Monex for Windows

Making your money count is a big job, and managing your holdings, debts and investments is a large chunk of that responsibility. Monex, personal finance software, is supposed to help you get your finances in order, but we weren't that impressed.

This freeware program is intimidating at first glance. With a large empty screen with only a few tabs and menus at the top, getting started is more than a little confusing. After some random clicking and experimenting, most users will be able to find their way enough to create a new account. Here a window pops up allowing users to name the account, give a description, assign what type of account it is (a pull-down menu offers everything from checking account, stock, credit card and more), and how much money the account is worth. After entering all your accounts, a full tree will appear, with tabs for each account along the top, and their totals at the bottom.

We found Monex to be much more complicated than we anticipated, and there isn't enough user guidance. We had a difficult time seeing how all of the information we entered fit together and synced up. Additionally, navigating the screen was more difficult and less intuitive than we would have liked. Overall, there are worse personal finance downloads available, but there certainly are better. We suggest you keep looking for a more user-friendly program.