I cannot link an home mortgage to an asset account.

bobcatorient

I read all the instructions but is it only for the Windows version ?

jacobs

@bobcatorient  You are reading instructions regarding Quicken Windows, and I'm afraid I can't offer any direct help with that because I've only ever used Quicken Mac.

I just found the web page I think you're referring to, and if you read what the "linked asset account" does, it's not very much -- and no different than what I outlined above  to do it manually in Quicken Mac. You enter the purchase price of your home, and then periodically update the value in Quicken. You can also record capital improvements to increase your cost basis. So what Quicken Windows offers in linking the asset account o the loan account has no real magic or time savings.

The only real advantage Quicken Windows seems to have in this area -- not mentioned on that page -- is that you can integrate with Zillow to automate that periodic update to your home value. But I can't imagine wanting to update your home's estimated value more than perhaps once a year, so even this is of marginal importance; you can easily go to the Zillow website once a year, look up its estimate of your home's value, and update the value in your Quicken Mac asset account if you wish. I'm not sure how much faith I place in trying to "accurately" track and update your home's value. Zillow doesn't know enough about the state of your home (was your kitchen or bathroom remodel basic or high-end?) to give a precise value, and a precise value is a bit of a misnomer anyway, since the value is what someone will agree to pay for your house, and not what a real estate agent guesstimates you can sell it for. I've been content to check a local real estate agent's listing of comparable home sales in my area periodically, or look on Zillow just to see what it shows, so I have a ballpark idea what we make get if we decided to sell our home, but I don't take the time to track these variations in estimated value in Quicken.

NotACPA

You can, indeed, in QWin, associate the mortgage liability with the home asset to view your Equity in the asset on the liability page.

jacobs

Could you provide more information about what exactly are you trying to do? A loan is a liability account, so what linkage are you trying to make to an asset?

bobcatorient

I create a mortgage loan/liability account by adding it from my mortgage company online, then I want to link it to an asset account that I created as my home.

bobcatorient

Sorry forgot to add that I have Deluxe.

jacobs

So you're trying to track the value of your home… but that's not the way to do it. Your home's value is what it is worth if you sold it, or if you want to keep it simple, what you paid for it. You can create an asset account for the purchase price if you wish, but that value doesn't change each time you make a loan payment.

An example will probably make this clearer. Let's say you purchase a home with a purchase price of $400,000, paying $100,000 and taking out a $300,000 loan. At this point, you technically have a $400,000 asset and a $300,000 liability; as you make loan payments, the asset value doesn't change; the liability decreases.

So if you want the value of your home reflected in your net worth, you can create an asset account for the purchase price.

(Technically, you start with an asset account with a zero value. Your down payment of $100,000 is a transfer from your checking or savings account to the asset account. The loan is a transfer from the loan liability account to the asset account.)

If you want to add a little more complexity, then the asset value can change as the value of your home changes. After a few years, if your $400,000 home is now worth $450,000, you could manually increase the value of your asset. Quicken Windows has an integration with Zillow.com, which provides real-time estimates of a property's value, so it can automatically modify the value of your asset as your home value changes. Quicken Mac doesn't have that Zillow integration. If you wanted, you could once a year look up your home's value on Zillow and manually modify the value of your asset account in Quicken.

Another approach some people use is to create an asset for the purchase price. Add to the asset when you make capital improvements, like a new roof or hot water heater. This way, you'll track your cost basis for the home; when you sell the house, the difference between the sale price and the asset account (your original cost plus improvements) is your gain.

(And some people choose not to try to track the value of their home in their Quicken net worth. Unless you're late in life, you'll likely need another home if you sell your current one -- so while you technically have some net worth for your home, it's not truly usable because you'll likely roll it into your next home. So unless you're planning for end-of-life expenses or distribution of your estate, it may be more useful to leave your home value out of your net worth in Quicken.)

bobcatorient

Jacobs, thank you for your reply and explanation. it is just that what the instructions and videos say about having the option to right click and link an asset account is just not available for me, in the deluxe version I just downloaded on my imac.

jacobs

@bobcatorient  You are reading instructions regarding Quicken Windows, and I'm afraid I can't offer any direct help with that because I've only ever used Quicken Mac.

I just found the web page I think you're referring to, and if you read what the "linked asset account" does, it's not very much -- and no different than what I outlined above  to do it manually in Quicken Mac. You enter the purchase price of your home, and then periodically update the value in Quicken. You can also record capital improvements to increase your cost basis. So what Quicken Windows offers in linking the asset account o the loan account has no real magic or time savings.

The only real advantage Quicken Windows seems to have in this area -- not mentioned on that page -- is that you can integrate with Zillow to automate that periodic update to your home value. But I can't imagine wanting to update your home's estimated value more than perhaps once a year, so even this is of marginal importance; you can easily go to the Zillow website once a year, look up its estimate of your home's value, and update the value in your Quicken Mac asset account if you wish. I'm not sure how much faith I place in trying to "accurately" track and update your home's value. Zillow doesn't know enough about the state of your home (was your kitchen or bathroom remodel basic or high-end?) to give a precise value, and a precise value is a bit of a misnomer anyway, since the value is what someone will agree to pay for your house, and not what a real estate agent guesstimates you can sell it for. I've been content to check a local real estate agent's listing of comparable home sales in my area periodically, or look on Zillow just to see what it shows, so I have a ballpark idea what we make get if we decided to sell our home, but I don't take the time to track these variations in estimated value in Quicken.

NotACPA

You can, indeed, in QWin, associate the mortgage liability with the home asset to view your Equity in the asset on the liability page.

bobcatorient

Thank you guys for the replies. So I assume there is no specific manual/guide for Quicken Mac, although there should be because it is not the same as the Windows version!!!! To be honest, i was and am very unhappy with Quicken. I had RPM 2017 and do not need that much from Quicken, but I though upgrading was going to give me much more room to examine my finances. I have to add that i am a federal employee and i read that the TSP account does not work with Quicken like other 401K plans. I think the money I spent for a subscription was wasted. or else i have to buy a PC and use the Windows version.

NotACPA

Your TSP account will download Quotes into Q.  BUT, because the Trustees/Administrators of TSP have refused to sign the contract with Q/Intuit, you're not able to download transactions.

BUG TSP.  They are the ones who are preventing you from downloading.

And, there's no "specific manual/guide" for QWin either, at least not one published by Quicken themselves.

Lastly, "RPM 2017" is a QWin version.  Did you not research the differences between the 2 before you bought QMac?

And, instead of buying a PC, you can look into running an emulator (Parallels, VMBox, etc) in your Mac to allow you to run QWin.

jacobs

@bobcatorient  There is no manual for either Quicken Windows or Quicken Mac. Quicken, like the vast majority of software developers, stopped producing comprehensive manuals quite awhile ago. Even the book which was published (by a third-party, not Quicken) about Quicken for Windows hasn't been updated in nearly three years.

There's a lot of information available for Quicken Mac, starting with the often-overlooked in-program Help; it's sparse, but covers many of the features of the program. The Quicken.com website is a mish-mash of useful and not-so-useful information, some correctly tagged whether it applies to Quicken Mac and some with no such indication. You can find information about various aspects of the program in videos created by Quicken and by users, in many posts on this forum, but there's no definitive, one-stop resource for everything you need to know. Again, this is not unique to Quicken.

I'm not familiar with the TSP plan. My understanding is that no Quicken product works with TSP, because the TSP administrators won't sign a contract to participate with Quicken. There's nothing Quicken can do on their own to address that. So I don't think this has anything to do with Quicken Mac, and more to do with the business model of Quicken -- and more accurately, former parent Intuit (who provides the connectivity services). I'm not sure I understand how using the Windows version addresses this issue.

You said you thought moving to Quicken Mac would give you more room to examine your finances. I'm (genuinely) curious what your expectations were which have fallen short. If you thought Quicken Mac 2020 was more advanced than Quicken RPM 2017, then that was probably a misperception on your part. Quicken Mac has been catching up to functionality in Quicken Windows for years, and although the feature gap narrows with each passing year, it will continue to be chasing Quicken Windows in some regards for the foreseeable future. In some areas, such as financial reporting, Quicken Mac is still awaiting a robust set of built-in reports, but most users find they can get all or most of the information they need. In other areas, such as retirement or savings planning, those features in Quicken Windows have yet to be written for Quicken Mac. Features like Zillow integration in Quicken Windows, as discussed above, are not mission-critical and easily accomplished manually under a minute in Quicken Mac for those who want it.

In the end, there's no one-size-fits-all solution for managing everyone's personal finances, so if you find there's another tool out there which better meshes with your specific needs, it may be best for you to make a switch. Best wishes moving forward.

NotACPA

@jacobs, my ex-wife was for many years a Federal employee.  TSP is the Fed's version of a 401k plan.

A Q user can download quotes, in CSV format, and then import them into QWin (and, I'd assume, QMac) but there's no downloading of transactions.

I never looked into this, but it's possible that transactions can also be downloaded in CSV format ... and there are third-party utilities that will convert that file into something that's Q usable.

I just took a look at an old Quicken file, from when the ex and I were married, and I have all of the transfers from her paycheck into TSP, and then the purchases of various securities within the TSP ... but I suspect that I those purchases were all manually input based upon a report downloaded from TSP.  Each purchase transaction is a week or more after her paydate.