Who uses Quicken

[Lsbcal]

I'm curious about Quicken, so have some questions:

(1) Will Quicken download Visa credit card data and automatically categorize it or do you have to do manual things? I can see our Visa data on line but don't know if it is downloadable.

(2) Will Quicken download bank checking info from a bank like Washington Mutual and automatically catergorize the data?

(3) What do people mean by it takes time to setup? How much time?

Currently I just sum our Visa, checking accounts and cash spent each month in Excell. One worksheet per year. So I have a good number for monthly spending and a good idea of large purchases. It only takes about 15 minutes to do this. But I cannot breakout the data into categories like food, clothing, etc.

Les

 

[Coach]

I'm curious about Quicken, so have some questions:

(1) Will Quicken download Visa credit card data and automatically categorize it or do you have to do manual things? I can see our Visa data on line but don't know if it is downloadable.

(2) Will Quicken download bank checking info from a bank like Washington Mutual and automatically catergorize the data?

(3) What do people mean by it takes time to setup? How much time?

Currently I just sum our Visa, checking accounts and cash spent each month in Excell. One worksheet per year. So I have a good number for monthly spending and a good idea of large purchases. It only takes about 15 minutes to do this. But I cannot breakout the data into categories like food, clothing, etc.

Les

Les, Quicken will download and categorize charge card and bank transactions. I think it would be hard to find a bank or credit card company these days that doesn't download to Quicken and Money, but you might want to confirm with yours.

How well it categorizes depends on how much detail you want. For example a Walmart charge will categorize into a single category, but you may want to break it out -- clothing, groceries, housewares, etc. This you have to do yourself.

And checks -- I have to categorize them -- they just download as "Check 3131" or whatever.

Setup isn't so bad. You have to tell Quicken where your accounts are and supply logins. If you want to use other features like mortgage tracking or retirement planning, there would be additional setup you need to do.

MS Money does basically all the same things, and you can get a free trial download. Invest a couple of hours with it and I think you'll know whether it's something you want to do or not.

Coach

 

[Linney]

(3) What do people mean by it takes time to setup? How much time?

Les,
Most of my set up time involved me sitting down and figuring out exactly what I wanted to be able to track expense-wise and creating those categories in Quicken. I'm the over-analyzing type so this process took a bit of time for me. Others might find that they can wiz through the process. I did use the expense categories described in the book Your Money Or Your Life as a guideline to start from. One nice thing that I learned later is that Quicken makes it pretty easy for you to re-catogorize things if you decide you don't like the way you set it up initially.

 

[Lsbcal]

Coach, Linney: Thanks for your replies on Quicken!

Les