I use Microsoft Money to track our personal finances — everything from income and spending to tracking our portfolios. Money has its quirks but I’ve been using it for years and it gets the job done. Unfortunately, facing competition from free online money management tools such as Wesabe and Mint, Microsoft has decided to shutter the Money product line. While a current copy of Money Plus can be used indefinitely, online updates will expire two years after initial activation or Jan. 31, 2011, whichever is earlier.
Microsoft Money’s online updates allows users to (1) download transaction data from credit cards, bank accounts and brokerage accounts and (2) download stock prices, currency exchange rates. I don’t use (1) but will miss (2) when the online updates of my current copy expires. Fortunately, I own just around 10 securities and updating security prices manually once every month or so would be tedious but not too onerous. Currency rates can also be manually updated in Microsoft Money.
To update stock prices manually, go to Money’s Portfolio Manager. Click on “Update prices” under “Common tasks” on the left and select “Update prices manually…”. Just pick a stock and update its price in the following window.
I had to dig around to find a way to update currency rates. Click on Tools->Program Settings->Update Currencies and update the exchange rate in this window.
