slowing through Quicken. And Excel.

I love Excel.  Really, I do.  Better than any budget software, it can easily validate thoughts and ideas, and give a long term road map to where you want to go.  Sitting down with that road map, you can plan for the future and dream like no tomorrow.

I use Quicken 2011 as well, but that doesn’t really give the frame work to plan or just throw stuff out.  Parts of Quicken are really good, and parts of it just suck.  But that’s okay.  I think the problem is there is an absolute depth to Quicken that is only discoverable through years and years of work, and there doesn’t seem to be any decent way to learn it all. 

I find it annoying when I run a program, and find a chart that is really, really good.  And I have no idea where I am or how to get back to that chart.  I don’t like the nags in the program, either.  I’ve never had any decent success with automatically syncing bank accounts.  The last time I tried, it randomly created a 2^nd bank account and ignored the one I had manually created.  So I quit trying to sync accounts.  But the program keeps harassing me and asking me to go back and “Why don’t you sync this account?” And I sometimes answer “Because that never works, you piece of junk.  Now quit asking me”.

I also dislike data entry on the thing.  I realize I spend a lot of time at convenience stores.  I work for one.  But Quicken should realize that a deposit from the company is NOT going to be an expense category.  But that happens every time.  The system constantly thinks net salary is groceries:snacks.  One is an expense, the other is income.  Come on, system.  Figure it out.  It’s not that hard. 

Also, on the planning section, only should the items that are due this month.  I may set something up to reoccur every month for the next six years, but that doesn’t need to show up in my monthly budget and cause me havoc.  The more I fight with the spending planner, the less I use it.  It’s much easier to use Excel because it is both more flexible and user friendly.