More recently I have been designing my own budget software based on my experience with Quicken largely in terms of what not to do. Back in 2005 Quicken made enough mistakes with their UI that my wife and I agreed to throw away a month or two of records in order to downgrade to the 2002 version.

But when my newly upgraded to Win 7 computer refused to install my old Quicken 2002 and 2005 versions, I was forced into shopping for something to meet our family’s needs adequately while I wrote my own which would meet them perfectly.

What I have found, is that YNAB looks as if it will do the job near perfectly and employs nearly all of the general philosophies I have used to budget ever since I started earning money. I am now very optimistic that YNAB will eliminate the compelling desire I have felt to roll my own – and that’s no small thing for a professional software developer to admit they’re *not* convinced they could do it better. Furthermore, the time it would cost me, is *easily* more valuable than the 60 bucks or so every few years to buy something.

Budgeting with a tool like YNAB (an envelope/cashbook oriented system) is a much better experience in a hundred subtle ways that using a traditionally oriented system like Quicken. It also requires significantly less time and is more empowering.

But if you still want to use Quicken, then use income categories like envelopes and don’t use expense categories – I promise your life will be simpler. But, honestly, I am quite certain you’ll be better off spending the same money on YNAB… at least, once they implement a 3 state reconciliation support.