Hey Intuit / Quicken - Get the $#^% outta here

[pprior]

I've been using personal financial software for 20 years, quicken for most of that time. For almost that entire time I've entered every purchase I've made, obsessively. At first it was because my budget was so tight as a grad student, that it was necessary to keep from overdrawing my accounts, and more recently as a way to stay on top of my financial successes and failures in my investment portfolio and plan for retirement and my kids college funds.

I've been frustrated with Intuit for some time. Quicken has lagged in development with bugs going unfixed over multiple releases. Intuit's use of a boot sector modifying scheme several years ago stopped me from using turbotax but I continued to use Quicken because there was no easy and equal substitute.

I then bought my first Mac about 4 years ago and switched all my software except quicken to Mac native apps, and waited (im)patiently for the new Mac version. When it came, and I saw how bad it was, I was greatly disappointed. The last straw for me was being forced to upgrade to a new version of quicken (I was using QFW 2007) this year.

I spent hours looking at alternatives, but there was nothing that would offer me the range of features quicken had, with an easy and full import of my large quicken database with all my accounts and banking info. I didn't want to spend hours/days trying to get it to work (which is why I had kept using quicken for as long as I did).

So 4 weeks ago I quit doing quicken. I quit entering my transactions, I quit tracking my investments. I set up auto bill pay on my bank's website.

And the world has continued to spin on.

This posting has probably little meaning to most of you, so I apologize if I've wasted your time. But for me, after 20 years of spending a lot of my time with Intuit, I feel like I've walked away at the end of a bad divorce. I'm free.

I'm still investing, but don't pay as much attention. It's easy to pore too much over quicken graphs and reports. I still discipline my spending, but after 20 years of watching it, I know what I'm doing. I used to spend at least an hour or two every week sitting in front of Quicken and entering all my receipts, and now that time is mine to spend with my family.

Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out, Intuit.

 

[old-wiz]

I've used Quicken for windows then switched to Quicken for Mac when I bought my first Mac. I haven't had any issues with it, but I really only use it as a checkbook and keep track of my savings/IRAs.

However, I think Intuit has really not done much to upgrade Quicken for Mac; they focus on Windows programs. And now they seem to be promoting Mint instead of Quicken.

I also skipped TurboTax the year they installed the bootsector hack but went back the following year.

 

[leeltd]

I can't agree more

hey pprior, i just want to say thanks. i've been researching and evaluating what options i should try to track my finances. i've been a quicken user for almost 20 years and I have been progressively disappointed in their service for the past several years. when they tried to extort money from me this past year by making me upgrade to 2010 to get online downloads, i finally had enough. but i couldn't decide which option until i read your post. i've been fretting over what software to purchase when in reality, i don't need one at all.

I used quicken for the last time a week ago and i must say i feel liberated. no more tracking my spending down to the penny every day. one difference is that i did sign up with mint.com for free and i love it. i can still see all my financials in one place and check it every few days to make sure i'm not to much out of whack. i have a feeling that over the next several months, the every few days will be changing to once a month.

anyways, just wanted to say thanks for opening me up to a much better possibility.

and to quicken, so long and good riddance.

 

[pprior]

Sounds like we have a lot in common.

I've found my bank's online billpay very easy to use and I can schedule monthly payments there quite easily. I'm enjoying my extra time very much and when I got my "you must upgrade or we're cutting you off" letter from Intuit I got a great feeling by tossing it in the shredder.

Good luck and thanks for sharing.

 

[fhall1]

Count me in the group....I used MS Money on a PC from (I think) 1998 to 2007 and meticulously entered bank and investment transactions. In late 2007 I switched to a Mac, but still ran MS Money with VMware Fusion while trying out the various Mac financial programs including Quicken Mac 2007.

In late 2008 I still hadn't found a suitable Mac alternative that I wanted to learn from scratch and would import my MS Money file without me doing major data massaging, and soon after MS announced they were ending support of Money.

I finally said enough was enough and stopped tracking my stuff cold turkey. I now rely on online bill pay from my bank and view my account websites periodically, and as you said, the world keeps turning, and I spend a lot less time in front of the computer adding transactions....it's been quite liberating actually. Thanks Intuit!