Downgrading, Re-upgrading, Renewing

Question

I've been a Quicken user for ~25 years now (holy cow), using what's now called "Classic Business & Personal".  I've usually been able to find renewal codes for around $70, and it's been worth it.

However, with the new higher prices, and renewal discounts hard to find, I've let my subscription lapse.  I'm considering downgrading to Premiere or Deluxe, possibly creating a new Quicken ID to get the new user discount that seems to be the only non-full-price offer right now.

My question:  if I do create a new ID and buy a year of (say) Deluxe, then discover that I really do need Business, is the only way of re-upgrading to Business without losing the Deluxe months I paid for to upgrade from within Quicken itself - paying what I assume will be full price?

The other options for re-upgrading seem untenable:  1) Creating yet another new ID presumably means losing the rest of my paid-for Deluxe subscription.  2) Buying a code for Business means waiting until the paid-for Deluxe subscription is down to six months to apply the code.

I've gotta say - it's a bummer that Quicken makes it so expensive for long-time users to renew, and so difficult to try different versions without getting gouged.

(Note:  I've already done the feature comparison.  Also, from what I understand, my 25 years of data will be safe across down/upgrades.  So )

Chris_QPW · Answer

The only way to upgrade from Deluxe to Business would be through Quicken Inc so yes, I think you would be subject to what they think the difference is between the current price of Deluxe and Business.

If that is a big concern, I would stop and ask a more basic question and that is do you think you will be managing a business in the timeframe in questions?  If not, then I see little risk in just going with Deluxe.  But maybe a follow-on question is if the difference between Deluxe and Premier matters to you.  Deluxe is certainly a viable option for most people but Premier does have some nice extra features.

And yes, if you go the create new Quicken Id route you would want to do it as close to when your current one expires so that you don't lose very much of that time.

And yes, your data file will be fine.  What you will have to do is setup all of your online services again when using a new Quicken Id.  Note that a new Quicken Id requires a new email address, but you can even get back to the original one with a bit of work and a third email address (these can be throw away email addresses once the original subscription expires).  You create the new Quicken Id with a new email address.  You change your existing Quicken Id/subscription to a new email address.  From there you can now assign your old email address to the new subscription.

And here is some information that might help a bit for getting a better price in the future.  You can buy a subscription up to a year in advance and you can extend an existing one 6 months in advance.  So, if you monitor retail prices you can find a good deal (usually around the holidays) and buy it at that time knowing that you can apply for your next subscription period which of course will be less than a year at that point.

This also means something about your situation on wondering if you might go back to the Business (or Premier) edition.  You would only need to get within 6 months of the expiring of that new subscription before it expires to use this method.

NotACPA · Answer

The part that I don't quite understand in your post is: WHY don't you already know if you need the features of B&P?

You can view and compare the features of the various Q products here:

https://www.quicken.com/products/pricing-comparison-classic/