Anyone experience with Quicken 2015..Please provide any suggestion...

[sanjeev0276]

I was using Mint but I am tired of their Ads... some one suggested Personal Capital.. I think we have to pay a fee to use their investment advice... Has anyone experience with Quicken... How has that been and what are pros and cons to using QUICKEN?

[bUU]

You'll see varying opinions of Quicken. A lot of people are upset about how Intuit works to monetize their customer base, including the effective requirement to pay for a full upgrade (basically re-buy the software) every three years. I feel they're able to do this because Quicken is simply the best of the best in terms of financial tracking and management tools, especially their Premier version. There are cheaper alternatives that do some of the same things, but they're far inferior, in my opinion, with regard to both functionality and usability.

So I highly recommend Quicken, but at the same time recommend going into it acknowledging that they are in it to make money, and so it there is going to be a low cost, but potentially annoying set of, expenses related to using their software.

[2017ish]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bUU ... So I highly recommend Quicken, but at the same time recommend going into it acknowledging that they are in it to make money, and so it there is going to be a low cost, but potentially annoying set of, expenses related to using their software.

+1 I wish they'd just give me an option to buy the online price/transaction updating for $X per year, rather than compelling the software upgrades every three years. But, even with the "intuit ID" requirement on the horizon, I doubt I'll move away from them until my financial life is much more simplified. (quicken user for >20 years)

[walkinwood]

I use Quicken and like it - including the 2015 version. I've been using it since the early 90s. I use it to keep track of my bank & investment accounts, portfolio holdings & value, credit cards, categorize expenses and create relatively simple reports that show monthly/annual expenses. Downloading transactions & asset prices is very easy and works well.

Before you commit to quicken (or any other package), I'd check them out first. It is not easy to transition from one to another.

[rodi]

I like quicken - but a lot of people here are getting annoyed with Intuit's business model. For me - the ease of tracking expenses/spending/investments makes it worth the hassles.

Hassles include:
- periodic asking for intuit ID.
- expiring ability to do one step updates after 3 years. (Can get around this by downloading quicken compatible files from your financial institution - but that's more of a hassle.)
- sometimes quicken doesn't play nice with my credit union (or vice versa)... I'll have to try multiple times to get a download... this happens about 1-2 times/month.

Things I like:
- One step update pulls all my transactions and balances.
- Remembers previous categorizations - so it knows that "Sprouts" is groceries and SDGE is utiities... I don't have to recatagorize each time. (But I check - because some of our "Home Depot" spends are "home improvement" and some are "rental expense".
- Once you build up historical data you have a good tool for figuring out what your ACTUAL spending is and what categories should be reviewed for improvement. This is my first year of retirement, so it's very useful to me to make sure I'm staying on track, monthly, with my projected budget.
- Quicken Lifetime Planner is a good tool for considering a variety of life plans - from retirement, to paying for kids colleges, to paying down debt.... You can "what if" various scenarios and fine tune your plans. Downside of QLP is it is linear (no historical stock market returns or monte carlo type calculators... just your assumptions for investment gains and inflation. Unfortunately, life is not linear.

For me, it's a useful tool. And I'm not comfortable with putting everything out on the internet (ala Mint). So I stick with Quicken.
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[tulak]

I use Moneydance, it does everything that Rodi mentioned above, except the lifetime planner. Plus their support is excellent, it's cross platform (nice for us Mac users), and no extra monetizing of their customer base.

I would recommend trying out a few different apps and see which one you prefer. It's not a choice to take lightly, since once you've collected a sizeable amount of data it's not easy to switch to another program.