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Re: OT: Any Quicken users out there? Posted by Ari [Email]  (#2847) [Profile/Gallery]
(more from Ari) on Fri, 5 Nov 2004 10:27:14
In Reply to: OT: Any Quicken users out there?, Brian_in_MA, Fri, 5 Nov 2004 09:20:51 Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup |
The hardest part of Quicken, or any finance program, is getting your data into it. It's a daunting task, but well worth it.
My advice is to start small. Don't try and use all the features at once, like budgeting and the like. As a start, set up your expense accounts - that's the hardest part. Expenses are stuff like Household expenses, groceries, insurance, taxes, maintenance, etc. As a start, open your checkbook, and go through things you've written checks for in the past year. You'll want an expense category for utilities, and probably want to break that down to phone, electricity, gas/oil, etc. As you go through the checkbook, think about how you would enter that data into Quicken going forward - where do you want that expense recorded?
The tempation is to break it down to the smallest category - a different expense for each magazine subscription. Don't. For the time being, keep things at a high level, like Subscriptions, and under medical, Doctors and Prescriptions. You can ALWAYS go back and add granularity later. In the first year, it's not a big deal. As you gather more and more entries, it gets to be a bigger task to break a single category into multiples. But it is doable. You'll get the feel of it as you go along.
The real value of Quicken is after you've been entering data for a few years. It's great then for all sorts of stuff - "Gee, when did we buy that stereo?" or "When did we go on that vacation?" Even stuff like 'what was the last time I went to that doctor?"
Quicken can do a lot, but don't try and do it all at once. Just get your checkbook and credit card transactions into it. The Net Worth is nice, if you want to track all your investments. It just keeps getting more and more features, so you could spend all your time trying to exercise it. Don't - just because you've got a shiny new hammer, you don't need to build a house - just put up the picture you needed up.
posted by 192.249....
, Fri, 5 Nov 2004 11:05:24
, Sat, 6 Nov 2004 10:40:32, Mon, 8 Nov 2004 10:40:32, Fri, 5 Nov 2004 10:27:14 <-- Viewing This Message
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