Quicken 2007For years, my personal-finance tool of choice has been Quicken. Today I'll talk about Quicken.And at the end of this article, I'll reveal how I've decided to track my money during 2017. Yesterday I compared Mint and Personal Capital. Rather than try every available app, I elected to take a look at four that seemed like good fits for me: Quicken, You Need a Budget, Personal Capital, and Mint.Earlier this week, I reviewed my experience with You Need a Budget. Lately, however, there's been a boom in personal-finance tools. Although manufactured for a number.In the olden days, there weren't many options.I used the program religiously from October 2004 until April 2009, when I sold Get Rich Slowly. (That wouldn't happen until October of 2004.)I've tracked my income and expenses with Quicken intermittently during the past thirteen years. I hadn't yet had my financial awakening. I was still maxing out my credit cards, still living paycheck to paycheck, and still wondering why I had suck rotten luck. That said, I have transactions in my Quicken datafile going back to 19 February 2004 — almost thirteen years ago!My records go back to when I was married to Kris and we were living in the small town where I grew up.I have a list of accounts and spending categories. (In fact, I just for fun I ran a net worth report on each year for which I have data!)I use the decade-old Quicken 2007 to do the following: If I wanted, it'd be easy to compare my present habits to the past. So, my records are spotty.I enter transactions by hand. And because I was raised using checks, I prefer a check-register interface. Yes, I'm one of those old men who still uses checks now and then. Account registers work just like check registers. If an account becomes inactive, I'm able to hide it from view (without deleting data).
![]() I don't use the budgeting feature, although I might give it a go in 2017. And I like that Quicken downloads stock prices every day. That said, I do use automatic updates for my investments. Manual data entry helps me remain more aware of my habits. ![]() I didn't feel like it was fair to review the current versions of Mint, Personal Capital, and YNAB against something a decade out of date! Let's see how the new version compares to the old. This is no small thing in fact, as you'll see, it's probably the biggest determining factor in which tool I use to track my money.Yesterday, however, I gave myself permission to upgrade to Quicken 2017. I know how to make it do the things I want it to do. (Very nice!)This simplicity comes at a price though. (Quicken 2007 is downright ugly.) The interface is spartan and sleek.And here's what the investments screen looks like. Compared to the older edition, the current version of Quicken looks much prettier. (I'd been worried.) And the new software was easy enough to figure out. (It's not unusual for me to have 5-6 windows open at a time in the old version.) This is far nicer than Quicken 2007, where everything has its own window. Because the interface is streamlined and pretty, everything is incorporated into a single window. It's hard-wired to connect to the Quicken mobile app, for instance, which is probably useful to a lot of folks (but not me). The new version is prettier the old version is more powerful.Quicken 2017 does offer a few advantages over its elder sibling. It offers similar functionality to Mint (also owned by Intuit) and Personal Capital but lacks the advanced reporting tools, planning calculators, investment tracking, and home finance utilities — emergency records organizer, home inventory, etc. Quicken 2017 Coming Features Manual Data EntryFor instance, Quicken 2017 is not designed for manual data entry.In the older version I'm accustomed to, it's possible to enter transaction after transaction after transaction without ever taking your hands from the keyboard. (And I like the feature that shows you a little bar indicating whether you're ahead or behind of projected spending for the month.)That said, there have been some changes that make things more difficult rather than less. It's nowhere near as good as You Need a Budget, of course, but it's usable. The budget tool in Quicken 2017 is much improved. You could, for instance, scan in receipts for tax-related purchases and tag them to the appropriate transaction. I have had nightmare experiences with Intuit accounts — for months, I was charged for a QuickBooks Online account I had cancelled — and I didn't want to create one. Even though it's desktop software, you still have to create an Intuit account to use it. Who the hell needs to see a “spending cloud” report? What a pointless feature.I didn't like the registration process either. And I'm certainly not going to trust Quicken's automatic categorization! (I'm assuming it's similar to — if not the same as — Mint.)Some of the reports in Quicken 2017 are…strange. Plus, recent transactions are listed at the top of the screen instead of the bottom of the screen.I know I'm going to sound like a grumpy old man here but I can't imagine entering data manually like this for an entire year. Now you have to click the “new” button every time you want to enter a transaction — and if you want to enter a description in the Memo field, you have to click yet another button. Best writing software for macDecision 2017!So, after weeks of experimentation with four (well, five) different apps, how will I track my money in 2017? To be honest, I'm probably going to continue using all four money tools I tested. Just call me Grandpa J.D., I guess. Quicken 2017 certainly isn't terrible, but I see no reason to “upgrade” from my existing copy of Quicken 2007. If I were starting from scratch (and didn't have a copy of Quicken 2007 already), I'd almost assuredly opt for You Need a Budget instead. But again: there's no overhead involved in continuing to use both of these.There is overhead if I choose to track transactions in Quicken and/or You Need a Budget. And if I don't like the info I get from Mint, I'll just stop using it. I've been doing that with Personal Capital for several years already, so that's nothing new. (Well, I guess I have to manually update my credit union balance in Personal Capital since it refuses to connect.) Instead, I can open each app on my iPad now and then to see how things are going. Now that they're set up, I don't have to do anything unless I want to. As you can tell, I love having a decade of data in a desktop app, so I'm not yet ready to give up Quicken. I'm open to the idea of moving completely to YNAB, but I'm just not there yet. Each offers features the other doesn't. Plus there's something meditative and satisfying about balancing the books every week.Right now, I intend to use both You Need a Budget and Quicken 2007. As I've said repeatedly, the process of entering transactions by hand forces me to confront my spending habits. If that's the case, make a point to check out You Need a Budget.) (No reason, that is, unless you think you need help budgeting. There's no compelling reason to switch. If you already use a money tool that you like, stick with it. To me, there was no clear winner.Based on my experience, I'd make the following recommendations: Six weeks of money nerd experimentation has led to an indefinite conclusion. If you don't intend to track your spending, then consider an app like Mint or Personal Capital to monitor your progress. If you need to track your transactions, YNAB is still a good choice, but I'd also encourage you to try Quicken. If you need to budget, You Need a Budget is the clear favorite. As readers suggest other apps to try, it'll be easy enough to add them to the mix. My accounts are set up in four different apps, and I'm actively tracking my spending. That said, the hard work is now done.
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