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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

The Quicken the Dead

I'll just come right out and say it. I've never been able to stay on the Quicken wagon. Numerous times, I've gone through the following cycle:
1. Look at most recent bank statement, become horrified about how much has been spent, and say to self: "This is ridiculous. It's time to get organized."

2. Setup accounts for checking, savings, credit cards.

3. Struggle to find and download transaction history and load into Quicken.

4. Painstakingly categorize all the transactions.

5. Feel good about having everything up-to-date.

6. Forget to upload the latest statements at month's end.

7. Fall behind and give up hope of keeping current.
Why the struggle? Not sure exactly, but I think the biggest roadblock for me has been the cumbersome process of downloading and categorizing transactions. The user-interface is clunky, and I look forward to keeping my accounts current about as much as a trip to the dentist. Plus, what I really need is a way to see how I'm doing in the middle of the month, while there is still time to meet the budget. With Quicken I would update everything after I got my statement, which was too late to have an impact on my spending.

Anyone else have the same Quicken experience? I'm ready to try something new. I'll let you know how it goes.

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4 Comments:

Blogger Mrs.A said...

So what is the "something new"? I still do mine the old-fashioned way - on the paper bank statement with pen and calculator. Unfortunately, I tend to let about 3-4 months of statements pile up before I find time to reconcile everything.

3:11 PM  
Blogger Alan said...

I'm going to try a web-based tool (www.wesabe.com). Or something a little more low-tech like Excel. Pen and paper would probably work too.

7:45 AM  
Blogger Shawna said...

we use and love www.mvelopes.com
it goes against everything in me to pay to keep track of our money, but with quicken we just never did, and with this I actually keep up.

10:23 PM  
Blogger Alan said...

Thanks for the input Shawna! I should probably post an update on the Wesabe experiment.

So far, I really like it. Keeping my transactions up-to-date is a breeze, and most of the time it correctly tags stuff based on previous history.

The one area it may be a little lacking in is reporting functionality, but they are working to add more features there.

4:04 AM  

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