What Happened to Microsoft Money — And the Best Alternative in 2026
If you spent the 1990s or 2000s balancing your checkbook, tracking your budget, or forecasting your cash flow on a Windows PC, there's a good chance Microsoft Money was the software doing the heavy lifting. For nearly two decades it was one of the most widely used personal finance tools in the world. Then, quietly, Microsoft walked away from it — and left a lot of loyal users wondering what to do next.
If you're one of the many people still hanging on to an old Microsoft Money installation, or you've simply heard the name and wondered what happened to it, this article covers the full story — and introduces ThriftyOwl.money, a modern web app built to give Microsoft Money users the home they've been missing.
What was Microsoft Money?
Microsoft Money was a personal finance manager for Windows that Microsoft launched in October 1991 as part of the Microsoft Home range of consumer software, built to go head-to-head with Intuit's Quicken. Over the years it grew into a genuinely comprehensive personal finance manager, offering an account register for tracking every transaction, a bill calendar and reminders, budgeting tools, investment portfolio tracking, a lifetime financial planner, mortgage and debt planners, and even a home inventory feature for insurance purposes.
For a huge number of households, Money became the single place where all of their financial life lived: current accounts, savings, credit cards, investments, and bills, all reconciled against the bank and rolled up into reports and forecasts. It was powerful, familiar, and — crucially — it was installed locally on your own PC, with your data stored on your own hard drive.
Why did Microsoft discontinue Money?
Because, as Microsoft put it, demand for a comprehensive personal finance toolset had declined. In June 2009, Microsoft announced that it would stop developing Money, stating that demand for a comprehensive personal finance toolset had declined. The writing had been on the wall for a while: online banking was maturing, budgeting was increasingly happening inside banking apps and browser-based tools, and Microsoft's own attention was shifting elsewhere.
The wind-down happened in stages. Microsoft stopped selling Money outright by March 2010, and formally ended support in January 2011. That meant no more updates, no more bug fixes, and — most painfully for users — no more of the online services the software depended on, like automatic statement downloads and online bill payment.
To soften the blow, Microsoft released a free edition called Money Plus Sunset in June 2010. Sunset let existing users keep opening and editing their financial data files without needing product activation, but it stripped out all the online functionality. In practice, this turned Money from a live, connected financial hub into a static archive. Users on non-US editions of Money had it even harder, since Sunset couldn't import their international data files at all. A cottage industry of third-party add-ons sprang up to try to patch the gaps, with mixed success.
Microsoft made one more attempt at personal finance software with "Money in Excel," a budgeting add-in launched in 2020 — but that, too, was retired just a few years later, in 2023. Since then, Microsoft has had no personal finance product on the market at all.
What gap did Microsoft leave behind?
Millions of people still rely on old Money data with nowhere modern to take it. More than fifteen years after Money was discontinued, it's remarkable how many people still have a Money data file sitting on an old hard drive, or are running Sunset on a machine they're afraid to upgrade. The reasons people have stuck with it for so long are usually the same:
Money's account register was simple and fast, its category and budgeting system was flexible without being overwhelming, and its reports — particularly cash flow forecasting — genuinely helped people understand where their money was going before it happened, not just after the fact. Modern banking apps are good at showing you what already happened to your money; far fewer are good at helping you plan what's coming next.
The trouble is that Sunset can't connect to a bank, can't run on modern operating systems reliably, and stores your entire financial history in a single, aging file format with no cloud backup. It's a dead end, not a destination.
How does ThriftyOwl.money fill the gap?
By giving Money users the same clarity and control as a modern web app. ThriftyOwl.money was built for exactly this moment: people who loved the way Microsoft Money worked, and want that same clarity and control, delivered as a proper modern web application rather than a 20-year-old desktop program on life support.
An account register you already know how to use. ThriftyOwl.money's account register works the way Money's did — a clear, chronological ledger of every transaction across all your accounts, with running balances, reconciliation, and split transactions, all without the learning curve of switching to an unfamiliar layout.
Cash flow forecasting, not just history. Rather than only showing you what's already happened, ThriftyOwl.money projects your balance forward based on upcoming bills, income, and recurring transactions, so you can see a dip — or a shortfall — coming weeks before it arrives.
Budgets, bills, and categories that stay flexible. Set spending limits by category, track them against real transactions in real time, and get a clear view of bills that are due, just like Money's Bills Summary, but accessible from any browser on any device.
Investment and net worth tracking. Record your shares and crypto, keep their prices up to date, and see how they're performing alongside your cash, with a price chart for each holding and your best and worst performers on your dashboard, so keeping an eye on your portfolio doesn't mean logging into five different platforms.
No dead ends. Because ThriftyOwl.money runs in the browser and is actively developed, your data isn't trapped in a single file on a single machine. There's no Sunset edition to fall back to and no forced retirement waiting a decade down the line.
Can you migrate from Microsoft Money to ThriftyOwl.money?
Yes, you can bring your Money history across. If you still have an old Money file (.mny) or exported records from Money Plus Sunset, you don't have to start your financial history from scratch. Export your transactions, accounts, and categories, and bring them into ThriftyOwl.money to pick up right where Money left off — with years of financial history intact, and a platform that isn't going to be discontinued the moment Microsoft decides its priorities have changed.
What is the bottom line?
ThriftyOwl.money is built to be what Money would look like if it had kept going. Microsoft Money was ahead of its time in the 1990s and 2000s, and its discontinuation left a real gap for the people who relied on it. ThriftyOwl.money was built to be what Money would look like if it had kept going: the same clear, comprehensive approach to managing your finances, rebuilt for the way people actually use the web today.
Try ThriftyOwl.money and give your finances a home that isn't stuck in 2011.
Primary sources: Microsoft Learn, "Microsoft Money: end of online services and assisted support, 31 January 2011"; Microsoft Support, "End of support for Money in Excel FAQ" (ended 30 June 2023).