Thinking about using Quicken

Financial Planning - Financial planning in general. (Moderated) 

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Subject Author Date Thinking about using Quicken Walter_Slipperman 06-11-2008  Re: Thinking about using Quicken Mark Bole 06-11-2008  Re: Thinking about using Quicken PeterL 06-11-2008  Re: Thinking about using Quicken Will Trice 06-11-2008  Re: Thinking about using Quicken rick++ 06-12-2008  Re: Thinking about using Quicken rick++ 06-12-2008  Re: Thinking about using Quicken Walter_Slipperm... 06-28-2008  Re: Thinking about using Quicken Will Trice 06-29-2008
Posted by Walter_Slipperman on June 11, 2008, 5:11 am My wife and I are looking for some way to get a better handle on our finances. We have a lot of different accounts setup through a financial planner, we have accounts outside the financial planner, we each have incomes from employers. I feel the need to be saving more money as we get into our late fifties and she has a more live-for-today attitude. I pay all the bills via citibank online banking and I keep track of all the accounts by examining the account statements and filing them away year to year. We don't write a lot of paper checks and we only use a few credit cards. My wife and I have decided that if she can see the accounts in a non-complicated way and see what we are spending she will be able to get a better understanding of whether my savings concerns are a good idea. I am thinking about getting something like Quicken to try to track all our expenses. Is it possible to get it to work with both my PC and my wife's Mac so that I could set it up on both machines and network her Mac to see it? --- I see that there is an online version of Quicken that I assume would solve the Mac/PC networking hurdle, but while I do my checking account online and check my brokerage accounts online, and check our 401Ks online I am worried about lumping everything together, putting all our finances out there and having it available to some tech support guy somewhere in cyberspace. any thoughts about that? /Walter -------------------------------------- Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the Newsgroup. Posted by Mark Bole on June 11, 2008, 11:29 am Walter_Slipperman wrote: > My wife and I are looking for some way to get a better handle on our > finances. [...] > I feel the need to be saving more money as we > get into our late fifties and she has a more live-for-today attitude. [...] > My wife and I have decided that if she can see the > accounts in a non-complicated way and see what we are spending she will > be able to get a better understanding of whether my savings concerns are > a good idea. Your intention is admirable, but at this stage of life, I'll wager there is only a very small chance that simply "seeing the accounts in a non-complicated way" will change her attitude. But you have to start somewhere... > I am thinking about getting something like Quicken to try to track all > our expenses. Is it possible to get it to work with both my PC and my > wife's Mac so that I could set it up on both machines and network her > Mac to see it? Don't get sidetracked by such technicalities. Just get Quicken for your own machine, then carefully track at least six months if not a year of transactions (if you have historic transactions, you'll get there much more quickly). When the time comes, just print out whatever reports or charts are available, and sit down over coffee with a few printouts. You can't get much more "non-complicated" than that. You both need to discuss together, the computer is just a tool, and one that she would already be using for finances if she were so inclined, so don't let it get in the way. The key concepts you want to get across are: 1) cash flow - are you avoiding unnecessary finance charges, and also avoiding large chunks of cash in non-interest bearing accounts? 2) Income statement: is your annual income at least covering your annual expenses? 12 months is a good window because it includes non-monthly transactions like bonuses, interest income, insurance, property taxes, and so on. 3) Balance sheet: is your surplus annual income from (2) being invested in a diversified way, matching your goals for the next 5 year, 10 years, and beyond? Are your long-term liabilities under control? It sounds like your bigger problem is coming up with and agreeing upon exactly what those 5-yr, 10-yr, and so on goals really are! -Mark Bole -------------------------------------- Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the Newsgroup. Posted by PeterL on June 11, 2008, 12:05 pm > My wife and I are looking for some way to get a better handle on our > finances.  We have a lot of different accounts setup through a financial > planner, we have accounts outside the financial planner, we each have > incomes from employers.  I feel the need to be saving more money as we get > into our late fifties and she has a more live-for-today attitude. > > I pay all the bills via citibank online banking and I keep track of all the > accounts by examining the account statements and filing them away year to > year.  We don't write a lot of paper checks and we only use a few credit > cards.  My wife and I have decided that if she can see the accounts in a > non-complicated way and see what we are spending she will be able to get a > better understanding of whether my savings concerns are a good idea. > > I am thinking about getting something like Quicken to try to track all our > expenses.  Is it possible to get it to work with both my PC and my wife's > Mac so that I could set it up on both machines and network her Mac to see > it? > > --- I see that there is an online version of Quicken that I assume would > solve the Mac/PC networking hurdle, but while I do my checking account > online and check my brokerage accounts online, and check our 401Ks online I > am worried about lumping everything together, putting all our finances out > there and having it available to some tech support guy somewhere in > cyberspace.   any thoughts about that? > > /Walter > I have used Quicken for many years. Be aware that in order for it to be useful for your purpose, you have to obsessively enter every little transaction and put it in the correct category. $3.60 for a latte? Book it. $0.75 for a can of Coke? Book it. After awhile it gets very tedious. -------------------------------------- Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the Newsgroup. Posted by Will Trice on June 11, 2008, 8:10 pm PeterL wrote: > I have used Quicken for many years. Be aware that in order for it to > be useful for your purpose, you have to obsessively enter every little > transaction and put it in the correct category. $3.60 for a latte? > Book it. $0.75 for a can of Coke? Book it. After awhile it gets > very tedious. It can be tedious if you do it this way. I actually use Money, but I don't bother to log cash transactions, except as cash. This helps on the tedium and gives you the info you need, although it opens the door to abuse by you or your wife: you can use cash tranactions to hide those $3000 lattes (but they are REALLY good!). Unless you pay for a lot of things in cash... I just assume all my cash goes to lunches and beer. My wife hasn't seen paper money in years, she'll use a credit card for a $3.00 transaction. Large withdrawals for a particular purpose I'll book under that purpose, for example if I withdraw cash while on vacation, I book it under the vacation category. But I don't book indipendent cash transactions at the $0.75 level. -Will william dot trice at ngc dot com -------------------------------------- Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the Newsgroup. Posted by rick++ on June 12, 2008, 9:49 am I use something simpler - just a spreadsheet where columns are months and rows are categories. Before personal computers I did this with square-ruled paper. I sum rows and columes and somethimes graph them. I see a year at time. I can see the terribleeffect inflating is thaving in 2008 now. Quicken/Money let you tie EVERY expenditure to a given category if you want the detail and effort. -------------------------------------- Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to which we respond. 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