Add Lifetime/Retirement Planner to Quicken Mac (70 Legacy Votes)

nitinsaichopra

> @"John L1" said:
> I was a religious user of the Lifetime Planner on Quicken Windows.  I like the fact that the Mac version is catching up, but this planning tool is a critical component to me and extremely useful as I think about what I need to do to save for retirement.  Please port this functionality over from the Windows side.
>
> (Please Preserve-Part of an active Idea)

Please add LPT for Mac Users this is very much needed.

rwiegand

Just discovered that the very useful retirement planning function is missing from the Mac version. Very sad about that.

sbbabcock

Yes, we are all sad the retirement planner is missing in the Mac versions and you will see from the timeframe on this thread that it doesn't seem to be a priority or something coming anytime soon. Very unfortunately.

jacobs

@sbbabcock I agree that it's frustrating when an Idea garners a lot of votes and is moved to "Under Consideration" status -- and then stays there indefinitely. This feature request was marked as Under consideration in March 2019, a remarkable 30 months ago. One would think that's more than enough time for the developers to decide either "yes, we're going to put this on our development plan" or "no, we're not planning to implement this feature." The limbo of just being perpetually "Under Consideration" is maddening.

My understanding of the process is that the forum moderators tag an idea as "Under Consideration" when it has generated enough interest to be pushed to the product development team. But it doesn't get marked as "Planned" based simply on their consideration of the idea and agreement that a feature would be worthwhile. It only gets marked "Planned" once they've assessed what it will take to implement, and assigned it to a particular development cycle in the future. The assessment phase alone can take awhile, as they have to have people on the team dive into the idea to estimate which developers (database, user interface, connectivity, etc.) would be involved and how much time each piece of the project entails. If those teams are busy on other projects, they may not take time to do deep dive assessments for awhile. They may also have to coordinate with other Quicken product development teams for Quicken Windows or Quicken mobile if a feature involves any interoperation compatibility between the platforms. And even after that, once they've assessed what's involved, they need to find a time to slate it for development. It doesn't get marked "Planned" just on the concept, it needs to be put into an actual slot on the development roadmap. (It may then move up or down over time, as other priorities may push it down, or availability of a particular developer might speed it up.)

Therefore, in a case like this, I'd assume remaining as "Under Consideration" is a somewhat good sign. If the developers decided this doesn't fit their plans for the future, they'd mark it as "Not Planned" in far less time than 30 months. My guess is that an idea like this, which remains "Under Consideration" for a very long time, is waiting to be assigned to one of their future development cycles. So we can assume it's not coming any time soon... but it may be coming in the longer-term future. 

jjmguam954

Quicken Windows user since the early 1990's. I switched to the Mac version about a year ago. I didn't realize that the retirement planning tool was missing until I retired recently. I would rather not have to switch back to Windows.

Please add LPT for Mac Users this is very much needed.

bnelson3

Why is there no place to plan a loan. Quicken for Mac 2007 had several planning tools that are absent in the new versions. Disappointing!

wcagwin

> @ said:
> I am in a similar situation. Please post the status of your plan to re-include this very important capability in the MAC version. Thank you. 'Upcoming Features' or something like that?

wcagwin

If the Mac version is missing features like retirement planning tools, why does it cost the same as the Windows version? Shouldn't they give us a discount until they bring it up to snuff? I'm needing to use tools like these now and am having to look into other programs that can get it done for me.

jacobs

@wcagwin In the former days where people purchased annual copies of Quicken, I think this argument of lower pricing for Quicken Mac because of fewer features made some sense -- although the company always ignored it. But currently, it's basically a moot point because you aren't purchasing Quicken Mac or Quicken Windows; you're purchasing an annual subscription to use Quicken software. With your subscription, you are able to use Quicken Mac or Quicken Windows or both. Since they don't have two different subscriptions for each platform's software, they have neatly sidestepped this issue. If you buy a Quicken Deluxe subscription, it gives you the rights to use either or both desktop products, the mobile app, the web interface, all for one flat price. 

The problem they -- and we users -- have is that the list of feature requests far outstrips the capacity of their development team to implement. They've been making some solid progress at adding features year by year, but there are still hundreds of feature requests on the table. And every user says a different one is the most important one! So they try to decide which ones to pursue in which order based on lots of factors, and we anxiously await each new release to see if any of our wishes have been granted.

In the end, it comes down to a personal decision for each of us: are we getting enough value from Quicken for what we pay for it, or not. If not, people go off to find something they think better fits their needs and/or costs less. Many don't leave, or come back, because they find Quicken -- despite its limitations -- is the best at what it does and is worth the annual fee. Because we all use Quicken differently, and have different financial tracking and panning needs, there's no single right answer for everyone.

I find that for financial planning, I do the work to update data and review my plans basically once a year, so the absence of planning tools in Quicken isn't a big factor for me. (But I've always used Quicken Mac and never used Quicken Windows, so I don't know what I'm missing!) I have a couple spreadsheets from a financial planner I worked with, and I update my retirement and non-retirement funds balances and my annual expenses in those spreadsheets every once in awhile, and that's good enough for my "what if" planning. Some similar tools can be found online for free, as well as for a fee. And perhaps, someday, in Quicken Mac.

This Idea thread currently has 160 votes, which you can see if you go to the top of the first page of the thread. Compared to other threads here, that's a high vote total, probably in the top 5% of Idea posts. It's marked as "Under Consideration", which means it's been sent from the team which manages this site to Quicken's product and development teams. One of the odd things about how they do things is that it doesn't change to "Planned" status until it has been assigned a development time slot on their schedule. So even even if they agree with the idea and plan to implement it, the status doesn't change and we don't know their intentions if they haven't yet assigned it to a future development cycle. Meanwhile, all users can do is continue to vote for the Idea posts they want, because higher vote totals do help  to have a louder voice in moving this up their priority list.

garysmith87

This would be a great addition to Quicken Mac...if only they actually updated the planner.

Right now, the Lifetime Planner in Quicken Windows still uses RMD's under the old law of 70 1/2 instead of the newer 72.

Roth IRA's aren't really taken into withdrawal consideration.

And I still can't tell Quicken which accounts should have money withdrawn first and in which order.  

So, what I used to think was a pretty cool feature in Quicken Windows has now become a worthless inaccurate feature that, now that I'm retired, I can no longer rely on.  

I, too, am now stuck using an outside planner for my calculations...and of course must now manually update all my entries.  So sure, Quicken Windows has the Lifetime Planner...but is it accurate and useable?  If not, it's no better than not having it at all.  

jacobs

@garysmith87 Good points about Quicken Windows Lifetime Planner. My hope would be that if the Mac developers decide to tackle implementation of their feature, they would do it like so many other things they have implemented, and not try to merely mimic the Windows implementation, but truly look at the best design for the feature. In this case, they could clearly Build Back Better. (oops, didn't mean to make this political.  )

wcagwin

> @jacobs said:
> @wcagwin In the former days where people purchased annual copies of Quicken, I think this argument of lower pricing for Quicken Mac because of fewer features made some sense -- although the company always ignored it. But currently, it's basically a moot point because you aren't purchasing Quicken Mac or Quicken Windows; you're purchasing an annual subscription to use Quicken software. With your subscription, you are able to use Quicken Mac or Quicken Windows or both. Since they don't have two different subscriptions for each platform's software, they have neatly sidestepped this issue. If you buy a Quicken Deluxe subscription, it gives you the rights to use either or both desktop products, the mobile app, the web interface, all for one flat price. 

Thanks for the info/insight @jacobs.

So, let me get this right . . . if I use Quicken Deluxe for Mac, but my husband's computer is a PC, does that mean I could install Quicken on both computers (without extra cost)? This could almost solve my problem if it is true. I could use my Mac for day to day stuff, and open it on my husband's PC if we want to track how we are doing on our retirement planning stuff. Did I get that right? If so, how do I get it going? Thanks!

jacobs

wcagwin said:

So, let me get this right . . . if I use Quicken Deluxe for Mac, but my husband's computer is a PC, does that mean I could install Quicken on both computers (without extra cost)? This could almost solve my problem if it is true. I could use my Mac for day to day stuff, and open it on my husband's PC if we want to track how we are doing on our retirement planning stuff. Did I get that right?

Yes... and no. With one subscription, you can install Quicken Mac and your husband can install Quicken Windows. That's the good news.

Unfortunately, these programs are different enough that you can't share a unified data file between them and move back and forth. There is a converter from Quicken Windows to Quicken Mac which works well for most (but not all) people. There is a converter for Quicken Mac to Quicken Windows which flat-out doesn't work unless you have no investing accounts; they have never finished building this. Bottom line: these programs are not interoperable. You may be able to make a one-way transfer from Quicken Windows to Quicken Mac, but that's about it. 

But wait! There might still be a viable option for you. Quicken has a mobile app and web interface which works with both Quicken Mac and Quicken Windows files. If you use Quicken Mac, your data file live on your Mac, but some of your data can be synced to Quicken's cloud server, which you can then access from a web browser on your Windows PC. The web interface isn't a full-fledged version of Quicken, so depending what you want to check, this may or may not fill your need. (I don't use the web interfaced, so I can't offer any detail about what it does and doesn't provide.)

IB

Dear Quicken. Please add the Lifetime Planner to Mac. Your user-base is switching from Windows to Mac and needs this functionality. It is an important tool for our financial planning.

Chris_QPW

garysmith87 said:

This would be a great addition to Quicken Mac...if only they actually updated the planner.

Right now, the Lifetime Planner in Quicken Windows still uses RMD's under the old law of 70 1/2 instead of the newer 72.

Roth IRA's aren't really taken into withdrawal consideration.

And I still can't tell Quicken which accounts should have money withdrawn first and in which order.  

So, what I used to think was a pretty cool feature in Quicken Windows has now become a worthless inaccurate feature that, now that I'm retired, I can no longer rely on.  

I, too, am now stuck using an outside planner for my calculations...and of course must now manually update all my entries.  So sure, Quicken Windows has the Lifetime Planner...but is it accurate and useable?  If not, it's no better than not having it at all.  

Isn't that the story of Quicken! (at least Quicken Windows, and I'm betting Quicken Mac in the future).

The Quicken management comes up with new features to sell the product and leaves older features to rot.   The tax tables haven't been updated in many years.  The Tax Planner only gets the tax table numbers updated, ...

As for the Lifetime Planner (which BTW use to be called the retirement planner until they got the notion that it might be used for planning before retirement, and relabeled it, without changing a thing.), it has always only been a "ballpark estimate".  The same can be said for the Tax Planner with all its weaknesses.

Not only is it not maintained, but it has also never had some features that would be required for it to really be more than "ballpark".  As you mentioned what accounts to draw money out of and such has always been "what the Quicken developers thought was the right order".  That means not only are you not specifying the accounts to withdraw from, but you also aren't even able to say if it should first withdraw from the Roth IRA or the Traditional IRA.  Depending on your individual situation that can make a big difference.  It just does what they think is "optimal".

Other things are like the fact that you have only two tax rates, before retirement, and after.  In reality most people have at least three.  Before, after, and after RMD starts.

Of course, the programmers have a fundamental problem that is even greater than the time to program it, and that is creating something that is "simple enough", but still can satisfy someone that wants to really dig into the details.  One of the things I see a lot on the website planners is that they ask very little information.  I'm sure that is because the average person doing this has a very limited attention span for it.  Quicken has an advantage over these websites since the user's financial information is in Quicken, but still there is a tradeoff between details and the needed work that would be involved from the user to tell it how to treat everything.  It won't help Quicken Mac users, but there is a free planner that goes into lots of the details which another Quicken user pointed out to me.  But it is a lot of work to get all the details put in and correct.
http://forecaster4website.azurewebsites.net/default.html

Note I believe the creator of this is long since retired and might not be maintaining this one anymore.

IB

Yes, please add the Lifetime/Retirement planner to Quicken Mac!

What sets Quicken apart from other programs is that it is a financial assistant; more than just downloading/storing/visualizing your transactions. The Lifetime Planner (Retirement Planner) is the best tool on the market and sets Quicken apart.

Please bring this feature to the Mac (sooner than later).

(I don't see a voting button)

Quicken Anja

Hello @IB,

IB said:

(I don't see a voting button)

The voting button can be found on page 1 of this Idea thread. It is the little grey triangle below the vote count (see screenshot below).



I hope this helps!

Bizbird

There are several reasons I believe this would be significant:
1- The six months prior to my wife retiring were a whirlwind of activity as we tried to figure out all the steps, locate all the information, and how all the pieces fit together. There was a myriad of headaches and sleepless nights. With the right tools and right training, life would have been much better for my wife and for me.

2- I believe many people do not think about these issues but only sporadically. Many wait to address the issues until the time comes to retire, and behold, they find themselves in a jam because they failed to make decisions earlier in life. There is an old saying, "Out of sight, out of mind!" that I believe applies to the issue of retirement. People don't deal with it, because there are so many other life issues, but a small amount of attention each month would radically transform the lifestyle of millions.

3- Too many people rely on their company to make decisions for them and never take time to evaluate where they are and where they are going.

4- Quicken provides financial tracking, budget planning, and investment tracking. Missing is a good, simple retirement planning tool for those who need help, but cannot afford a financial planner. Most people simply cannot afford to pay a financial planner, and a tool of this nature would help millions. Those who use a financial planner and can afford to pay one may have other tools, but could also use this as a means of better monitoring their finances.

5- Good financial planning doesn't just look backward. It looks forward. A retirement planner looks forward. This would make a complete package.

6- People are asking for it. There are countless others, who would use it, but never thought about it.

7- It would help Quicken be known as a complete financial tool that anyone can use regardless of income.

7- As a minister, I have heard countless people talk about living on a fixed income and had no idea how they were going to survive. The question, "What am I going to do?" is heard often. Many came for food, rent, and other assistance.

8- If people had an inexpensive tool that would help them prepare for retirement, there would be fewer headaches, less worry, better money management through the years, a better quality of life in retirement, plus the impact on others, especially family would be greatly reduced. But it has to be simple and easy to use! If it is complex, forget it!

9- Maybe it is already part of the application. If so where would I find it?

Hope this helps.

Steve Byrd

jacobs

Steve, very well stated. I hope that some day, a Quicken software executive or manager reads it and "gets it". (But the cynic in me wonders if any of these comments are ever seen by the people who matter most! )

And no, you're not missing anything. This is an old feature in Quicken Windows (which some Quicken Windows users note has not been updated and is therefore not as useful as it should be) which never existed in the legacy Quicken for Mac. In the modern generation Quicken Mac, the developers have been working to add new features every couple months, but there are many more requests for features than there are programmers. When the modern Quicken Mac came out in 2014, it was woefully under-featured, but a lot of progress has been made over the ensuing years. My hope is that over the next few years, we'll see some longtime requests like this come to fruition. Unfortunately, Quicken management believes in not sharing what they're working on or planning to work on, so we still have no idea whether this is on their development roadmap or not.

Anyone who wants to see this functionality added to Quicken Mac, please jump to the first page of this thread and add your vote for it (by clicking the little black arrow under the vote counter in the yellow box). Driving vote counts higher is the main way users can express their feature desires to product management. 

IB

Don't forget to up-vote this feature on the first page.

Andersod

Retirement planning, investing and reporting tools should be mandatory points for a quality personnel financial software.

Birdie

I decided to retry Quicken for Mac last winter. Blechhh. Giant waste of time. Not for budgeting, not for planning, not for insight. It’s easier and cheaper to download a report from my credit union and credit card companies. Wasted hours. links are not stable. Imports to wrong accounts. No quarterly or rollover numbers. If you leave your old life in a vault every 1 January, you’re good. So i installed Windows on my Mac in a partition and tried quicken for windows. Blechhh. Not much better. Neither of these is as good as Microsoft Money was back in the day. I’m only in the market for a fully integrated product. Piecemeal exists already. So non-renewal for me. I did like the tax category report for business expenses.

Andersod

Retirement Planner is way overdue for the Mac version. This is what I expect from a quality financial software!

Tom Auer

I have bookmarked this topic, as I think it is the most important topic under the Quicken Mac category. I apologize if I sound like a Steve Jobs-inspired wannabe messiah: but I will earnestly state that Quicken has democratized financial planning in a way similar to how John C. Bogle (founder of Vanguard) democratized investing.

If this feature came in a premium version: how much would Quicken want for that version, say $50 extra a year? I'd pay that in a heartbeat.

margueritehron

I am extremely disappointed that the Lifetime Planner is not included in my Quicken Deluxe for Mac package, and will be going to another provider when my current subscription expires.

callicks

why is porting software for retirement planning from windows to Mac that difficult? Numerous companies could do it for you. give them the code and let someone do it.

jacobs

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20345233#Comment_20345233

It just doesn't work like that. Quicken Mac and Quicken Windows use radically different technologies in almost every area of the program — different databases, different frameworks, different programming languages, different memory management, different file formats, different operating system tools, different user interface tools, different printing tools, etc. The Mac development team could look at the screens and functionality of Quicken Windows to design similar functionality for Quicken Mac, but the software needs to be created from scratch.

And there's no reason that can't or won't happen. It's just a matter of prioritizing the work. The problem is that there are literally hundreds of features Mac users have asked for, and the development team has to evaluate which ones to tackle in what order. Voting for ideas on this forum contributes, as do user surveys and feedback from Quicken customer support. While this may be the top feature request for many of those who have posted on this thread, there are plenty of other users who think other features should be at the top of the list.

qnkid

ALTERNATIVE TO RETIEMENT PLANNER. I upgraded my Mac to the M2 chip and cannot run a virtual Windows machine (Quicken) without great hassle. I found an even better solution: newretirement.com. - 14 day trial, $120/year does everything Quicken does plus allows multiple saved scenarios, Monte Carlo simulation with probability for Optimistic, Average, and Pessimistic outcomes for escalation and earnings; plus range of escalation. They will hound you to add on additional help at extra cost, but if you have used Quicken's Retirement Planner you will have no trouble.

Tom Auer

Newretirement.com actually is a very interesting resource. I wonder whether Quicken would want to have some sort of partner business relationship.