I’ve been using Quicken 2006 and earlier versions for my personal finances for a long time. Recently it started corrupting my data files every few days. Thankfully Time Machine saved me when that happened.
Since that version is 3 years old, I thought I should probably upgrade to the newest version, so I checked quicken.com and found that the latest Mac version is 2007, although a much-delayed update is due later this year. The 2007 version doesn’t have many major changes, so I didn’t bother upgrading.
Quicken still isn’t Intel native, which will be a problem with Snow Leopard, since Rosetta isn’t installed by default. Attempting to open Quicken 2006 in Snow Leopard results in the following alert. I’d rather keep my Mac pristine and not pollute it with Rosetta.
I researched several alternatives and found iBank & MoneyDance to be the most promising. Both claim to import QIF files exported from Quicken.
First I tried iBank and found that it imported everything from different accounts in the QIF file into a single account, so I gave up on it.
MoneyDance imported my QIF file cleanly, but I found that it wasn’t compatible with my bank’s online service, so I gave up on it.
I was very reluctant to trust my finances to an online service, but based on Chuq’s recommendation I decided to try Mint. I found that I really like it a lot. It feels almost as snappy as a desktop app and always has up-to-date information from all of my financial institutions. I ended up creating a Mint Fluid desktop app, which loads faster than the non-native Quicken and feels just as nice as any of the desktop apps I’ve tried.