Anybody use Quicken Premier 2010?

Non-investing personal finance issues including insurance, credit, real estate, taxes, employment and legal issues such as trusts and wills.
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simplesimon
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Anybody use Quicken Premier 2010?

Post by simplesimon »

I just won a free copy of Quicken Premier 2010. Does anybody use it? I currently use mint.com. If it's not any good I'll just give my copy away.

I should probably add that I've never used personal finance software. How intuitive is it to use? How does it compare to mint.com (for those that have used both)?
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Gary
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Post by Gary »

I use it. I upgraded from Quicken Premier 2006 last month. Frankly, I don't see much difference between the two.

I use Quicken to keep track of bank and credit card balances. Its also great for downloading stock quotes so I can see how much my net worth changes every day. But all in all, in my opinion, the investment tools are not that good.

I'd say if you are using Mint.com and are satisfied with it then sell your Quicken on Ebay.

--Gary
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Fletch
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Re: Anybody use Quicken Premier 2010?

Post by Fletch »

simplesimon wrote:I just won a free copy of Quicken Premier 2010. Does anybody use it? I currently use mint.com. If it's not any good I'll just give my copy away.

I should probably add that I've never used personal finance software. How intuitive is it to use? How does it compare to mint.com (for those that have used both)?
Yes.

Easy.

Much more complete for my needs.

Disclaimer: I have used Quicken for many years. My previous Quicken was 2008. 2010 has a better user interface and reporting; only took me a short while to get used to it. I have only "played" with the last version or two of Mint and Yodlee. Thus, I'm probably biased toward using Quicken. I also have tried gnucash and Moneydance - not impressed.

Fletch
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Ducks
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Post by Ducks »

I like Quicken. It takes a bit of work to keep everything entered, reconciled, and updated... but it's been very helpful for us, especially around tax time.

I use the 2008 version. The subsequent upgrades seem mostly cosmetic in nature, so i haven't bothered.
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abuss368
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Post by abuss368 »

I used Quicken for believe it or not, 10 years (using Quicken 1999) for the first time. Months ago, we decided to delete 10 years of data for loans, banking, credit cards. We started to realize the huge amount of time compounded entering all this information, and for what value or purpose. We only enter investments for tax purposes and tracking about once per month or so.

At first it felt like an adjustment, that something was missing or wrong, by throwing out receipts and not entering them. Now, we are so used to it, and our expenses are still the same. We now shake our head at all the lost time over the past 10 years doing these worthless activities.

Besides, Intuit, the makers of Quicken, like to come out with a "new and improved" product every year (recurring revenue stream). And what are the "changes & improvements"? The reports or transaction ledger pages look a little different?

We will never go back to entering all that information ever again!
Last edited by abuss368 on Fri Jan 01, 2010 11:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
KyleAAA
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Post by KyleAAA »

I use 2009. For tracking CC and savings account balances, etc it's fine and pretty easy to use. For anything more sophisticated, it can get confusing.
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Hexdump
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I am about to be forced to have to switch to it.

Post by Hexdump »

Since MS abandoned MS-Money.

grrrrr
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magellan
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Post by magellan »

abuss368 wrote:I used Quicken for believe it or not, 10 years (using Quicken 1999) for the first time. Months ago, we decided to delete 10 years of data for loans, banking, credit cards. We started to realize the huge amount of time compounded entering all this information, and for what value or purpose.
We've used Quicken since 1991 and still have most of the data. I did a year-end wrapup/purge in the early 90s and still regret it. With automatic download and categorization of most transactions, keeping track of everything is not that much work.

Estimating annual spending needed for retirement was much more accurate with several years of good data. Sometimes big-ticket expenses come in bursts and it's easy to low-ball estimates by looking at a sample that's too small. I'm thinking about things like painting, re-roofing, driveway paving, special big trips and other multi-thousand dollar expenses that hit on an odd schedule.

In addition to tracking our average spending, I also use the historical data as a record keeping system. I can readily answer questions like:
- When was the last time we had the septic tank pumped/chimney cleaned?
- How old is the washing machine/refrigerator/car exhaust/brakes/etc?
- How much have property taxes/electricity/heating oil increased in price since xxx?
- What was the name of the carpenter/painter/carpet cleaner/etc we had do work on the house last year?
- What's the model number and serial number of my digital camera and lenses.

I'm sure everyone has their own system for this stuff, but we've sort of pushed everything into Quicken and that's worked pretty well for us. Now I'll just instinctively add a phone number or other interesting "meta" info into the memo of a transaction if I think it'd be nice to have later. Whenever we buy big ticket items, I put the model number and serial number in the memo so the data file is also an insurance inventory to some extent.

In addition to using mozy.com backup, I also export every transaction (from 1991-present) to a csv file at the end of each year so I have a non-quicken backup of the data in case the file and all my various backups somehow get corrupted.

Jim
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Ducks
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Post by Ducks »

abuss368 wrote:We will never go back to entering all that information ever again!
Ahhh I wish life were so easy for us.

We live in a state with no income tax; only sales tax... so all our sales tax is deductible. The feds' standard deduction is about 1/4 of our yearly sales tax spent (does this mean we spend too much according to the federal government? :P), so I feel it's worth it to split out sales tax on every single purchase we make. That said, it annoys me so much to do it that I haven't reconciled any accounts in 2009 since March, and I haven't entered receipts since October. Guess what I'm doing this week. :roll:

I bought myself one of these NeatDesk doodads last year, and I'm thinking of letting it figure out how much we spent on sales tax and just tell quicken the general category things fall into and forget the minutia.
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Jake46
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Post by Jake46 »

I've used Quicken since 1999. I use Quicken Premier because of its ability to handle stock option exercises.
sailor234
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Post by sailor234 »

I've used Quicken since the late 1990's to track my investments. For one year, just before retiring, I tracked everything to have an idea of my expense distribution while working. It seemed an enormous amount of work and did not materially change my style or spending habits, although it did help convince me I could afford to retire.

The longer I'm retired the less frequently I use it although I do go through my EOY financial statements and bring the Q amounts into agreement.

My career was in software systems; I've never been impressed with Q software quality or the user interface. I had a data bug which left a negative cash amount in one account; I found the records that caused it but could not eliminate the error. Q (Intuit) customer support was no help. If nothing else, the company desperately needs a utility that goes through the database and validates each record.

I should note that my detailed tracking of investments and asset allocation is in an Excel spreadsheet, which includes quarterly data for ten years and growing.

Ray
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Post by CaptMidnight »

Ducks wrote: I bought myself one of these NeatDesk doodads last year, and I'm thinking of letting it figure out how much we spent on sales tax and just tell quicken the general category things fall into and forget the minutia.

How is the Neatdesk working for you? What is its error rate at recognizing text and numbers? Did you look at competitors?
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ruralavalon
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Post by ruralavalon »

I just upgraded from Quicken Premier 2009 to Quicken Premier 2010, have not found any difference. I use it to track spending, and to try to estimate post-retirement expenses
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RooseveltG
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Post by RooseveltG »

I have used Quicken since the late 1990s and think it is a good program. I do think their upgrade program is a scam. I went from Quicken 2008 to 2010 and there are only a few minor tweaks. At least with Microsoft, you can see substantial changes between Office 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2010.

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Ducks
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Post by Ducks »

CaptMidnight wrote:How is the Neatdesk working for you? What is its error rate at recognizing text and numbers? Did you look at competitors?
I bought it with J&R Computer World gift cards I got from my credit card, so I was limited to looking at what they had. The only other one I looked at was the Fujitsu ScanSnap, but it did not come with a filing software package and would have had to get Acrobat as well, or look elsewhere for some other system. The neatdesk seemed to be the complete package I was looking for.

I honestly have not used it that much -- certainly not enough to learn the nuances of the software. But so far, it seems to be a very smart system. I have scanned in 51 receipts, and going through them, it looks like it is pulling off sales tax correctly most of the time, recognizing store names correctly most of the time, etc.

I'll be putting 2010 receipts into a pile until I finish 2009; when I'm done, I will start using the NeatDesk more thoroughly and will try to give a better review.
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MWCA
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Post by MWCA »

abuss368 wrote:I used Quicken for believe it or not, 10 years (using Quicken 1999) for the first time. Months ago, we decided to delete 10 years of data for loans, banking, credit cards. We started to realize the huge amount of time compounded entering all this information, and for what value or purpose. We only enter investments for tax purposes and tracking about once per month or so.

At first it felt like an adjustment, that something was missing or wrong, by throwing out receipts and not entering them. Now, we are so used to it, and our expenses are still the same. We now shake our head at all the lost time over the past 10 years doing these worthless activities.

Besides, Intuit, the makers of Quicken, like to come out with a "new and improved" product every year (recurring revenue stream). And what are the "changes & improvements"? The reports or transaction ledger pages look a little different?

We will never go back to entering all that information ever again!

I estimate we spend 20 minutes a quarter entering all that information. Does not seem like too much time for me. Specially when I get the results of where every dollar goes.
Scorpion
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Quicken 2010 upgrade

Post by Scorpion »

I bought Quicken Premier 2007 a few years ago and have been exceedingly happy with it. We use it for our family budget, which I am sure has saved us many thousands compared to the no budget approach from before.

A day I dreaded has arrived, however; a message just popped up saying I must upgrade to Quicken 2010 or my online access will end in April. That really feels like total BS to me - I have to upgrade solely to keep the functionality that I bought the program for.

That said, does anyone know how smooth the transition is? Will my data file from 2007 be completely integrated into 2010 without problem? It took me many many hours to get 2007 set up - I would hate to face that again!
Marilyn Dennison
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Post by Marilyn Dennison »

I have found Quicken to be a terrific tool for financial ease. My daughter was in the denial mode with her finances. I set up her accounts and downloaded the transactions. Now, with two clicks she can update in less than two minutes. She updates daily and checks on her credit cards' and checking accounts' transactions [which we all should do]. Quicken will also tell you how to rebalance your investments to the desired allocation. The big plus is that she is finally taking charge of her finances.

For those whose spouses won't pay attention I truly believe that this will help to get them involved as it is easy to see the entire financial picture.

This is only my opinion.

Marilyn
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magellan
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Re: Quicken 2010 upgrade

Post by magellan »

Scorpion wrote:That said, does anyone know how smooth the transition is? Will my data file from 2007 be completely integrated into 2010 without problem? It took me many many hours to get 2007 set up - I would hate to face that again!
I don't have to upgrade until next year so I don't have first hand experience. It's very likely that your upgrade will go smoothly and everything will be fine. OTOH, you may want to wait until March unless a great deal comes up or you like to be an early adopter and don't mind a small chance of having to deal with a technical issue. Since you just got the "sunset" notice, I'd imagine in the next few weeks there will be an onslaught of Q2007 to Q2010 upgrades happening and support will be very busy with those.

Intuit's initial Quicken releases have been very buggy in the past and some small percentage of hapless folks who jump on a new release too fast end up spending hours and hours with tech support. Fortunately, usually after 4 or 5 updates everything gets fixed and the software works fine.

Q2010 has been out for several months and by now the tech support folks should have uncovered most of the upgrade issues and software bugs. OTOH, if you wait another month or two, your odds will be that much better.

Jim
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KarlJ
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Re: Quicken 2010 upgrade

Post by KarlJ »

Scorpion wrote: That said, does anyone know how smooth the transition is? Will my data file from 2007 be completely integrated into 2010 without problem? It took me many many hours to get 2007 set up - I would hate to face that again!
I recently upgraded to Quicken Premier 2010 from Premier 2007 mainly to continue to have access to the download capability. The transition was fairly smooth with all the data files with the exception of one glitch. For some reason the balance for an account was inserted as the first entry for the file, effectively doubling the account value. I fixed this by deleting this one entry for each file where this occurred, probably taking me a few minutes to accomplish max. Otherwise all my data files translated correctly. BTW there was a minimum of a decade of historical data in the files processed in my case. Since using Premier 2010 after the setup there have been no significant problems, although I do not notice a lot of improvements over the Premier 2007 functionality.
jared
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Giving it a try

Post by jared »

No, but I just purchased a copy. I need to start tracking my expenses and getting a better handle on where my money is going. I'm already scared to see what my "dining out" category will look like.
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Ducks
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Re: Giving it a try

Post by Ducks »

jared wrote: I'm already scared to see what my "dining out" category will look like.
This is our #1 biggest money-sink. We knew it was, of course, but seeing it all added up there in black and white (err - and red :P) with the $ in front of it, it was a shocker.
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skatterZ
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Post by skatterZ »

I love quicken, however recently upgraded from 2008 to 2010
lost all manually entered prices of fixed assets (CD's and Bonds)
also ended up with negative holdings in one ETF
so watch it
still love it but has some bugs right now
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Salty1
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Post by Salty1 »

Anyone interested Quicken Premeier 2010 50% off till Jan 23 here:http://quicken.intuit.com/lp/qkn10/qlp1 ... 63_062_002
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Ducks
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Post by Ducks »

I don't want to reward intuit for giving non-substantial improvements to their product. I'll wait until they fix the 3 things I want them to fix, or until they sunset me.

That is a good deal for those who are about to be sunsetted or do not already have Quicken, though.
Getting our Ducks in a row since 2008.
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simplesimon
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Post by simplesimon »

Well that just kills the auction I just created this week.
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