Best personal finance management software?

[ragingfish]

So, with my promotion, and salary increase that went along with it, I apparantly now am in a tax bracket where I would benefit from itemizing.My question to you all is this. Is there a personal finance management software title out there that is good not only at tracking all my credit card accounts, bank accounts, investments, etc., but will also do itemizing for me?I used to use Quicken back in the day, but got away from tracking anything at all when I realized that, I check my online accounts daily, sometimes twice daily, so I know where my money stands, and more importantly, if something is wrong. Is Quicken a good title to go with? MS Money? Another one?Does anyone here use any of the above, a different title, and what would you all recommend? When it comes to taxes, the less thinking I have to do, and the more work the software does for me, the happier ragingfish is.

[millster]

I've always used Quicken. My bank allows me to export my account statement directly into a Quicken export format so it's extremely convenient. Plus, I've just never had trouble with the software. I've never used MS Money but that's largely just because I use Quicken on my Mac and Money isn't an option. I track all of my accounts in Quicken and have for years now. In my opinion, it can't be beat!

[ragingfish]

Does it have a feature to auto-itemize things for you?Can it track investment accounts?

[millster]

Quote, originally posted by ragingfish »Does it have a feature to auto-itemize things for you?Can it track investment accounts?Yes, the Premier Edition for Windows will track investments. It does have tax prep features, but I can't say for certain if that includes auto-itemization. I've not used that part of it before.In the past, I've always gone to a CPA for my taxes. This past year I tried Turbo Tax (works with Quicken if you have the data) since, at the time, I wasn't making enough to itemize.

[ZubenElGenubi]

Quicken won't itemize, but Turbo Tax will interface with it pretty well and help extract expenses that might be applicable for itemizing.

[iinan]

Ms Money all the way. I tried quicken and QUICKLY went back to Money DLX. I am REALLY into my finances and stocks, bonds, iras, 401k's and such, and I use MS Money dlx daily, Its the best IMHO

[ragingfish]

What about MSM do you like that made you switch back from Q so much? Or rather, what about Q did you dislike so much...

[Reynoma]

I use Quicken. I tried MSM for a short period of time when I got it for free with TaxCut software. Because it didn't seamlessly integrate with my Palm, I switched back to Quicken (and have not looked back).Quicken can track investments and quicken can do the itemization you want. You will need to map certain expense categories to the schedule on the tax form - quicken actually makes this pretty easy.My bigger question for you is this: why to you think you would benefit from itemizing? Making more money does not make it more beneficial - you need to have expenses that are able to be itemized. For example: real estate taxes, mortgage insurance, charitable contributions, unreimbursed employment expenses, etc.

[joatmon]

There is less to itemize now than there used to be. For me the mortgage interest was enough to make itemizing worthwhile, but now that is gone and the only expenses I could itemize are other taxes and charities, but they don't add up to enough to make it worth itemizing compared to the standard "head of household" deduction. I've used turbo tax, but even when I did itemize my taxes were simplee enough that I didn't need to. It was fine, but I don't buy it each year anymore.