Rating: 
Summary: Limited use
Review: As I am normally from the 'fly by the seat of your pants' school of finance, it seemed like a great idea to try to organize things. So I purchased Money 2002. After using it for about a month, I have just uninstalled it. While it works well sometimes, it doesn't have the flexibility that I need and flat-out messes things up sometimes.I had some problems initially setting up all of my accounts and assets, and had to delete and start over occasionally. I eventually did manage to get everything set up. I found that the budgeting and investing tools did seem to work pretty well. In my estimation, those are the high points of this package. The credit card accounts seemed to have major problems. I managed to get one of my cards' account working correctly, but the other was just plain wrong. Even after downloading its information from the internet. The main problem I had with this program is that, after downloading transactions from my bank for my checking account, Money would match them to the wrong transaction in my register. This was particularly a problem with ATM withdrawals, but happened with checks as well. Then it would not give you the option to change them, you could only click 'accept', even if you knew it was wrong. Why even give me an option if it's my only option? Once you clicked accept, because you had to, it would delete the original transaction you had in your register, subsequently messing up the entire account. Then, after the 1st of the year, I received a rebate from my 401(k) because I had over-contributed. How in the world do I go back and reconcile that with last year's contributions that Money thinks I made? I have no idea. It's income that I received this year, but really just a rebate of income that I had last year. And taxable now to boot. This program might work well for people who have relatively simple finances, if they would fix the matching of downloaded transactions to what you've entered into the register. But it's definitely not for me.
Rating: 
Summary: Worse than you think
Review: Being a MS Money user for the last seven years, I thought that the new version will improve my ability to track my personal finances, just as the previous versions did. Instead, I had to cope with the disappearance of my budget and, worst of all, an annoying Passport log in, which seems to have a serious security issue. Two days after installation and the first Passport log-in, I had two on-line charges on a credit card I've never used on the Internet!!! Fortunately, I found my Money 2000 file backed up and restored normality by removing this threat from my system.
Rating:
Summary: More bugs than Windows XP.
Review: Bought this when it first came out to replace Quicken (too slow).
More fool me - ghastly interface. More bugs than an ant hill and now it won't let me edit or view downloaded info and I've now got 78 items on one account needing 'previewing'. I'd move the file back to Quicken but guess MS Money has now ballsed up my accounts so badly I'd be better off starting again.
Rating: 
Summary: Loving it
Review: It's amazing how many people gave this product bad reviews for options/features that they can easily turn off if they don't like. Options people! Go into options! I'm a college student and bought this program hoping to manage my money, loans, credit cards, many bills, etc. I was basically falling behind, being late on bills, not tracking my checkbook the way I should, and not creating a great credit history in the process. This program has helped immensely! Some of the features are annoying if your just looking for something basic but a quick trip to the options menu lets you turn any bell's and whistles off (inluding, but not limited to, that MoneySide in internet explorer so many people are griping about). I actually like some of the "bell's and whistles"... I'm a first time user and I found the talking help files very useful, letting me get my accounts setup and running very quickly w/o having to read through documentation. I had all accounts, recurring bills, everything, set up in about an hour and considered myself a savvy user after about 2 days of playing with it and trying things out. Cash flow forcast is great, register easy to use, budget somewhat useful, import of electronic statements priceless, optional alerts for hitting a maximum balance amount (credit cards) or minimum amount (checking accounts) fantastic, paying bills electrically easy, upcoming bill warnings useful, I haven't had any problems with crashing, etc. either. To sum it up, I'd recommended this program. Two thumbs up.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Impressed (Quicken User)
Review: I just installed Microsoft Money 2002 Deluxe yesterday. I'm not impressed at all. I've been using Quicken for a couple of years now (2000, 2001 versions). I like Quicken's register much better. I bought Money hoping that it would have better integration with the web via MSN Money. I'm highly disappointed. It allows you to enter transaction via the web(just like Quicken 2001), but it doesn't have what I'm looking for which is associate the transaction with one of my bills. One should be able to just click on the bill and enter in as a transaction just like you're using Microsoft Money, but on the web. MSN Money has some neat features such as managing all your accounts in one page, but I was able to do that using CitiBank's MyCiti for free ... I believe they are using the system anyway. I see that there's a way to link MSN Money accounts to Money accounts, but have yet to see how they actually sync up. As a starter at Money, I'm not impressed with the product. Hopefully they will provide updates that will give me more functionality.
Rating:
Summary: Not worth the upgrade
Review: I upgraded from Money 2001 standard to get the delux features.
The user interface was changed slightly, but I found no particular user interface advantages to the changes. I really
dislike the passport login reminders and I don't care for the MoneySide feature, an Explorer plug-in that pulls up your financial information while you browse the web. Given recent security problems with Microsoft's products, I want my financial information as far from the web interface as possible. I cannot seem to disable MoneySide also, but its inactive since I never registered for a passport account anyway (I hope). I also don't
care for the integration of shopping services with this product either, but they are easily ignored. I also seem to have a hard time getting balancing my accounts with downloading account information. It appears that Money is easily confused and adds additional transactions that replicate existing transactions. This has potiential tax reprocussions. I like the portfolio tracking part, and some of the other features, but its not worth the money they charge for the product in my opinion. You should rank the features and how important they are to you to decide if this product is worth the price. I give it two stars because of the passport and moneyside
features and also because of the extra fluff that gets in the way of what I really want to do with this software. The basic functionality appears to be reasonably good.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Software I Own
Review: I just balanced my checking account in 3 minutes so I felt compelled to put up a review proclaiming how great MS Money is. First off, I was shocked to see that the overall rating for Money is so low. I tried to use Quicken Deluxe 2001 a while back and aside from hating the UI I just never felt that it worked very well. Things like balancing my account and paying bills online were awkward and I eventually gave up. Money, on the other hand, has a beautiful, intuitive UI, makes balancing my accounts simple and sometimes automatic, and provides incredibly smooth online integration. The epay feature lets me pay all of my bills through money and they automatically get entered into my credit union's online bill pay system. Anytime something goes wrong, for example if I enter a date that's too early or if I haven't entered an address to send the bill, Money handles it smoothly. I should note that my experience with MS Money is limited to entering and categorizing all of my transactions, electronic bill pay, and balancing my accounts so I can't comment on any of the reporting or budgeting features. I noticed that a few of the negative reviews are from people that say they have a hard time managing their finances and it's not surprising these people would be let down. Money can't do everything for you and I spend a significant amount of time making sure everything is kept up to date. However, if you are willing to invest time to track your finances Money is definitely an application you should consider.
Rating:
Summary: Easily the best
Review: After seeing PC Mag giving Money 2002 Deluxe five stars, I bought the software to upgrade my previous version of Money. The installation went very smoothly, and I really like the refined new interface. While it's not drastically different from the previous version, it contains a lot of nice subtle changes that make the program even easier to use. Also, the new version is much more responsive and stable on my overloaded Win2k system. Money 2002 excels in at least two areas: ease of use, and tight integration with Internet. There are tons of features -- and I highly recommend the deluxe version because it covers pretty much everything in personal finance management (trust me -- I used to work in finance) -- but they are all very easy to learn and use. You don't need Internet to use Money 2002, but Internet helps you take full advantage of it, such as creating a mobile Money portfolio on MoneyCentral/CNBC, working with your financial institutions online from one place (i.e., account aggregation), and finding information on houses and cars quickly and easily. When you run the program with the CD-ROM popped in (you don't need the CD-ROM to run the program), you get audio commentary as well as video tutorials. In short, this version of Money is really worth the upgrade.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: The only major thing I learned about money from Money 2002 Deluxe is that buying it is a waste of money. It is user unfriendly, has a confusing layout and the "automatic" retrieval of information from the internet worked for less than half the accounts I put in the software.
Another "fun" thing was that the first time I set up all my accounts, budget etc., the Money file was saved to a folder on the LAN network - even though I was not connected to it at the time. I should have realized this, of course, but I didn't. Next time I tried to access the file it was not found, neither on the network, nor on the hard drive.
Money 2002 Deluxe is good for two things:
Cardio exercise - because it will definitely raise your blood pressure and heart rate whenever you use it, and
It will make your wallet a lighter and more comfortable fit in your pocket..
Rating:
Summary: I'm in love with this program
Review: I have been using Microsoft Money since about 1996. I upgraded to 2002 in the beginning of 2002. I am amazed at what this program can do. It is such a time-saver. I am using the background banking. Even when Money is closed it automatically pulls in my transactions for my credit card and broker account. I was delinquent in reconciling my checking by 5 months. After I imported the transactions (took about 2 minutes), I was able to reconcile all 5 months in about 2 minutes flat. Somehow, it seemed to know which transactions to associate with the month I was reconciling. The hard part was finding my statements to balance to. If only my credit union would sign up for the direct banking so that I could use background banking. I love the ease of using the reports. They are easily customizable. Also, if you want to see the transactions behind a certain category you can right mouse click to see the detail. I cannot understand why so many people are unsatisfied with this product. I find it an intuitive program that contains a powerhorse of tools. It seems like I am constantly discovering new things it can do.
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