"What If..." on my loan balance seems to off by multiple orders of magnitude

dhcernese

I have a new $80K/15Y loan entered. No payments have been made yet. I tried the "What If..." feature to see what would happen if I paid extra principal per month. At first, I tried $100, $200, then not seeing much result, $1000, and then even $10,000 per month! Finally if starts to show some gain.

Clearly something is broken. Even the $100 change should have cut years off the loan, quicken only showed 0 months shorter. $200 only cut off 1 month.

dhcernese

I'm not entirely sure, but if I input 10000 ($10,000.00) then quicken seems to calculate that as if it were $100?

Quicken Kristina

Hello @dhcernese,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and telling us about this issue.  I'm sorry to hear you're running into this problem. Is this happening only in that one account, or do you have other loans where the What If tool is also inaccurate? When did this issue first start? Was there anything that happened just before the issue started, such as a power surge, power outage, update, unexpected program or computer shutdown, etc?  Do you keep your Quicken file on your C drive or is it on a shared network drive?  Is your Quicken file synced with any cloud service, such as One Drive or Dropbox (if it is, you will usually see the service name listed in the file location)?  The simplest way to check your file location, if you have Quicken up and the file open, is to click on File, then look near the bottom of the list, just above where it says Exit.  It will list the file locations for the 4 Quicken files you have most recently accessed, with the one you are currently in at the #1 spot.

Thank you.

mshiggins

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20356693#Comment_20356693

Now that is an interesting observation. If you wanted to confirm it, you could use the Debt Reduction Planner and set it to pay $100 extra principal. Then if the payoff schedule in the Debt Reduction Planner matches the loan What If, it would confirm your suspicions.

dhcernese

> @Quicken Kristina said:
> Hello @dhcernese,
>
> Thank you for reaching out to the Community and telling us about this issue.  I'm sorry to hear you're running into this problem. Is this happening only in that one account, or do you have other loans where the What If tool is also inaccurate? When did this issue first start? Was there anything that happened just before the issue started, such as a power surge, power outage, update, unexpected program or computer shutdown, etc?  Do you keep your Quicken file on your C drive or is it on a shared network drive?  Is your Quicken file synced with any cloud service, such as One Drive or Dropbox (if it is, you will usually see the service name listed in the file location)?  The simplest way to check your file location, if you have Quicken up and the file open, is to click on File, then look near the bottom of the list, just above where it says Exit.  It will list the file locations for the 4 Quicken files you have most recently accessed, with the one you are currently in at the #1 spot.
>
> Thank you.

I have never tried the what-if tool before. This is my first time. It is a local file, no cloud, no network, no sync.
My other loans do not have this problem, the what-if appears to work as expected.

dhcernese

> @mshiggins said:
> Now that is an interesting observation. If you wanted to confirm it, you could use the Debt Reduction Planner and set it to pay $100 extra principal. Then if the payoff schedule in the Debt Reduction Planner matches the loan What If, it would confirm your suspicions.

The Debt Reduction Planner worked great. I think there's something else going on just with how what-if works.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

When I tried to replicate the issue in my Quicken, the What if tool worked normally. To check for file specific issues, I suggest that you please try validating and/or super validating your data file. However, I do recommend that you first save a backup file prior to performing these steps.

Validate: 

1. File
2. Validate and Repair File...
3. Validate File
4. Click OK
5. Close the Data Log
6. Close Quicken (leave it closed for at least 5 secs)
7. Reopen Quicken and see if the issue persists.

If the issue persists, proceed to Super Validate. If the issue is resolved after performing validation, then please disregard the instructions to Super Validate.

Super Validate:

1. File
2. Hold CTRL + Shift and click Validate and Repair File...
3. Super Validate File
4. Click OK
5. Close the Data Log
6. Close Quicken (leave it closed for at least 5 secs)
7. Reopen Quicken and see if the issue persists.

Thank you.