Phil Gyford

I’ve been playing with Moneydance recently, a personal finance package for Windows, Mac and Linux. So this is the kind of deeply uncool activity companies used to market computers in the ‘80s, along with “Helps kids do their homework.” Rock’n’roll!

But anyway, I like to know when I’m about to crash into the red or when I can afford to buy a new laptop, and I can recommend Moneydance. In fact, I’m not sure there were a lot of viable options. There seem to be precious few personal finance apps suitable for Mac users outside the US, and while Moneydance’s language is very American, it copes perfectly well with any currency.

To enable its cross-platform-ness it’s written in Java, which meant my old 333Mhz G3 rendered it barely usable, but on the new shiny G4 it’s pretty smooth. I’m sad enough to have been keeping track of my bank accounts for years using PocketMoney, first on various Newtons, then on a Palm, and I eventually managed to import all the data into Moneydance. After getting my head round the double-entry-ness and spending a few hours tweaking the data, all was well and I gladly handed over my $30.

And one of the best things about it is the user mailing list. Such a simple service, but, like the user mailing list for OmniGraffle, it stops you feeling quite so alone. Or sad.