Best Free Personal Finance Software
If you're looking for a quick education in double entry bookkeeping look no further than GnuCash. It will ease you into the "Assets - Liabilities = Equity + Income - Expenses" accounting equation and help you keep tabs of your budget without using the categories commonly used in commercial personal finance applications. On the downside, they don't track securities the way I would and some brokers (like Charles Schwab) only support online downloads into Microsoft Money, Quicken, and TurboTax so you'll have to enter these transactions manually. There are many other competent and perhaps easier to use personal financial packages including AceMoney Lite, GFP, Grisbi, jGnash, KMyMoney, Metalogic Finance Explorer, Money Manager EX, and rq money. I haven't used them all so let me know what you think.
Mint also looks like an attractive personal finance service. However, I'm hesitant to give my banking details to any service in the cloud even though they promise "We ask for your online banking user name and passwords, but we do not see or store that information." My details COULD be adequately protected but how do I KNOW that it is and always will be? I need a credible guarantee that if my account numbers and credit card numbers are somehow compromised through their service, that they will make me whole. And if you ever close your account, how do you know your data has been securely erased from caches, files, backups, etc.? I'm just not willing to (literally) bet the bank just to build some charts of my budget. That said, this really does look like a promising planning tool for the less paranoid.
GnuCash
Website: http://www.gnucash.org/
Download Link: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=192 or http://www.gnucash.org/pub/gnucash/sources/stable/
Author: The GnuCash Project
Current version: 2.2.4
Version date: 3/3/2008
License: Free - GNU General Public License (GPL)
Download File size: 52 MiB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, BSD, GNU/Linux
Additional Software Required: To install on a non-Windows OS, users will need Gnome 2, guile, and slib.
64 Bit Capable: Yes
Portable Version Available: Yes
Non-English languages supported: Handles internationalized dates and currencies. The Gnucash menus and popups have been translated to 21 languages, including Chinese, Danish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, and British English. Documentation is available in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish.
Other relevant information: You're encouraged to use an encrypted file system to store your critical data files.
AceMoney Lite
Website: http://www.mechcad.net/
Download link: http://www.mechcad.net/downloads/AceMoneyLiteSetup.exe
Author: MechCAD Software LLC
Version: 3.10.2
Date: 4/6/2008
Download file size: 1.76 MiB
License: Free - MechCAD Free Software License Agreement
Operating systems supported: Windows XP/200/Me/9x
64 Bit version available: No, but this 32 bit program will run in a 64 bit environment
Portable version available: No
Other languages supported: 40 languages, 150+ currencies
Additional software required: Emulation software supports operation on non-Windows OS(Linux with Wine, Mac with Crossover)
Other relevant information: AceMoney Lite works with one user account only.
GFP
Website: http://gfd.sourceforge.net/
Download link: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=107070
Author: Igor Regis et al.
Version: 0.8.1
Date: 10/15/2007
Download file size: 2.92 MiB
License: Free - GPLv2
Operating systems supported: Windows XP/2000/NT/98/95, OS X, All POSIX
64 Bit version available:
Portable version available: No
Other languages supported: Many
Additional software required: Java, Plug-ins
Other relevant information: Tutorial, FAQ, Forums
Grisbi
Website: http://www.grisbi.org/
Download link: http://grisbi4win.sourceforge.net/www/download.php?lng=en
Author: Grisbi Team
Version: 0.5.9
Date: 8/18/2006
Download file size: 9.25 MiB
License: Free - GNU General Public License (GPL)
Operating systems supported: Windows, Mac OS X, Debian, Fedora, FreeBSD, Mandriva, Nokia 770 Internet Tablet OS 2006, Slackware, StartCom Enterprise Linux Multimedia, SuSE, Ubuntu, Zaurus, Zenwalk
64 Bit Capable: Yes, but not for Windows.
Portable Version Available: No
Other languages supported: Grisbi will be soon internationalised
Additional Software Required: GTK 2.6+ (included)
Other relevant information: 0.6 version will be almost rewritten from scratch
jGnash
Website: http://jgnash.sourceforge.net/
Download Link: http://jgnash.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Download_Page
Author: Craig Cavanaugh et al. (see Help > About > Credits tab)
Current version: 1.11.7
Version date: 2/5/2008
License: Free - GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 and others (see Help > About)
Download File size: 6.32 MiB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
Additional Software Required: Java 1.4.1_02 or higher
64 Bit Capable:
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English languages supported: Many Locales and currencies supported
Other relevant information: File Encryption
KMyMoney
Website: http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/
Download Link: https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=4708
Author: Michael Edwardes, et al. (see The KMyMoney Handbook Chapter 21)
Current version: 0.8.9
Version date: 3/24/2008
License: Free - GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2
Download File size: 6 MiB
Operating Systems Supported: Linux and FreeBSD (any OS with KDE 3.2+)
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English languages supported: Danish, French, Germany, Italian, Portuguese, Russian
Metalogic Finance Explorer
Website: http://www.metalogicsw.com/
Download Link: http://www.metalogicsw.com/financeexplorer/index.html
Author: Metalogic Software
Current version: 3.1.3
Version date: 12/16/2007
License: Free - Metalogic User License Agreement
Download File size: 1 MiB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows
Additional Software Required: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English languages supported: No
Money Manager EX
Website: http://www.codelathe.com/mmex/
Download link: http://www.codelathe.com/mmex/mmex_download.php
Author: Madhan Kanagavel (CodeLathe, LLC)
Version: 0.9.2.0
Date: 11/18/2007
Download file size: 2.07 MiB
License: Free - GPL
Operating systems supported: WWindows 2003/XP/2000/ME/98/95, Linux SuSE/Ubuntu
64 Bit version available: Yes, available here
Portable version available: No
Other languages supported: 22 languages, 4 currencies (US $, UK £, Euro €, Swiss Franc)
Additional software required: No
Other relevant information: Money Manager Reports available here
rq money
Website: http://www.rq.sk/rqmoneyen.html
Download Link: http://www.rq.sk/download.html
Author: Slavomir Svetlik
Current version: 1.0
Version date: 3/15/2008
License: Freeware
Download File size: 725 KiB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows Vista/XP/2000/9x
Portable Version Available: Yes
Non-English languages supported: Portuguese, Chinese, Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Spanish
Mint
Website: http://www.mint.com
Author: Mint Software, Inc.
This software category is maintained by volunteer editor Mike Dutch
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I've tried one of the Free PIMs suggested by one user, the PIM Xtreme. It also has a financial module. I don't know if it's the best but at least is a very very simple.
I leave you the URL in case you want to try: http://dgtalize.com/products/pimx
There is now a portable version of GnuCash on PortableApps.com.
I've tried Money Manager EX (running on Windows XP). It is extremely slow, particularly switching from one account to another, or marking all as reconciled, etc. I still prefer GnuCash (running on Windows XP as well), which has great features and supports double-entry.
I have used quicken 94 & 98. jgnash is similar but less user friendly than quicken, especially when it comes to auditory user input feed-back. Ace Money lite got me confused as I am not into stocks and it is restricted to only one account. Gnucash is huge with lot more functionality. Turbo cash is for mainly businesses. Quicken and jgnash although double entry it is not like Ledger and Gnucash in that you can enter the other account only if you wished, while the former ones requires you to enter the 2nd account info like in true double entry systems or automatically assign imbalance.
riki
Money Manager EX looks like a great find.
Website: http://www.thezeal.com/software/index.php?Money_Manager_Ex
Looks like there's an embarrassment of riches for those looking for free high quality personal finance software. It would be great to know how often commenters use the programs they recommend and whether they rate their general financial knowledge as high, medium, or low.
Mike
Glad to see someone has mentioned Money Manager, I have gone through all the above, Money Manager EX is simple to use, great for personal accounts.
I've tried AceMoney and Grisbi, but settled in with Money Manager EX (GNU GPL). It has served me extremely well for my personal finances. Definitely worth checking out.
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