What is the $1 fee? [Edited]

DJPJ said:

I do not like the increases in how much I am now having to pay Quicken for their premium end of their offerings...  I am quite perplexed by the apparent profit motive with an annual model, which is motivating me to move elsewhere!

@DJPJ  I'm not saying we need to be sorry for them, or even terribly sympathetic, but I'll just offer some perspective...

1) Quicken is a business, and the goal of every business is to make a profit.

2) When it was owned by Intuit, Quicken didn't produce big profits. It's one of the reasons Quicken languished without significant growth or innovation for a long time, and Quicken for Mac development nearly died.

3) Quicken was bought out -- some might say "rescued from" Intuit -- by a private equity company, H.I.G. Capital. The purchase price was never disclosed, but Quicken needs to generate profits to pay off the debt incurred in buying the company, plus a positive return (profit) on the investment.

My reading of the situation is that Quicken was probably under-priced for what it took to maintain and continue to develop. And its old pricing model -- release a new version every year, and have it expire after three years, such that the majority of user paid once every three years -- didn't generate the revenue needed to maintain, grow and innovate. This allowed other software players to come into the space and nibble away at Quicken's user base, further eroding revenue. They needed to charge more to invest in improving the products -- we see this with Quicken Mac, where an enlarged development team is slowly but surely building a much better program -- and innovating -- like creating the new online-only Simplify product to compete against Mint and other online-only personal finance products. 

That leaves users in a spot where one could say, "hey, I don't want to pay so much each year to fund development of new products I don't even use, and to pay off debts to a multi-billion dollar investment company, and to increase their bottom line." Or, one could take a different view: "While I don't like paying more than in the past, I value what I get from using Quicken, and if this is the price of keeping Quicken healthy and vibrant so they'll stick around for the future, I guess I'm willing to pay a little more for that."

That all said, if you use Quicken pretty lightly, you may find there are other tools available which do what you need and cost less. One thing to keep in mind is that every product out there which is free is looking to profit off you in other ways. Personal Capital is geared toward investors, and while their app is free, they use it as a lead generator to acquire paying clients for their financial services -- so expect to be solicited if they find your income and assets worth going after. (Yes, they are examining your data. There is no free lunch. ) Mint's app is also free, but their model is to use it as a platform for advertising. They also mine users' data, aggregate it, and sell it. (Again, the service is free, but there's no free lunch.)

If you find one of these or other products fits your needs for managing your personal finances, and you're okay with the way they're looking at and monetizing your data, then you've got your answer. On the other hand, if you find Quicken offers better features for your personal finance needs, that you don't want to deal with trying to migrate your data and learn a new systems, and/or that you want more privacy for your data, then you've got your answer. There is no universal right answer; the right answer for each of us is something we can only decide for ourselves.