Software Review: MoneyWell

Last post I mentioned this very nice piece of software I found for managing personal finances on a Mac. Macs are starting to challenge the stereotype that PCs are only for number-crunching and gamers while Macs are only for artsy-fartsy creatives like musicians, photographers, graphic artists and the like. Apple's Numbers spreadsheet, part of iWork'08, is a great start in that direction and FileMaker's Bento database app puts Access to shame for the personal user. Sadly, there have been no decent personal finance apps. Microsoft Money -- my daughter's favorite piece of personal finance software which is among the most user friendly of Microsoft apps -- is Windows only. Since for a variety of reasons I'm not going to Boot Camp my system anytime soon or resort to a virtualization solution like Parallels or VMWare Fusion, and I detest Sicken, er, Quicken -- the other most common Mac app for financial management (I'm just not Intuit . . .) because it is crippleware next to the Winblows version. As for web-based apps, please spare me. Ick on a fscking stick.

One day while checking out VirginTracker, er, Versiontracker one day on break, I found MoneyWell. Impressive piece of software. The idea behind MoneyWell is this: If iTunes and a financial app got stinking drunk one night at the office Yule party and did the nasty in a broom closet, MoneyWell could be the result born 9 months later. Your Chart of Accounts becomes a group of playlists, your bank account is like an iTunes library, etc. Budgeting is a matter of allocating money to "buckets," add in income and the proggy fills the buckets with money. Add in the graphing and analysis tools, and you have a killer financial app. In a sense, this tool turns budgeting into a RPG point allocation system, something I have a easy time understanding. As someone who designed a custom small business financial accounting system about three jobs ago with spreadsheets and QBASIC macros (don't try this at home....) for MS-DOS 5.x / Netware 2.2.x, I know how beastly these things can get. MoneyWell's learning curve is not steep, and the built in help is as good as anything I've seen in Leopard; the online tutorials are excellent, as good as those for iPods.

Unlike many such apps form VirginTracker, this one's polished and professional. No Thirst Software did a wonderful job. It reminded me a lot of Bento, another great Leopard app I make a lot of use of in my gaming. At $39.99 USD for a license -- the shareware version is limited to 200 transactions -- it beats the hell out of Quicken.

Color me impressed by this app. If you have a Mac and you have budgeting issues, get this proggy. Try it, you'll buy it.

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Listening to: The O'Jays - For The Love Of Money
via FoxyTunes