These programs culminate five years of leapfrogging that began when Microsoft was rebuffed in its attempts to buy Intuit. Every year the fiercely antagonistic competitors integrate each other’s latest, greatest features and hide their own bells and whistles as long as possible. Competition must work, because these 2001 versions are remarkably thorough and, at post- rebate prices of $39.95 for Quicken and $44.95 for Money, remarkably affordable.
Both are one-stop shops for anyone who wants to pay bills, choose investments, pay taxes, plan retirement or have anything whatsoever to do with money. They jog back and forth between the online world and the desktop to provide electronic bill payment, downloadable bank and brokerage statements, market data and more. In either program, users can enter expenses or transactions from the road by dialing into moneycentral.msn.com for Money or quicken.com for Quicken.
This raises the question: are you ready to hand your entire financial life, passwords and all, over to either Intuit or Microsoft to post on the Web? It’s not hard to imagine the day when cross references get annoying (We notice you just got a bonus! Congratulations from your local Honda dealer!). And even though both firms boast topnotch security to keep hackers at bay, some nervous users may prefer not to use all the online connections available to them.
Which is the better program? Money’s planning tools are cooler. It includes Purchase Wizard, which helps users decide how to pay for big buys. Users key in what they want (the default example is a boat), how much it will cost and when, and Money lays out the most attractive financing options, such as home-equity loans or stock sales. Money lets users play “what if” with abandon, demonstrating with an instant line graph how your financial future could change if you cut your income, saved more or bought that boat. The last version of Money failed to integrate smoothly with tax software; that’s been fixed, and new users will be able to export to Intuit’s TurboTax or Kiplinger’s Tax Cut with a few clicks. The new Money even tracks frequent-flier miles.
I liked Quicken better, but only by a hair, because its navigation is a bit more straightforward and its investing tools are a bit more sophisticated. Its new portfolio view has as many as 80 data points for sorting stocks, compared with Money’s 60, and allows users to compare an individual stock with its industry and chart its value relative to its earnings growth. Quicken also offers a less full-featured Macintosh version.
Quicken, with seven years on Microsoft Money and a 70 percent share of this market, also wins the 401(k) wars; online it gives free buy-and-sell advice on the funds within about 1,100 plans; all participants have to do is key in their employer’s name and the rest pops up. But you don’t need to use Quicken to access this Web site; nor do you have to use Money to access Money Central. Quicken can still export data to TurboTax; now it also allows users to select specific data to export.
So, what’s the opposite of a Hobson’s choice? It’s all good, and there may be even better offerings in the future. New competitors called “aggregators” (such as byallaccounts .com) are creating Web-based personal-finance tools that are becoming popular. Once those upstarts catch up, it’s anybody’s race.
Priced to MoveMicrosoft Money Post-rebate cost: $44.95
