How to use Quicken if you're an unmarried couple

November 18, 2006 8:07 PM

Quicken: If you're unmarried but living together, how should you answer the "are you married question" when setting up Quicken?

My fiance and I are setting up Quicken on my computer. We'd like to use it with both of our various accounts (right now everything's separate, though soon, I'll be added onto his checking account/joint). The wedding isn't until 2007 (and hence not in this tax year).

When you go to set up Quicken, it asks if you're married or not. If you answer yes, it lets you enter in information for your spouse. If you answer no, it only seems to be able to accept the one person.

Should we just go ahead and answer yes? Or is this going to cause undo confusion when it comes to (turbo)tax time?

posted by mollymolo to Work & Money (5 answers total)

Have you been living together long enough to be considered legally common-law?
posted by Kickstart70 at 8:11 PM on November 18, 2006

The point of the question is to establish whether you'll be filing joint tax returns (common-law) or not. That's all that is impacted.
posted by rokusan at 8:26 PM on November 18, 2006

Response by poster: That's what I thought (about the joint tax returns, which we're not filing this year, but will next year) so we answered no. But, now that we've done that, there doesn't seem to be any way to add in information re: the second person (i.e., me)
posted by mollymolo at 8:36 PM on November 18, 2006

Best answer: That's because you don't get to do your stuff together. You don't add in information about the second person; you start completely from scratch for the second person.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 9:16 PM on November 18, 2006

I don't know which state you live in, but according to Unmarried.org, only a few recognise it in any useful way (the page lists them). So, unless you live in one of those states, you should file seperately until you get married.
posted by Joh at 10:16 PM on November 18, 2006