A Simpler Interface on Personal Finance
Posted on January 18th, 2006
I've used Microsoft Money for several years. It's a step up from the cramped confines of the ledger in the top flap of my checkbook, but maybe it's too smart for its own good. Maybe there's a simpler way.
To me this is a classic case of doing something a certain way because that's just the way you've always done it. If MS Money hadn't come preinstalled with my computer, I'd never have bothered with it. It does way more than I need-- way, way more. I'd need to go into massive debt or open some massive brokerage accounts to justify having a "Favorite Accounts" list (if an account has money in it, it's a favorite to me), cash flow projections over the next 3, 6, or 9 months (which invariably demonstrate money going up on pay day and money going down when the rent is due), or bill reminders.
Lots of applications fall into this 80-20 pattern where 80% of the users use 20% of the available features. Bigger than the disparity between feature supply and feature demand is the fact that I'm launching a whole application typically just to record a single transaction. It's like taking the car out of the garage just to put something in the mailbox at the end of the driveway.
I do appreciate the ability to download transactions from my bank's website and OFX-import them into Money. That process is simple and efficient. But is it a must-have?
I looked around on Google a bit to see if I could find anyone doing their personal finances through a spreadsheet. Didn't find much. It seems like an obvious choice-- you can make things as simple or as complicated as you like.
GnuCash would be another option; I tried this out a while back the last time MS Money started to make me chafe. But it ended up being too complicated, because I had to "learn" a new interface and a new way of doing things. I was trying to simplify, but things were getting more complicated.
So why not a database with a web-based front end? Better yet, why not a database that you can interact with through a Jabber client? That would resolve the disparity between the complexity of the interface and the complexity of the transaction. A decently designed web page could be just as feature rich as MS Money's interface, and potentially more efficient. And while I'm sure it would be tough OFX imports could be a possibility too.
Maybe this is all just the cyclic flow of feature lists in software. You start off with a few, then invariably start adding more and more. Then you've got so many that you want to start over with a clean slate.
Still, the idea of typing something like "ATM withdraw 25" at a Jabber bot and having it parse out the details is pretty tempting.