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What does Quicken mean to you?

Sceptic

This post is about Quicken, but with a different angle, so I really am not sure what category it belongs. This forum mostly contains issues and complaints about Quicken. You hear about the problems and frustrations but very rarely about the positive effects that Quicken has had, or how people have benefited from Quicken. In my opinion, Quicken is the best financial app or program out there. Yes, it breaks and there are issues, but that's because it's a complicated program that has been built upon for decades.

I think Quicken Inc. is working hard to maintain and evolve the Quicken products into great financial tools. But it is difficult, if not impossible to please everyone, or give everyone what they want. That's where I think people loose sight of what Quicken is all about. It is a great tool to use to help get financially organized and secure, but it is only as good as how it's used, the commitment, and the level of understanding of the Quicken user.

That all being said, I have been using Quicken since 2009 and before that MS Money since 1994. My data file contains financial transactions from 1994 to current. It has been an invaluable and critical software program for me. I strongly believe that it is the reason why I was able to retire at age 55. I have been retired for 12 years now and just recently moved to Southern CA where I am living the best retirement I could have ever hoped for. Quicken played a big part in helping me acheive this.

It's hard to get people to see beyond the mundane "nuts and bolts" and frustations of a financial software program, and realize the end results and the benefits in the long run. It does take time and commitment. People easily frustrated with the issues and loose sight of the end goal.

I know that each person's expericence is different, but there has to be others that can say how much Quicken has helped them, and how much they really appreciate Quicken the program, and also Quicken the people.

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Comments

Jim_Harman

I agree that for the most part Quicken is a great tool to help you organize and manage your finances, but like any tool you must learn how to use it and understand its limitations.

Quicken has evolved over the years, and often there is more than one way to use it to accomplish a given task.

Sceptic

@Jim_Harman I agree and what I have noticed is that Quicken Inc. has made some great improvements with both functionality and stability. And I totally agree that Quicken is complicated and there are many ways to accomplish a task. Each user has their preferred method and that's what makes troubleshooting a challenge at times.

jacobs

@Sceptic said: "I am living the best retirement I could have ever hoped for. Quicken played a big part in helping me acheive this."

I feel pretty much the same as you. I've been using Quicken (Mac) since the early 1990s, and it has been the heart of our financial tracking and planning for more than three decades. Even since "graduating" to having the help of a financial planner, I find having being able to see anything and everything about our savings and expenses in one place, and having access to every transaction over such a long time, both satisfying and helpful.

Quicken is certainly not without flaws and missing features, but I've been very happy to see Quicken Mac rise from near-death almost 20 years ago to a robust (albeit still incomplete) product today. One of the reasons I'm a frequent contributor here as well as a beta tester is that I hope to see Quicken remain viable until I'm too old and feeble to manage our finances. 🤣

Sceptic

@jacobs that is great to hear. Thank you. I was beginning to wonder is my experience with Quicken was just a fluke that no one would be able to relate to. I also "graduated" to a financial advisor after using MS Money and Quicken, and appreciate being able to keep things consolidated and easy to access. My financial advisor is amazed at the detailed report I can provide for our planning meetings. After I retired, I joked and told him that Quicken was my new job. He just laughed.

Quicken has flaws but I have been impressed with the improvements they have made. And I too have a vested interest for Quicken to remain viable as long as possible. For me it is an invaluable financial tool.

Welcome to SoCal!

I pretty much agree with everything, partly because I don't experience any issues and the product works super fast for me. As commented earlier we "must learn how to use it and understand its limitations" - I am truly grateful to the SuperUsers and this community to teach me all of that.

One of the approaches that works for me is to do all my ideas and experiments using a copy of my file on an offline VM test environment so that it doesn't impact the cloud dataset hence my main file.

Palace

Yep, Quicken is a great program, for what it is 😉 I've used it about 30 years or so, on and off, mostly on. Even used MS Money awhile. Just guessing here, but over those years, I've probably 'completely obliterated' about 10 files and stated anew. Why, because I couldn't find a way to correct all the errors; mostly made by yours truly, I freely admit! I sometimes find what I term 'my secret work-around' to 'get the Quicken file' to work the way I want it too. Why, because I like it better that way, even though occasionally it causes a 'crash' 😏 With all that said, Quicken has definitely help me save a few bucks. Makes me think where my money is a'going, and 'Why in the world did you allow that salesman talk you into buying that lousy hiking stick, which broke in no time? A stick picked up in the woods is better. After all, if it was good enough for Moses, it's good enough for me! 😇

jacobs

This is one of the benefits to me of participating in the beta testing program. I always have one or more files I use for testing. I never mess with my real data file, but I can experiment in my beta test files, and I can have the beta application open at thew same time as the live version of Quicken. Periodically I replace my beta test file with a fresh copy of my live file.

Sceptic

@Palace you bring up a good point about restarting with a new data file. I remember when I first started using Quicken, it seemed like it was unstable and if you had issues, you had no choice but to restart with a new file because either the "learning curve" wasn't there, or the error wasn't recoverable. Sometimes it was a case of "trial by error". I think that has changed significantly, I think Quicken's support options have significantly improved and the Quicken Windows program and data file has become more stable. I must admit now that most errors I have are due to "user error" and my curiousity of "what happens if I do this". Backups and creating test files have saved me many times.

Chris_QPW

I have started a reply to this thread multiple times and then deleted it because even though I can think of lots of things to praise, it isn't in my nature to leave out the flip side of it, and then I would just have a post that sounds like all the other threads.

So, I will just leave it like this:

Has Quicken given me more visibility into my finances than I would have done otherwise? Yes (this is partly because tools at financial institutions used to be so lacking, and because my finances were more complicated in the middle of my life)

Did Quicken change the year that I retired? No.

NotACPA

Quicken, ultimately, is a tool to manage one's finances.

And for all the complaints that we see here, the phrase that comes to my mind it:

"IT'S THE POOR WORKMAN WHO BLAMES HIS TOOLS!"

jpclark.

Well, I must say that Quicken is part of my life bloodline I like, many use it daily, have some problems but I don't usually gripe about them because the challenge to me is to find a workaround. I know it takes much time and money to have the analyst's figure out a solution and then get the programmers to do the job. When I have problems, I don't want to wait a year for the solution, if it comes.

How long have I been with Quicken? Do you remember its forerunner "Managing Your Money", that's how long, in the '80's.

Quicken keep on pushing out those solutions, thanks.

Sceptic

It's great here in So Cal! I think it's the best kept secret in the US. My dentist overheard me saying this to the hygienist and told me not to say this to anyone. He thinks it's getting too crowded here. A traffic jam here is 10 cars on the road at the same time. It does get crowded when the snowbirds are here from Oct to June.

mshiggins

Thanks, @Sceptic, for starting this topic of discussion.

Agree that the typical posts here are mostly issues and complaints and a lot of those folks posting are pretty frustrated by the time they get here. I believe having Quicken users like you helping out by trying to answer questions and find solutions is one of the things that has kept Quicken afloat. I hope you stick around and keep providing the solid advice and solutions you have been posting.

On the topic of what Quicken means to me, I love having all my financial data in one place organized so it's easy to answer any financial question and be confident when making financial decisions. I started using Quicken back in 1999, having previously used spreadsheets to manage a few basic accounts. It was Quicken's ESPP tracking feature that sealed the deal and lured me away from those spreadsheets. My finances have definitely gotten more complicated in the years since then. Quicken's flexibility and comprehensive feature set lets me manage all that additional complexity.

It's not all rosy, though. There is a steep learning curve for new users. As others have noted, you have to put in some effort to make it work. You also have to know which features to avoid if you want to reduce your chances of data corruption.