After a couple weeks, my wife is not on board with logging. So she hands me receipts and I also monitor the credit cards/bank account every few days for transactions I might have missed. We’ll see how this plays out. After we start a fresh month (December not the greatest for establishing a budget), we’ll take a look at the numbers per category and decide on limits. At that point, I’m hoping she’ll use the iPhone app to at least glance at remaining budget per category while shopping.
Ugh…I’m still managing our finances with Quicken 99. As does my wife with her business. Works fine in W7 64-bit with a little tweak. I got stuck after Y2K, I guess.
I suppose I’m in a bind when it eventually stops working on whatever PC I’m using, and I have to bring everything up-to-date.
There is a Moneywiz personal finance app on sale for Ipad today. Anyone using it and care to say whether it is good or not?
Edit: It doesn’t seem to have the ability to auto-synch accounts with your bank. I’ll keep digging. It was .99 so no big deal if it sucks.
Arise!
So I’ve just encountered Intuit’s “Hi! We’ve gone ahead and crippled the software you bought from us a few years ago” deadline. I actually like using Quicken, but I’m pretty sure I’d hate myself on general principle for the next three years if I pulled the trigger and “upgraded” to the new edition.
Has anyone had any especially happy experiences switching from Quicken to an alternative?
Gravy: I’d love to be able to cleanly move existing records from Quicken into a new program (via Excel?), but that might be asking too much.
If you mean Intuit is disabling stuff like online access for 3 or 4 year old versions of Quicken, I usually accept that as a cost of using Quicken.
I used Quicken for a number of years but eventually just fell out of the habit of using it. And after a while I feel like the hump you have to get over is so high that it’s a real obstacle to starting it up again. And when I started reading up on the latest version of Quicken, it sounded like it wasn’t terribly good. So I’ve started monitoring my finances by using Mint. It’s much more passive than Quicken, but I find it works for me. And it’s possible to enter transactions into Mint, though it’s a pain. But for just monitoring accounts and seeing where the money goes, I find Mint works fine.
As for alternatives, we tried some stuff on the Mac for my wife - bought a couple of products, but nothing really worked that well, so eventually she gave up and bought Quickbooks for her business account… and get this: our bank has some issues working with Quickbooks (I hate our local bank, but that’s another story).
I picked up YNAB after the recommendations here and elsewhere and have heard it was a fairly painless process to import from Quicken. Depending on your use case it may not be a good fit but they offer a free 34 day trial so you can check and see for yourself. While not automated it does offer import from bank, and any issues I’ve had and posted to their Steam forum received a timely response from the developers which I appreciate. Price is a little on the high end at $60, but being on Steam there’s the guarantee of sales in the future. The Steam version also runs perfectly fine without Steam open.
Thanks for the feedback, guys. I’ll look into YNAB. No automated links to banks is AOK by me. I’m looking for something a bit more hands-on.
I’d consider paying Intuit an annual subscription fee to continue to use Quicken, if they made it that up-front and straightforward, but there’s something about their practice that rubs me the wrong way. Partly it’s being told I’m “upgrading” when I’m forced to buy new software that I haven’t asked for. Partly it’s the way they’ve borked the existing install. To my mind, it’s one thing to ring down the curtain on automated synchronization, online transactions, etc., but it really chaps my ass that I can no longer manually transfer over a file that I’ve downloaded from my bank—especially considering that my bank has apparently already ponied up money to Intuit for permission to generate the file in the first place.
I really like the way Mint shows my financial situation, but my wife doesn’t care for it because it doesn’t show all of our upcoming payments (for example, when I look at the checking account, I can subtract out the cell phone payment and the mortgage, since I know they both happen around the 5th of the month, whereas my wife looks at the amount and sees a lot of money there).
So I downloaded and am trying YNAB because the whole idea of having your cash divided into a bunch of bins seems to make sense. While I like the budgeting model they use and the 4 rules, I’m having issues making it all fit within my particular financial situation, because it’s a little complicated (lots of accounts). It also feels a little weird to be starting the budget in the middle of the month and to be budgeting only (basically) the first half of the month. I’m not sure I like it, but I’ll keep trying it.
A bit OT, but has anyone been accepted to/moved checing accounts to [https://simple.com/](Simple Bank)?
I just got an invite. You need to transfer minimum $100 USD to open the account. The basic lowdown is it’s online only, but with a fairly rich web interface to help you track and organize your finances. You are supplied a standard Visa debit card, and they are part of a US national ATM network wher you can get no fee cash withdrawals. No fees, unless you’re inactive for 180 days. You can pay people via the site or the app and there will be a no fee paper check mailed to them. There’s no interest either, but that’s not much of a loss considering the negligible interest in any checking account. I put the minimum $100 there and will play around once the money clears. If I like the interface and organization features I might consider moving my paycheck direct deposit there.
Just curious if anyone had experience or info about the bank?
A bit OT, but has anyone been accepted to/moved checking accounts to Simple Bank?
I just got an invite. You need to transfer minimum $100 USD to open the account. The basic lowdown is it’s online only, but with a fairly rich web interface to help you track and organize your finances. You are supplied a standard Visa debit card, and they are part of a US national ATM network wher you can get no fee cash withdrawals. No fees, unless you’re inactive for 180 days. You can pay people via the site or the app and there will be a no fee paper check mailed to them. There’s no interest either, but that’s not much of a loss considering the negligible interest in any checking account. I put the minimum $100 there and will play around once the money clears. If I like the interface and organization features I might consider moving my paycheck direct deposit there.
Just curious if anyone had experience or info about the bank?
Looks interesting, but I’ve never heard of them before. Anyone try www.bankofinternet.com? They have a tiered interest paying free checking account that pays you more interest based in how you use it (direct deposit, number of transactions, etc). They also let you use FinanceWorks for managing and organizing your spending, which is something made by Intuit I think.
If I wasn’t pretty happy with the way my money is organized I would definitely look into one of these newfangled internet oriented banks (I know technically Simple Bank isn’t a bank, but their FAQ explains the money you send them is held by their parent, The Bancorp Bank, which is a bank).
I’ve used internet banks for over 12 years now. First Netbank (they went under about 6 years ago) and now Everbank. Everything mono said about Simple Bank can be applied to Everbank, except perhaps the minimum amount to open an account, and Everbank gives you a tiny amount of interest on your checking. They give you paper checks, a debit card, everything you’d expect. The only issue is when you need a bank check to buy a car / home, you need to call them 24+ hours ahead of time so they can FedEx it to you. Otherwise it’s a great.
Also, fuck BoA.