Money and I have had a rocky relationship for years, but there might be some hope for a happy co-existance after all… go figure.

Back in 95, I started to realize that just because I had checks left it, didn’t always mean I had cash in my account. So I got Quicken 1995… odds are it was “the one on sale” that week – I didn’t know much difference between the money managing packages of the day…

For reasons that are mostly unclear to me – although I have a theory – I continued to buy new versions of Quicken from 96-03. I think they fed on my Geek-Need-Latest-Bestest-Super-Version mentality; Sony and Intel have done it for years for hardware making me fair game, right? Well, that and I’m nearly 100% certain there were rebates involved making it cheaper than retail: hurray for the discounts.

Then the most amazing thing happened in the fall of 03: I simply said “No.” No more updates. I would not comply any longer. I hadn’t used the new features for the last four releases: my bank didn’t offer online updates (I think they were still using an abacus for higher math) and I had my stocks online already… screw the budgeting stuff. I balked. I finally saw no reason to upgrade, since Quicken 2003 was still running fine. 2004 and 2005 [and 2006] were left unbought.

The other day I got an email from our Company Store that Money 2006 was now available for purchase. The last time I had considered Money was back when everything tried to be “web-ified”… it drove me nuts. Ugly and flat and all types of ewwy. I refused to convert to it then, but that was years ago. I gave an early beta a test drive, but opted out… I’ve got enough trouble with banks – I didn’t want to add a new spin to number managing with fresh code!

Now that it’s out, I thought I’d give it another spin. Brought in all of my accounts and my 10 years of checking history with only a couple of clicks. That was good. Noticed a “what have you spent your money on” graph… That was bad. Sorta made me ill: there are somethings I’d rather not know about.

Then I noticed that a quarter of my categories had disappeared… and this is where there’s a true test of how good an application is, especially when migrating data: how well does it let you fix what it broke. To that end Money has done a pretty good job. Had all of my categories back in place and tacked to the right register items within a few minutes… 10 years worth of data got combed to do it. It also let me hide my closed accounts, which was a nice bonus, since they’ve been closed for years. Who needs to actively watch a closed Joint Account when you’re one person?

And there’s a lot more in there too… I just haven’t gotten to it yet. And might not ever, too. As my friends can tell you, I don’t do well with a firm budget. I can temper my spending fine, but I don’t wanna know a lot about it. I purposely don’t add up my annual spending for coffee. Nor for food. Not often for most electronics either… Icky. I also hate applications that force me to track every penny of cash flow – Ignorance is bliss, after all.

So yeah, for this experiment, I’m a Company Man… sorta. I mean, for this go around, it was far easier for me to get Money than it was Quicken… and, yeah, if it sucks, I won’t be afraid to say so.

w00t.