I'm done with Quicken! - What else?

[audreyh1]

You can, IIRC, but it makes no sense for me to do that because I only have five funds at Vanguard. I type them in by hand - - about 20 total keystrokes for the five share prices, which I don't feel is too onerous. Excel multiplies by the number of shares and adds them up for me. All in all, it takes maybe 20 seconds or less versus hours of aggravation battling with Quicken in the fruitless effort to get what I want out of it.

As for my bank account, I check it everyday anyway to record my spending. After doing so, I type in the balance, just one number. It's really not hard, although it would be if I had carpal tunnel, I suppose. I don't.

Can't spreadsheets query mutual fund prices directly these days?

 

[zinger1457]

Can't spreadsheets query mutual fund prices directly these days?

You can with Excel using the WEBSERVICE formula and pulling the quotes from Yahoo finance but I believe you need Excel 2013 or later.

 

[googily]

Can't spreadsheets query mutual fund prices directly these days?

I use Google Sheets. Lives in the cloud so I can get it from multiple computers (and my phone), and also has a lot of functions that automatically pull current quotes.

(When the market is open, the current values are either for the stocks/ETFs themselves or the matching ETF for a mutual fund--then at the end of the day, the "final" numbers are the mutal fund numbers)

I only look at it 20 or 30 times a day. ;-)

 

[W2R]

Can't spreadsheets query mutual fund prices directly these days?

Absolutely, yes they can as thought I implied in my post that you quoted. Or, at least Excel could do that years ago which was the last time I looked at that question. In my case seriously, to save 10-20 seconds/day of attention to my mutual fund share prices (which I value doing anyway), there is no reason to automate this and several good reasons not to.

 

[pb4uski]

I use Google Sheets. ...

Given your screen name, we would expect nothing less.

 

[googily]

Given your screen name, we would expect nothing less.

Ironically, my screen name is a reference to something totally not-Google. But I am in deep with the Alphabet Corporation, there's no denying that.

 

[Klubbie]

Throwing out a couple more budgeting tools I've been exploring as Quicken leaves me frustrated in many ways.

PowerWallet.com - I find this tool to be decent. The reporting could use a work but it does allow you to see pretty clearly your cash inflow and outflow. You can set up bills on a calendar and have pretty good flexibility on setting up budget categories/subcategories. Plus it's free.

GoodBudget - This is purely a budgeting tool. You can't synch your accounts but it offers a ton of flexibility and from what I can see it has good reporting. You have to upload your transactions manually which may or may not be a bummer, depending on how you do your budgeting. It's got two-tiered pricing. You get 10 "envelopes" (which are just budget categories and subcategories) for free. For $50 per year you get unlimited categories.

HomeBudget is a program I played with for a while but moved away from. I was having problems syncing accounts for automatic download, but after dealing with Quicken for a year I am less concerned about that and thinking about revisiting it. If memory serves me correctly it was fairly powerful and offered a decent amount of flexibility.

Exact Finance is another program that I just stumbled across this week. It's still in beta, but looks promising. The developers are looking to charge $10 per month for it, but the intention is to be a one stop shop for all things personal finance. Budgeting, forecasting future cash flow and tracking investments. It looks promising but I need to see more.


Currently we use a combination of Mint, Quicken, and Personal Capital. Mint is used so my wife and I can track our spending during the month. Quicken is where I aggregate data and assess at a high level how we are doing budget wise. Personal Capital I use for investments.

The OP mentioned CountAbout, which I explored about a year ago. I had some frustrations with the program, but I think I may revisit it. Most of my frustrations were around importing data from accounts.

 

[JoeWras]

EXPENSES is why I keep Quicken. Any budget depends on my last 10 years of expenses.

For this fee, I'll probably stay, while I silently vomit a bit in mouth.

 

[IMATERP]

Problem du jour

Quicken is not picking up simple transfers in my credit union to other accounts.

Not real complicated stuff but errors are becoming more and more frequent.

Michael

 

[rodi]

EXPENSES is why I keep Quicken. Any budget depends on my last 10 years of expenses.

For this fee, I'll probably stay, while I silently vomit a bit in mouth.

I agree - especially that last bit... all of it.

 

[Dave J]

I'm old school. Been using MS Money since 1999. When MS stop supporting Money I tried Quicken years ago but not all my data transferred. I have to manually enter all transactions but I do not find it that painfull as long as I do it once a week. I still find the tool very helpful even without the online update features. The lifetime planner is also very helpful for RE planning. Not sure if you can still download the free sunset version. I just hope it still works on Win10 when I decide to upgrade PC. Will not be happy to loose all those years of data.

I use Money Sunset on Win 10 without issues. When Win 10 first came out you had to download a file extra for it to work, But I think that was resolved in future win 10 updates.

 

[Ozstache]

Apart from needing to input all data manually and a known Windows 10 related program crash when updating portfolio price history that doesn't actually bork any data, Quicken 2004 still works a treat for me!

 

[cranberryjoe]

I'd love to get off Quicken - but it seems all the other products require your financial institutions to support Direct Connect or you have to do the downloads yourself. Most of my credit cards and banks don't. With Quicken, they all get downloaded via Express Web Connect. Not sure I want to go back to having to import all the transactions myself.

Anyone else running into this issue? If so - what did you do? Stick with Quicken? Do the downloads yourself? Something else?

I switched to Moneydance a number of years ago. Most of my accounts are supported with Direct Connect, but I have to manually download data for a few. Not a huge deal but I do have to remember to do it a few times a month.

Someone else mentioned the main reason people don't switch from Quicken to an alternative is the difficult export/import process to preserve your data history. When I switched to Moneydance I spent an afternoon reconciling all my accounts to get the balances to match. Usually it was caused by an incorrect starting balance, fixed by entering a new transaction at the start of the account to make it match. Sometimes it was caused by some oddball transactions such as stock splits. Those were harder to find, but once fixed the data matched perfectly. It was worth it to me to spend a few hours tracking down the erroneous transactions to get away from Quicken!

Moneydance has some FAQ guides to help with the import process.

 

[BrianB]

I could +1 every complaint listed above.

Over the past several months One Step Update has lost the ability to download any transactions for me. Wells Fargo, Elan, Optum, Chase. One by one they all stopped updating and resetting had no effect.

Last week (after three program updates!) something almost magical happened. I tried a reset on the WF accounts, and they updated! Tried it with the other institutions and they updated, too! It took about an hour to reconcile & match transactions but now everything works again. Maybe the new owners will be more responsive and interested in maintaining the program.

The only account that won't update for me now is our Fidelity CMA (Cash Management Account). Apparently since Fidelity is not a "Bank", Quicken doesn't recognize this account as a checking account and categorizes it as an investment account. I haven't found a work around for this yet, but we use WF for day-to-day transactions so manually adding 1-2 transactions per month in the CMA is acceptable. At least I don't have to manually enter all the dividends & DRIP's that come in every month.

We are now on Quicken 2017 Premier version R15. Build #26.1.15.2

BrianB

 

[RockyMtn]

Apart from needing to input all data manually and a known Windows 10 related program crash when updating portfolio price history that doesn't actually bork any data, Quicken 2004 still works a treat for me!

I have the same problems with one step update on occasion. Sure hope they get if figured out. If Quicken does go with a license fee approach anyone want to speculate on how much it will be per year?

 

[bUU]

If it includes what it includes now (spending, bills, planning, investing, property and debt), then at least $69.99/year, $59.99/year through discount retailers. And don't expect to find a less expensive, single-component offering. It won't be worthwhile offering that.

 

[zinger1457]

I have the same problems with one step update on occasion. Sure hope they get if figured out. If Quicken does go with a license fee approach anyone want to speculate on how much it will be per year?

Quicken has already switched to a subscription model for users in Canada, $40 for Basic and $90 for Home and Business. It appears that some investment features like downloading stock prices are only available in Home and Business. Quicken initially stated that when the subscription expired you wouldn't even be able to make manual changes to your Quicken data but apparently changed their tune after all the negative feedback.

 

[bUU]

$40 for Basic

This surprises me. I wouldn't be surprised to see that remain a Canada-specific offering. USD32 is barely worth processing the transaction these days, except as an entry-drug.

 

[zinger1457]

This surprises me. I wouldn't be surprised to see that remain a Canada-specific offering. USD32 is barely worth processing the transaction these days, except as an entry-drug.

It's still a lot more than what they are getting now, at least from me. I've been using Quicken Deluxe for years, renew every 3 years, and have never paid more than $30.

 

[bUU]

That's the perennial question: Companies can lower prices low enough to get one specific individual to purchase, but doing so reduces the revenue from all the individuals who would have purchased at the higher price.

 

[bobandsherry]

Quicken 2018 released, now with "membership". Discussion in this thread:
http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/quicken-2018-available-88934.html

 

[Snidely Whiplash]

I use an older version of Quicken but now that I’m getting a new computer I need to consider an alternative.

I don’t use any of the online features of quicken at all. I just use quicken for the (1) checkbook register (2) printing a few checks per month and (3) setting up personalized spending / income categories and (4) printing year end spending reports.

Can I do in the latest version of quicken this without havingto subscribe or is there an alternative that would work for me? Backwards compatibility is not a necessity.

 

[Hermit]

I use an older version of Quicken but now that I’m getting a new computer I need to consider an alternative.

I don’t use any of the online features of quicken at all. I just use quicken for the (1) checkbook register (2) printing a few checks per month and (3) setting up personalized spending / income categories and (4) printing year end spending reports.

Can I do in the latest version of quicken this without havingto subscribe or is there an alternative that would work for me? Backwards compatibility is not a necessity.

I think Moneydance may fit your needs. I played around with it and it seemed pretty nice for your needs. Maybe some Moneydance users will give you more info. If a recall correctly, you should be able to export say a year's worth of old data from Quicken and import it into Moneydance. I have found that my older data in Quicken is not very clean, so large imports could be hard for me.

 

[Snidely Whiplash]

Thanks Hermit. If I’m understanding correctly, the Quicken subscription (if it lapses) only affects the on-line features so maybe it makes sense for me to buy Quicken / subscribe for a year and then not renew and only continue using the off-line features that are important to me.

 

[Hermit]

Thanks Hermit. If I’m understanding correctly, the Quicken subscription (if it lapses) only affects the on-line features so maybe it makes sense for me to buy Quicken / subscribe for a year and then not renew and only continue using the off-line features that are important to me.

I have Quicken 2016. I'm going to stick with it for the next year. I use the on-line investment update features now but will not have a great need for those when I move my 401k to a Vanguard IRA in the next year or so. After that, I will need to decide on moving to another tool or keep Quicken. Last week the update feature quit working with my 401k so if I cannot get that going again it may hasten my decision.