating: 
Summary: Big Brother likes to have you use their product their way
Review: I've had Money 2003 now for a few months, and it's been up and down. Some of the features like when you type in a payee and Money usually figures out the correct category-- example, type "In-N-Out Burger", and Money puts in "Food:Dining Out" as the category-- are nice, if not a little scary (how do it know?). But since installing it, I've had to rebuild my entire database from scratch. I was having dialogue boxes pop up all the time saying "That command is not allowed" when I wasn't trying to do anything but select a transaction to work with. I'd hit "OK" on a couple of dialogues, and it was fine until I selected another transaction. This was such an annoyance that I reinstalled Money, only to find out that it did the same thing with my backup file. So, I had to reconstruct my file. Bummer. The other major gripe that I have is the difficulty that I have in just doing basic things. Money has so many wizards and so many "user-friendly" (read: handholding) kinds of features, that I as a self-assessed poweruser find that I just can't do things very easily. I set up a loan, but I couldn't change the loan amount without deleting the loan and starting over. Sometimes the wizards are very helpful, but there is just a lot of stuff that Big Brother does for you. I hate that feeling. It's like that little wink that Clippy (the Office assistant) does when you close his window. Just go away! Don't wink at me just to get the last word! <end anti-Microsoft diatribe> I bought Money because it was onescore less two American samoleans at Costco after rebates. I didn't have any previous installs of any financial SW (even Quicken), so I thought Money would be pretty good. It's mostly been a frustration.
Rating: 
Summary: Quicken owners beware
Review: I bought the current 2003 version and previously the 2001 version in hopes of getting a new perspective. I have used Quicken since it's begining and was looking for a change. In neither version of microsoft could I convert my quicken files. In fact the 2003 version locks up my computer whenever I try to convert. I have followed the instructions and could get no help from Microsoft. I again resorted to upgrade my Quicken software and I'm giving up on MS Money forever. Twice bitten, etc.
Rating:
Summary: Great Product but Upgrade May Not Be Required
Review: For the past 5 years I have preferred Money over the competition. This year, the sixth, is no different. For the product itself, I give it five stars, but for M2003 upgrades from last year's M2002, I only give it three stars. There are no earth-shaking changes for me and there were no great error corrections in this version. I could easily live with M2002 for another year, but I do like to have the latest version when practical. If it is your first version, it is definitely worthwhile. The planner functions are great and, so far, the competition has gotten better but still not as good as M2003.
Rating:
Summary: 2001-2003
Review: First time i used MS MONEY was a couple years ago. I was hooked by the ease of it all in controlling finances. I especially love the what if scenerios to do with stocks and other omnious financial happenings. 2003 has made vast improvements!
Rating:
Summary: The Worst Money Managing Program Ever
Review: I have spent two days trying to make a simple household budget. There is NO DOCUMENTATION with the CD, and you have to figure it all out yourself. (The Help menu is a joke, forget it.)
This is a maddening, complicated and overly difficult program. I bought it because of good reviews, but I wish I had bought Quicken. Stay away!
Rating: 
Summary: Needs printed documentation
Review: Overall, I'm very happy with what I've figured out thus far. I'm sure the program is very powerful, but it really lacks useful documentation. Instructions on what each individual field means are fine, but those don't tell me how or when I should use specific features of the software. NOTE: Before thinking Money enables you to be 100% online, check Microsoft's Money web site to see if your banks and other financial institutions are supported!
Rating:
Summary: Lacking, even much older versions of quicken is better
Review: For morgage accounts, I like to split principle, interest and escrew. In Quicken, I can use the transfer function to redirect part of my payment to my escrew account and keep track of how much money is in it. In MS Money, I can only assign it to a category, but not to a seperate account. It does have better buget planner than Quicken 2000, but I'm deleting MS Mondey and going to Quicken 2003.
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