Quicken getting to be not worth the hassle - any potential defectors out there?

On Tue 17 Jan 2006 11:30:10a, Texas Yankee wrote in news:CQ9zf.16455$Di.13079@trnddc06:

Surprised to see you over in that boat! Q2005D (& Q2004D before that) works great for me. I don't recall the advertising and extra menu items being really noticeable.

My most active accounts all support direct connect (I've dropped or seldom use others), so that makes it really nice.

Simple - consolidated view of my finances where my money goes and what my networth is. I try to avoid doing busines with firms that don't offer at least Web Connect (prefer Direct Connect). I try to do only tranactions that can be downloaded to reduce data entry (but I validate them as being real before accepting which is easy because I am single) How much detail (=time) you spend depends on how what reports you want out of the product. Example, you can set up Quicken to say you have a Telephone category. Of introduce subcatgories for Local Call, Long Distant, Cell Phone. You can add classifications to bread out each of those for all the individual taxes you spend. The choice is yours.....

Agree, Keep the records is a great advantage at tax time and has saved me a bunch of money on deductions I wouldn't have previously had.

You can remove 99% of the advertising that is seen in Quicken by editing files in the Quicken program directory. I don't have the details handy, but they were posted in this group a while back.

The categorization is nice. Having the computer remind me it's time to pay bills have save me real $$ in terms of late payments not to mention the trashing of my credit rating.

Tax time is simply a matter of producing a couple of reports.

As far as online bill paying, I don't use that feature so I'll refrain from commenting.

Using saving goals to allocate money against a know event like vacations, property taxes or Christmas presents is an incredible benefit. Likewise, creating funds for non-specific events like home improvement assists in financial planning.

But in the end, what you put into it is what you'll get out of it. If you feel it's not worth it, then it probably isn't, in your case.

Heck a couple years ago I tried MS Money. I put up with it for 4 weeks (read 4 cycles of use). After the 4th week I spent 5 hours bringing my old version of Quicken up to speed. Money didn't work well for me, but for other people it's fine.

Hey Texas Yankee, I feel your pain.

I have reduced my use of Quicken over the last year - matter of fact last year I didn 't use it at all. Even tried a Turbo Tax competitor this year! I had been a using Quicken since the beginning.

Mostly, a lot of the downloading stuff always seemed to leave errors that couldn't be corrected, and getting help seems more difficult than it should be.

I just 'started over' with the product (2005), and I am only using it to track my monthly budget - no investments, no loans. Only the two accounts that I spend out of. We'll see if I can get more use out of it that way for a few months, or if I should jump ship to something else.

I too hate all the ads - I am interested in how to use what I bought, not how to use what I didn't!