Goodbye Quicken!

June 20, 2009 11:20 AM

Recently converted from Quicken to Mint.com and am finding it a bit disorienting...

1. How do I keep track of checks before they clear?

2. What do I do with my monthly statements now?

I've always used Quicken like an electronic checkbook register: enter my withdrawals and deposits as I made them and reconciled with my statement at the end of the month. Obviously, this is much more labor-intensive than it should be in the internet age and that's why I'm switching. That and the fact that Quicken on the Mac is *awful.* I think I just need to get used to account balances being a couple days behind what I've actually spent, and make sure I leave a comfortable financial cushion, but I am wondering how others have made this transition.

posted by Slarty Bartfast to work & money (10 answers total)

This might not answer your question, but I asked about Mac-based financial software here, which suggests alternatives to Mint.com.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:20 PM on June 20, 2009

1. You don't.

2. Throw them away.

Mint is nothing like Quicken, for the most part. Think of Mint as a dashboard to your financial information but not anything like accounting/bookkeeping software such as Quicken.
posted by sexymofo at 12:23 PM on June 20, 2009

Not to derail, maybe I should ask my own AskMe, but I checked out Mint because of this question. It looks amazingly great, especially as I have accounts at a number of different banks that I'd love to aggregate, but is there any reason to trust these people? Handing over bank account log-ins and passwords to be stored on their servers seems like financial suicide. Isn't that essentially thing one on the list of things you don't do: "Never give anyone your login and password!"?
posted by The Bellman at 1:10 PM on June 20, 2009

Rudder might suit your needs better, I think.
posted by emilyd22222 at 1:11 PM on June 20, 2009

Not to derail, maybe I should ask my own AskMe, but I checked out Mint because of this question. It looks amazingly great, especially as I have accounts at a number of different banks that I'd love to aggregate, but is there any reason to trust these people? Handing over bank account log-ins and passwords to be stored on their servers seems like financial suicide. Isn't that essentially thing one on the list of things you don't do: "Never give anyone your login and password!"?
posted by The Bellman

There's another AskMe on just this question (with input from the Mint folks).
posted by special-k at 1:33 PM on June 20, 2009

Thanks special-k!
posted by The Bellman at 1:40 PM on June 20, 2009

Obviously, this is much more labor-intensive than it should be in the internet age and that's why I'm switching.

Quicken shouldn't really be that labor-intensive. All the data just downloads, and you accept it, and then at the end-of-the-month, those transactions are pre-cleared.

That's hard to believe that mint has no way to track checks though. Or even just debit card transactions that haven't posted yet. That could cause serious overdraft problems on a checking account.
posted by smackfu at 2:56 PM on June 20, 2009

Rudder might suit your needs better, I think.

I'm not seeing where Rudder says you can manually enter transactions.


Mint is nothing like Quicken, for the most part. Think of Mint as a dashboard to your financial information but not anything like accounting/bookkeeping software such as Quicken.

I guess my question comes down to, does one really need bookkeeping software such as Quicken?
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 3:05 PM on June 20, 2009

Quicken shouldn't really be that labor-intensive. All the data just downloads, and you accept it, and then at the end-of-the-month, those transactions are pre-cleared.

No it shouldn't, but it has always been so buggy for me (I'm using the shitty Mac version) that I have to go through everything manually and it doesn't connect to several of my retirement accounts.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 3:08 PM on June 20, 2009

There's currently no way to track checks before they clear. I keep enough of a buffer that I don't worry about it, but I bet a lot of people would like this feature.

Since Mint pulls your info directly from the banks, there's no sense in checking Mint against your monthly statements. I keep my paper statements on file just in case (in case of what, I don't know), but I don't even bother reading them anymore.

Mint is a work in progress; there are a number of reporting and tracking features that I would like to see that simply aren't available (at least, not yet). The great thing about a free web service, though, is how easily they can be modified and enhanced over time. Since I started using mint, they added the ability to track personal assets like cars and homes, and the investing tab is a lot less buggy than it used to be. Will the mint guys code your favorite pony wish? Maybe; send them some feedback so they know what you want. I think it's a pretty solid service for what it does, and it can only get better.
posted by Chris4d at 1:17 PM on June 22, 2009