Tag Archives: quicken

Financial

Quicken is back to their tricks, part 2

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Another update: I was forced to buy a updowngrade to Quicken 2016 to continue to use the transaction download feature.  That was bad enough.  But the incompetent software writers at Intuit somehow managed to make the product even worse.  The simplest things no longer work, such as Ctrl key shortcuts.  Example: Before you could hit Ctrl-B to backup, but now none of the shortcuts work.

And the default transaction categories no longer function.

And multiple credit cards no longer download, even though Quicken’s site insists that the problems are solved (e.g., Target Red Card).

I am embarrassed for these people and how badly they do their jobs.  If you are starting from scratch, try something besides Quicken.

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Update: Quicken did the same thing this year, only they made it worse by putting out a horrible upgrade in Quicken 2013.  Go to Amazon and check out some of the reviews.  So now you get to pay for a downgrade if you want to keep some of the features of the old product.  I’m amazed that they stay in business.  If you do have to upgrade, do it from Amazon and not the Quicken site.  You’ll save $$.

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The 2011 Netflix marketing plan will be referred to for a long time as a sure way to destroy shareholder value and irritate your customers.  Sticking it to your loyal customers is not a winning strategy.

Apparently Intuit, the maker of Quicken, hasn’t learned this lesson.  In order to “encourage” (read: “You can have your dog back once you send us some more money”) people to upgrade they are de-featuring their product.  Specifically, they will deliberately end the ability to download transactions from your credit card and banking institutions. But that isn’t a support feature, that is a core part of the product.

It is common for software companies to drop support for older versions.  I understand and accept that.  It is also common for software companies to significantly improve their products to entice you to upgrade.  Again, no problem there.

But this is a joke.  Once again Quicken throws in a few useless tools (A new cash flow graph is one of the four main reasons you should upgrade.  Woo-hoo!) and “only” requires you to pay the original purchase price again to get these great new features.  They aren’t even offering a discounted upgrade price.

Imagine if Microsoft said that if you don’t pay for an expensive Excel upgrade that you could still add, subtract and divide, but you couldn’t multiply.  Or if HP said you must pay for an upgrade or your sound system would stop working. That’s what Quicken is doing.

And it isn’t just the cost of the upgrade, it is the wasted hours installing and learning a new program to do the same things I was doing already.

I highly encourage people to use another software package.  Or if it is more cost-effective for you to give into the extortion then at least buy it on Amazon for less than Quicken charges you directly.

Please share this with others!

Side note to liberals: I think most will agree that this is a clear case of corporate greed leading to bad decisions and negative consequences for customers.  But do we need the government involved to solve our problems?  Not at all.  That would be an expensive disaster.  We just need competition and a free exchange of ideas.  Please keep that in mind.

Financial

The little things can cost you a lot

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Money won’t buy you happiness, but mismanaging it will buy you unhappiness.  Sometimes modifying some small habits can make a huge difference.  That $4 per day coffee may not seem like a lot as a percentage of your gross income, but it could be a big figure as a percentage of what is left over after all your other expenses.

For example, if you make $4,000 per month that coffee is 3% of your spending.  That is actually a fairly big number compared to the value you are getting for it.  But how much do you have left at the end of the month?  A few hundred dollars?  Zero?  Negative?  Now that $120 looks even bigger.  You can have some treats but be very careful with what you buy often.

Via How Much Are Your Habits Costing You? – The Simple Dollar.

Those Constant Money Drains

It is probably okay to splurge occasionally, but what we’re focusing on here are the constant money drains that you may not even notice. These daily or weekly habits could be costing you in a big way, while not really adding value to your life, which is why it is important to identify them and figure out a way to reduce their impact.

To see how much some of the most common habits cost, let’s look at a few different scenarios:

Example 1: John smokes a $5 pack of cigarettes every day. Over the course of one week, he will spend $35. In one year, he will fork over $1,820. And during his first decade as a smoker, John will spend $18,200!

Example 2: Mary refuses to brown-bag her lunch and instead spends an average of $10 to eat at a restaurant with her friends each workday. Over the course of one week, she will spend $50. After the first year, she will spend $2,600. And if she keeps it up for a decade, Mary will spend $26,000!

Example 3: Amy pays her credit card bill late every month, resulting in a $35 late fee. After the first year, she will have spent $420. If she continues this habit for a decade, she will have flushed $4,200 directly down the drain!

Read the entire article.  There is a lot of wisdom there.

Also read the Bible :-).

Hebrews 13:5–6 Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”

Christian worldview

Weekly roundup

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A good overview of Bill Maher’s “facts” from the Religulous movie.  A sample:

Within a few minutes Maher is denying not just the divinity of Jesus Christ but his actual historical existence, a question disputed by almost no credible scholar. You can argue that it is difficult to believe in Jesus’s existence considering that primary records for his existence are recorded by only a precious few devoted disciples who recorded his allegorical teachings in detail as well as the social unrest they inspired. Then again, if that’s the standard – you probably don’t believe Socrates [existed] either.

A very thorough debunking of the movie (just one error after another) plus some of the deception behind it here.

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A nice summary of the false beliefs of Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle.  Despite the claims, it is not a belief system compatible with Christianity.

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Obama is amazing.  His ACORN associates are getting nailed left and right for voter fraud, yet he has the nerve to twist it to say that his voters are getting suppressed!

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Snopes-certified email about Obama – Pianist Huntley Brown explains why he won’t vote for Obama.  Great stuff.

I could not see Jesus agreeing with many of Obama’s positions.

Black women comprise only 6% of the population, yet they comprise 36% of the abortion industry’s clientele.  Obama has done nothing to stop this.

He is dead on there.  Pro-life = pro-black.  Pro-choice = anti-black. 

He nails him on the Jeremiah Wright mentorship as well.

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If you have stock in Intuit, the maker of Quicken, you should sell it.  I have used Quicken for over 10 years and just upgraded when I bought a computer with Vista that would not run the old version.  Wow, are they a poorly run company.   I would have just returned it to the store except that the transition was slightly less difficult than starting over with a new company.

They de-featured the low end program so radically that it is way behind the version that was 10 years old.  Their support is inefficient, error filled and goes in circles.  There are many bugs in the software.  Upgrading to a more robust version was a challenge, as there were mistakes on their order pages (the prices changed from one page to another).  The Help menu kept referring to non-existent menu option.  And this is a software company!

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The Fairfax County Virginia school system won’t accept books about overcoming homosexuality because it will make gays and lesbians “feel inferior.”

Do you think those who hyperventilated over Sarah Palin asking about book restrictions will get equally upset with this decision?  Censorship! Censorship! 

Don’t hold your breath.

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Busting the myth about who believe the earth was flat