Quicken Philosophy

I wanted to make a comment here on Quicken. I've been using it for over 15 years. The first version of Quicken I bought was a DOS version. There were no windows versions at that time.

Here's the thing. I have always run Quicken independently of everything. I mean that I don't use the download feature with a few exceptions. With my checking and savings accounts I do my entries manually and then reconcile them at the end of the period with the statements. I find that this is the best way to handle the accounts. I reduce the risk of accidentally over-drawing my checking account. And it serves as a double check with my financial institutions.

I had a client recently who insisted that he was too busy to run his finances that way. And indeed he was. But, I still recommended it. We wasted no less than four months trying to get a bug solved in Quicken with NO success. We were on several conference calls with Intuit support and no resolution. To this day there is no resolution. The problem was with Washington Mutual and Bank of America accounts. And finally after many calls, Intuit support (foreigners in India) insisted that it was the institutions' problems.

I disagreed with that. But since I didn't write the program, I cannot get in and fix the source code. So I will insist that all my customers who use Quicken use it as I direct them. It's more work but it provides a good cross check to your institutions and is independent of any download problems.

The exception to this is if you have IRA's, stocks, etc. These transactions may become complex and difficult to enter and reconcile. My client has an extensive portfolio with Fidelity Investments. And to their credit, Fidelity was performing accurate downloads. This allowed my client to track the dismal performance of his portfolio (but that's another subject all together).

And so, I stick with what I said. I will train you to run Quicken independently of downloads for the most part. And it will run and you will be pleased with the outcome.

Peace!

Dave

Visit my website at http://www.davepickel.com