Weekly Roundup – Missing Quicken Installer Edition

Another week, another weekly roundup… This is a bit late, but I’m still recovering from computer problems earlier in the week. My current headache is that I can’t find my Quicken for Mac 2006 installer, so I’m living in a Quicken-free world for the time being. I actually wouldn’t mind upgrading to Quicken for Mac 2007 so much, but I’m reticent to pay for an “upgrade” that doesn’t run natively on the current generation of processors (yep, they released an upgrade that isn’t Intel-compatible – maybe next year).

Still not sure what I’m going to do… I’ve thought about switching to Moneydance, but I’ve been using Quicken for 10 years now, and old habits die hard. Moreoever, it appears that I need to export my data from Quicken before I can import into Moneydance – no Quicken = no export = no import. Ugh.

Anyway, enough about that… Time for a rundown of some of the articles that caught my eye over the past week.

» First and foremost, Flexo broke through his first significant personal finance milestone! Be sure to stop by and congratulate him.

» Jim wrote up some identity theft tips from none other than Frank Abagnale. Coincidentally, I just bought myself a micro-cut shredder.

» JLP took a look at when early-retirees should tap into social security.

» FMF talked about retirement withdrawal strategies.

» MBH talked about taking it to the top when you run into customer service problems. As longtime readers know, I’m a big proponent of escalating customer service problems to the highest possible level (if necessary — I always work through the normal channels first). He was also being a bit of a smartass this week, so I’ve decided that I will tag someone for the “Eight Random Things” meme… MBH, it’s now officially your turn! Let’s see if he’s reading this.

» SVB talked about building and/or renovating a home.

» Jeremy talked about making some mid-year investment changes.

» My Retirement Blog wrote up some tips for saving on a small(ish) income.

» Lazy Man dedicated an entire week to alternative streams of income.

» 4M wants to know how much do you pay for health insurance?

» Ben talked about how to prepare for a layoff. Fortunately, I’ve never had to deal with this situation in my life.

» Sun talked makes the case for having alternative investments in your portfolio.

» David at My Two Dollars pointed out a site with a ton of free business forms.

» Speaking of free, Cap linked up a list of 30 free eBooks about money.

» Finally, Nick tackled what he termed the utter uselessness of self-checkout lanes. I don’t actually have a problem with self-checkouts, although I do have to wait for help from the attendant way too often.

And that’s it… Hope you had a great weekend!