cca@gibbs.physics.purdue.edu (Charles C. Allen) (04/17/91)
A couple of weeks ago I asked for comments on Managing Your Money 4.0
(Macintosh version). I received several replies, which are included
below. The concensus (yes, a concensus) was that MYM is a very good
program and should be able to do what I want. On the strength of the
responses, I bought MYM from MacConnection ($99).
Charles Allen Internet: cca@physics.purdue.edu
Department of Physics HEPnet: purdnu::allen, fnal::cca
Purdue University Bitnet: cca@fnal.bitnet
West Lafayette, IN 47907-1396 talknet: 317/494-9776
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From: jmitchel@king.mcs.drexel.edu (Jim Mitchell)
I've been a happy user of MYM for several years. I don't much
like MECA (the distributor), but the program is good. I'm a fussy
type with mulitple accounts to track who likes to balance matters
exactly at the end of the month. MYM does that extremely well.
I've read accounts of highly frustrated individuals who wanted a
program which started doing things for them right away with little
setup. MYM requires you to think through your accounts (though you
can change them) and to understand the logic of the program. It's
particularly good at preventing you from entering unbalanced amounts,
yet permitting you to make changes after the fact (which same feature
makes it unacceptable for business use unless you do all your own
bookeeping).
I'd warn you in advance that some of the concepts are not terribly
intuitive initially though at my stage of knowledge they are all
familiar enough that I have no difficulties.
MYM can cope with standard dividends and interest quite well. If you
get into GNMAE's and other complex items that return capital as well
as interest each month you'll have to get quite complex to track matters
correctly (I'm succeeding, but with no help from the manual).
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From: scott j bury <sjbury@rice.edu>
I use both MYM 4.0 and WealthBuilder. I like them both, but they
really do have different purposes. WealthBuider is really a
database/projection/planning software. (A word of caution: You
intially get a fairly large database on Mutual Fond, Stocks, and
Bonds. However the quarterly updates will run you $99.00/yr for either
the MF or the Stocks&Bonds or $174/yr for both.) You can run different
senerios about your retirement dream etc.. It also has alot of
MoneyMagazine's advice and info about general finances. Yes it does
allow you to keep track of portfolios but it is not as useful as MYM.
IMHO, MYM 3.0 was great. Version 4.0 is even better. When CheckFree is
up and running in May, the package will be complete. Very friendly.
MYM tracks and integrates all types of accounts, e.g cash,checking,
portfolios, credit cards, loans and even things. It allows you to set
up budgets and expense/income accounts. It keeps track of principle
and interest payments on loans. It really does a lot. It can handle
buy/sell/short sells/covers/delivery and receive portfolio
transactions. It also does interest and dividends as well as splits.
Further it updates prices and keeps you abreast of how many millions
you just made shorting Microsoft ;-). It allows you to analyze you
closed positions. When you sell a security it allows you chose which
shares to to sell and calculates your cap gain/loss. Then it will
print out a schedule D report. A real boon at tax time.
MYM is chock full of useful tools such as simple vs. effective yield
calculator, bond yield calculator, loan analysis, mortgage refinacing,
IRA/401k estimator and a tax estimator. With a little effort you can
set up expense categories to track itemized deductions and either
print out a report or export it to MacInTax.
I use it daily. It is a great program and no I don't have any
connection with Meca software.
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From: rob@ll.mit.edu (Rob Steele)
I've been using Managing Your Money for over a year now and
depend on it heavily. I recommend it, especially now that
it's available for about $100 from MacConnection. You should
know that it does portfolio management but does not analyze
potential investments. Also, you'll want a spreadsheet like
Excel use in conjunction with it.
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From: macq@miguel.llnl.gov (Don MacQueen)
I just received my MYM 4.0. It has some big improvements over
previous versions, especially in the transaction entering windows
('write checks' 'transfer funds' 'receive money') and the
implementation of recurring transactions. It seems to be a good bit
slower than 3.0 was; I'm using an SE with 2.5 mb and lots of
inits/cdevs. It certainly can track many accounts of each type. I
don't do anything beyond checking, savings, and expense categories so
I can't advise you on money market or mutual funds. The handling of
loans (by which I mean their way of attempting to somewhat automate
them) is still something of a black box which I refuse to use, mostly
because it is awkward to use with adjustable rate mortgages. Printed
reports are still designed for 8 1/2x11 imagewriter portrait
orientation and haven't much flexibility for other orientations or
paper sizes. You can't get a report of expenses which has one column
per month and one row per account.
I use it and expect to keep using it.
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From: kyt@spruce.cs.columbia.edu (Kok-Yong Tan)
Hi! I'm a prior and present user of Managing Your Money and I'm
pretty pleased with it. My complaints are mostly about aesthetics
such as "it'd be great if this window had the same doodad as that
other one does." I maintain my bank accounts (checking, money market
and investment money market) on it as well as my credit/charge card
expenses. It can be as fine-grained or as coarse as you want it to
be. I am currently using version 4.0 and the lack of the promised
CheckFree module (where you can authorise automatic payment out of
your checking account) is no loss to me at all (since I've heard
horror stories about it). I'm not quite clear what your difficulties
are with dividend reinvestments since you can always treat them as a
deposit back into the account with the source being the account
itself. I name the source of the interest received on my money market
account as "Savings Interest Earned".
If you have an account on CompuServe, there is a written review by Lofty Becker
comparing MYM, MacMoney and Dollars and Sense. However, it's pretty dated so I
don't know if it'll help any.
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From: OEY@AppleLink.Apple.COM (Oey, Timothy)
I and about 7 of my friends all use Managing Your Money (after using several
other Mac finance packages). Some of us arrived at the same conclusion
independently.
MYM is the most up-to-date, complete, useful etc. finance package around for
the average individual who wants to use the Mac to track his/her finances (in
my personal opinion). I've been using it for 2 years now and am a very happy
customer.