The Community Meetup- February 2024 Edition
This month we are talking about a popular feature in Quicken Classic for Windows: The Lifetime Planner. The Lifetime Planner is great for giving an overall look into your financial future. Let us know if and how you use it. I am utilizing it for saving for a house and retirement planning.
Quicken Janean
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@Boatnmaniac got 2 mentions and some of us got none, @Quicken Janean ? 😥
Quicken user since version 2 for DOS, now using QWin Biz & Personal Subscription (US) on Win10 Pro.
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He was really on a roll the past month! 😂
(Also: second and third place are out of order, if the point values are correct.)
On a more serious note, I'm curious how Quicken Windows users feel about the article on Lifetime Planner which we Mac users don't have. On the forum, I feel like I've read a lot of comments about parts of Lifetime Planner being broken, or out of date with tax law changes in recent years. I guess it's a good sign if Janean is shining a spotlight on this feature, as it means it hasn't been left for dead. I'm just curious if Lifetime Planner is fundamentally fine with a few small problems, or if encouraging users to explore it will lead them down a pothole-filled path.
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19932 -
@jacobs how many potholes you find will depend on where you drive. There are plenty to find in the "lifetime planner".
BTW I always feel like I should quote "Lifetime Planner", because I personal think that changing its name from Retirement Planner to Lifetime Planner without a single other change, doesn't magically make really work for other purposes. I suppose it can be done, but it is a lot of shoehorning to do it.
And to me that really sums up the Lifetime Planner in general. If all you want it is wild guess (some might get closer to a ballpark figure) I guess it is fine. Of course, it all depends on your situation and the limitations you will hit. Will it matter to you if it will start taking out 70 1/2 when you it is really due to start at 73? Will it matter that it takes from the different account types (taxable, Roth, Traditional) differently than you will? Did you notice that if you predict that you will be buying something like a car in the future that Quicken didn't calculate in inflation for it? Will it matter to you that you have to use one rate of return for your tax-deferred account, one for your spouses and one for everything else?
Will it matter to you if you predict anything like inflation wrong, and there isn't any way to tell that you are way off track? (Like protected balances it only works from the current date, nothing tracks your performance against what actually happened.)
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@Rocket J Squirrel I am sorry about that (you were one position away from making the list)! I updated the list and made those corrections @jacobs.
Quicken Janean
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@jacobs I try to highlight features that are available in both Mac and Windows but that is not always easy. Additionally, with us reviewing idea requests more often with the product development teams, I think it is good to point out bigger features to find as many bugs as possible so we can get them fixed and make improvements; especially if it is something that users want implemented within Mac. I hope that makes sense. 😊
Quicken Janean
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@Quicken Janean Thanks! I hope it didn't come off that I was criticizing your choice of the topic for this month's feature; that wasn't my intent.
My post was more of a question to Quicken Windows users about whether this feature being promoted is broken or flawed in small ways and places, or more significantly flawed. I know many Windows-to-Mac switchers have lamented the absence of the Lifetime Planner feature, have voted for it to be added to Quicken Mac — and it is now "Planned" by the Quicken Mac developers. So I'm trying to gauge how useful a feature it is, whether there are fundamental flaws, or if it's just in need of some upkeep and care on the Windows side. I know there have been many posts about things which are broken or are out of date which haven't been addressed (particularly by @Scooterlam).
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
HEY, with the update, I made the list
Q user since February, 1990. DOS Version 4
Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Business & Personal
Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP0 -
@NotACPA said: HEY, with the update, I made the list
The funny thing is that the revised version is unbalanced with four names on the left and five on the right — so there was actually space for @Rocket J Squirrel, who was next, to make the list if it was balanced five and five. Some people just get no respect, RJS! 🤣
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19931 -
Hello @jacobs,
@Scooterlam created an Idea post that lists the Idea posts and bugs currently known for the Lifetime Planner. Here's the link, if you'd like to take a look:
Hopefully having the Lifetime Planner in the spotlight will drive more traffic and votes to these posts!
Quicken Kristina
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@Quicken Kristina Yes, that's the what I allused to in my post above, but thanks for posting the actual link. I agree, if it gets more people to vote for the Idea threads to get things fixed and improved, that's a good thing. (Although some of those seem to me like bugs which should be on the developers' to-do list rather than relying on users to vote for them to get consideration.) Out of curiosity, I see that thread now has over 50 votes; shouldn't it have been forwarded to the developers and be changed to "Under Consideration" when it reached 50 votes?
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19931 -
OR, if you count Chris at the very top, there's 10 on the list … 5 & 5.
Q user since February, 1990. DOS Version 4
Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Business & Personal
Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP0 -
Not at all! Thanks for posing the question. These are the types of questions and discussions that are really useful when it comes to further developing these features.
Quicken Janean
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Its great to see LTP promoted.
Its not great to see some 67% (29 of 43) of LTP Ideas in this curated list are now archived. Archiving posts means regular users, who might be interested in being heard by voting or commenting, cannot see many of the ideas and bug posts. Of which many have an educational component to them How does that encourage adoption and longer term engagement in a promoted feature?
@jacobs Would be interesting to see what form of planner pops out for Mac. I was surprised to hear about a Mac version frankly. Would have thought any new development would go towards a web based solution rather than maintain 2 LTP versions across 2 OS. Nonetheless, many of the ideas in the list above are agnostic of OS and are features of many modern consumer and professional planning tools.
I wouldn't say LTP is full of bugs as many ideas in the list are enhancements. For sure there are some bugs pertaining to contribution limits and RMD and a few other more minor ones. At the end of the day, the user who does DIY planning, should really get to know the tools they use. A fool with a tool is still a fool, as some might say.
I've used quite a few planners and LTP has been my first stop in doing scenario planning for bigger decisions such as a recent home sale/buy and a future home sell/buy vs. rent vs outright moving to our winter home. I feel pretty comfortable with LTP in these scenarios, especially now that I can dump the plan data to Excel in minutes and compare the relative changes in each scenario. Of course, these scenarios are always run past other planners, so LTP is not a one and done solution.
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