fivecentnickel.com &#187; Miscellany

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Cash Gifts vs. Gift Cards: Pros and Cons

Lisa White — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:34:52 +0000

Cold, hard cash… Or glittery gift cards? It’s an ongoing conundrum every holiday season. If you’re like me and you have a particularly challenging list of friends and relatives to buy for, this is the burning question.

For those looking to choose one or the other, consider the pros and cons of both.

Gift card pros

Today, it’s easy to buy gift cards. They’re in the checkout lane of almost every retailer, or in a stand nearby. And it’s no wonder; retailers love gift cards! Not only do they make a bigger profit than from shoppers using cash, but considering the many cards that are lost, forgotten, and/or have outstanding balances that are never used, stores can really come out ahead.

Gift cards also bring in new customers who would otherwise not have shopped the store. Best of all, those who are using gift cards often spend more than the card is worth, boosting the retailer’s revenue. It’s a win-win… For the gift card retailer!

A gift card feels more personal because you actually had to go to a store to purchase it. Also, you had to pick from a seemingly endless variety, which proves there was some thought put into the gift giving. So what if the card recipient is not a fan of the only store they can redeem the card at. It’s the thought that counts, right?

Did you know there are ways to pay less for gift cards? Yes, you can fool your gift recipient by spending less on them than they think you did! Auction sites like eBay sell these cards for less than face value, but you need to make sure you’re not getting ripped off or paying a shipping charge that would negate any savings. Also, verifying the card’s expiration date is important.

If you’re not comfortable with eBay, specialty sites such as giftcards.com and certificateswap.com offer gift card discounts of 10 to 20 percent — but there isn’t always a great selection. Warehouse clubs such as Costco and Sam’s Club also sell gift cards at a discount off face value.

Today, there are also more gift card options. A more versatile alternative to a specific store card is a prepaid Visa, Master card or American Express gift card. These are readily available both at many stores, including convenience stores, or online. The biggest benefit is that these cards can be used like cash anywhere for anything. You could be giving the gift of gas for the car or diapers for the baby, but money is money in this economy, even if it isn’t being used as a gift.

If you are really unmotivated to shop this year, there are e-gift cards you can purchase and send from the comfort of your home. Just be aware that spam blockers may interfere with the recipient actually receiving your gift, so you’ll have to give them a heads up. The element of surprise is overrated anyway, right?

Gift card cons

Many gift cards are limited to one retailer, so you need to find out where the recipient likes to shop. Otherwise, you risk giving a gift that will be re-gifted, something we all try to avoid.

Gift cards can be easily lost, misplaced or not fully utilized. That’s not an issue for the giver, unless you consider that your hard-earned money was wasted. In this case, consider your purchase as a gift to the retailer or business the card came from.

Some gift cards also have fees, expiration dates, and/or restrictions, so be aware of what your purchasing and make sure the recipient is in the know, as well.

Cash pros

The biggest benefit of cash is its convenience and flexibility. It can be used anywhere for anything. You may have grandma to thank for at least part of that new iPad this Christmas!

Cash does not have an expiration date, hidden fees, or any restrictions whatsoever. You can just spend it at will. Unlike a gift card, you can save or invest cash.

Also, if you don’t use the full amount of a cash gift, you get change back that you are more likely to spend at a later date because you know how much it is worth. You may not remember it was part of a gift or who gave it to you, but it’s there nonetheless.

Cash cons

It’s hard to find any negatives with cash gifts. Yes, it can be lost or stolen just like gift cards. Also, actual money can be considered less personal than a gift card. But it’s a sure bet that most recipients will appreciate cold, hard cash, even if they choose to spend it on someone else.

There is no better time than now to consider the pros and cons of cash and gift cards to help determine the best choice this holiday. After all, we only have a few shopping days left before Christmas!

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US Postal Service Cutbacks – What They Mean to You

Nickel — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 18:30:16 +0000

In case you haven’t heard, the US Postal Service has announced major cost-cutting measures that will negatively impact the quality (or at least speed) of their service. We’ve talked about this before, but USPS is hurting. Badly. In fact, they’re currently projected to lose over $14B next year, up from $8.5B in 2010. Yikes!

In response, they’ve talked about closing locations, and of course they’ve increased stamp prices. But those changes only get you so far, with the proposed 3600 Post Office closings only saving around $200M.

Well, now they’ve raised the stakes, and have decided to shutter over half of their mail 461 processing centers nationwide. These closures would eliminate 252 such centers and result in roughly 30k layoffs. The savings? Around $3B — which will still leave them with over $10B of red ink on an annual basis.

So what does this mean for you? For starters, you can say goodbye to next-day service on local, first class mailings. Instead, mail will have to travel further (on average) to processing centers that will be significantly busier. Thus, the typical 1-3 day service will become 2-3 days, and periodicals are expected to take 2-9 days.

In other words, your Netflix service will likely slowdown, and you won’t be able to cut things quite as close with respect to bill payments.

Of course, this degradation of service will likely cause a decrease in mail volume, with more people moving their transactions online, streaming movies instead of watching DVDs, etc. And this will do nothing other than further reduce USPS revenue, resulting in a vicious cycle of service cuts spawning more service cuts.

Technically, they have to await an advisory opinion from the Postal Regulatory Commission next March before they can act, but that opinion is non-binding so it seems pretty likely that this will happen.

What do you think? Is the USPS doomed? If so, what will take its place? And how much will it cost? If not, how can they save themselves?

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You Can Only Spend Each Dollar Once

Nickel — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:00:09 +0000

Over the weekend, I sat down to talk a bit about money with our oldest son. He receives a decent monthly allowance, he got some gift money for his birthday back in October, and he also makes money from random jobs like pet sitting, etc. And yet, he was broke, and he wasn’t sure how it happened.

Obviously, the root cause was that he had spent all of his money, but he couldn’t figure out how/why it was all gone. The culprit? Mental accounting.

All too often, people use mental accounting tricks to justify expenditures that they really shouldn’t be making. They receive a windfall of some sort and spend it on a night on the town. Then, a few days later, they spend it on a fancy new gadget. And a few days after that, they spend it yet again on another extravagance.

All the while, they’ve been using the same windfall to justify their spending. In essence, they’ve been spending those same dollars over and over. That’s exactly what happened to our son.

He got some cash for his birthday, got his allowance, and made a few bucks taking care of the neighbor’s dogs. Suddenly, he felt flush. So he downloaded a new video game. He downloaded a movie and a few songs from iTunes. He bought himself a new football jersey. He ordered an Airsoft gun. And suddenly he was broke.

In his mind, he had been justifying all those purchases with the same few dollars. And guess what? You can’t spend your dollars more than once. If you try, you’ll wind up broke — or worse.

Of course, if you’re dealing with cash, you literally can’t spend your dollars more than once. But if you’re using a cash equivalent — e.g., paying via PayPal, using a credit card, etc. — then it’s easy to lose touch with your spending.

In our son’s case, we were enablers. We covered some of his purchases when he had left his money at home on the promise that he’d pay us back. I paid for his video game download with my PayPal account on the same premise. And so on. He kept spending, secure in the knowledge that he had a ton of money.

But he didn’t have a ton of money. And by the time he paid us back, he was tapped out, having spent everything that he had taken in recently as well as all of the spending money that he had been saving up. Fortunately for him, we settled the bill before he went into debt.

The lesson here is that impulse purchases add up. Fast. And it’s incredibly easy to let your spending get the best of you if you’re not keeping close track of things.

As a general rule, we don’t lend our kids money to buy things they can’t afford, but we also leave it up to them to make their own spending decisions (within reason, of course). The idea here is to let them make mistakes while the stakes are low.

In our son’s case, hopefully he’ll learn from this experience, and avoid similar problems in the future. I think (or at least hope) that it worked this time around. He was pretty downtrodden when it came time to settle his bill. And when we talked about what had happened, he seemed genuinely chagrined.

Going forward, I’ll make a point of encouraging him to carry and spend his own cash so he’ll have a better feel for what he’s spending. And if you’ve fallen into similar traps in the past, I suggest that you try doing the same.

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Stamp Prices: The 2012 Increase

Nickel — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 10:00:26 +0000

In yet another attempt to stanch the flow of red ink, the US Postal Service plans to increase first class stamp prices from $0.44 to $0.45 on January 22nd, 2012. This is the first such increase in two years, and it’s expected to generate $888M in revenue.

Unfortunately, that’s just a drop in the bucket relative to the losses they’ve experienced — $8.5B in 2010, and $10B in fiscal year that ended last month — but it’s a start, I guess…

Sharp-eyed readers will note that they actually proposed an increase from $0.44 to $0.46 that would’ve gone into effect earlier this year, but that price hike was apparently never approved. The current $0.01 increase is the largest that they can enact, as such increases are pegged to the Consumer Price Index.

At the same time, the Postal Service is pushing Congress to enact reforms that would allow them to end Saturday deliveries, close locations, and raise postage prices at a rate higher than inflation. Until these things happen, I can’t see the USPS being able to balance their books. But even if these things happen, it will be an uphill battle as demand for mail service declines.

One bit of good news is that all stamps being printed are now “forever” stamps, so you won’t have to worry about those pesky little one or two cent stamps to round up your old stamps to the new rate.

Other changes include postcards going up from $0.29 to $0.32, letters to Canada and Mexico going up from $0.80 to $0.85, and letters to other international destinations increasing from $0.98 to to $1.05. Apparently these other rates aren’t pegged to inflation, as they all exceed the 2.1% CPI cap.

Source: Washington Post

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What Do You Do With Your Spare Change?

Nickel — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:14:28 +0000

Earlier this week I ran across a story about a guy named Danny who uses a coin jar to supercharge his savings. Whenever he spends cash, he makes a point of not using his change – and when he receives additional change, he collects it in a jar back at home before taking it to the bank.

I’m sure we’ve all done this to a certain extent, but Danny managed to save $723 over a seven month period by doing this. To be fair, Danny lives in Canada, where there are no one dollar bills. Thus, he gets a lot of “loonies” and “toonies” (one and two dollar coins) in change, which help to supercharge his change jar.

Given our general distaste for dollar coins here in the States, you’d have to spend an awful lot of money to pile up change at the same rate that Danny does. After all, given that their smallest bank note is currently the five dollar bill, he might get an average of $2.50 in change from a typical transaction. In contrast, an average American would receive something closer to $0.50/transaction.

Anyhoo… This got me thinking about how I (and all of you) handle my (your) change. The way I see it, there are a handful of options for dealing with coins, including:

Stick them in a jar (or equivalent) and (eventually) take them to the bank/Coinstar
Carry them around in your pocket/purse until you spend them
Toss them into a fountain and make a wish
Tell people to “keep the change”
Give them to panhandlers
Something else entirely

As for me, I used to save my coins in giant beer stein at home, and then periodically roll them up and deposit them in our savings account. I eventually got tired of dealing with all these coins, however, and have since started doing a combination of the first two things on the above list.

I hate carrying excess change in my pockets, so I typically dump my coins it into the cupholder in my car whenever I get them. I then make a point of grabbing out a handful and spending them when I need to hop out of the car and buy something – e.g., at a gas station, convenience store, or quick service restaurant.

In fact, I also keep a stash of dollar coins in the car so I can spend those, too. For those that are unaware, I bought a bunch of dollar coins from the US Mint to break through a reward tier on our Amex Delta card, and I’ve been gradually putting them into circulation.

Paradoxically, as much as I hate carrying around a big pocketful of change, I actually like the dollar coins. In fact, just last night I paid for takeout after my son’s soccer practice with a handful of dollar coins retrieved from my cupholder.

Admittedly, it takes me much longer to spend down my spare change now that I’ve quit drinking Diet Coke. In fact, I used to stop off for a fountain Diet Coke on the way to work on a daily basis, so I was spending my change pretty much as fast as it built up. But now that I’ve ditched soft drinks entirely, I feel much better – and my cupholder runneth over!

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USPS Plans to Close Over 3600 Post Office Locations

Nickel — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 17:00:57 +0000

In case you haven’t heard, the USPS is planning on closing over 3,600 locations. Believe it or not, of their roughly 32k locations, only about 6k (19%) cover their costs, so it’s time for a change. Is your favorite location in danger? Find out by clicking through and checking the official list.

Of the Post Offices being considered for closure:

3,061 generate less than $27,500 in annual revenue, or less than a two hour daily workload
385 generate less than $600k in annual revenue and are located within two miles of five or more other USPS locations (including kiosks)
188 generate less than $1M in annual revenue and are located within 0.5 miles of five or more USPS locations (including kiosks)
19 are currently suspended for one reason or another

I’d be curious to know how many of those locations that generate less than $27,500/year or have very light workloads are in small towns with just a single Post Office. This will be a huge bummer for them. The good news for those that are affected by such closings is that the Postal Service will seek partnerships with grocery stores and gas stations in those locales to ensure continued service.

As for those other, highly redundant locations, I’d say that it’s about time. I feel for those that are losing their jobs, but the USPS is hemorrhaging money, and something has to change. In fact, I’d bet they could find even more that could be closed without significantly impacting their service. After all, how many postal locations do we need in a half (or even two) mile radius?

Amazingly, all of these closing will barely make a dent in the $8.5B loss that the USPS suffered in 2010. In fact, the closings are expected to generate just $200M in savings. For the sake of comparison, dropping Saturday delivery would reportedly save over $3B per year, which would actually make a meaningful dent in their deficit. Obviously, with such staggering losses, they’ll have to make numerous changes, so I suspect the closings are just the tip of the iceberg.

Okay… Let’s hear it. Is your favorite Post Office on the list? I’m pleased (but not particularly surprised) that our location, where I have a P.O. Box, will remain open.

Source: CNN/Money

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Three Reasons to Build a Financial Database

Nickel — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 10:00:21 +0000

It’s no secret that I’m a big (huge!) fan of keeping close track of our finances. In fact, I’ve been tracking and balancing our accounts in Quicken (and now Moneydance) since January 1st, 1997. The end result of my efforts has been the production of a relatively massive database containing our detailed financial history.

Today I want to share with you three reasons why I’m thrilled to have this resource at my disposal…

Keeping yourself on track

I first started tracking our finances so I could chart our progress. I’ve never been a big fan of budgeting – hence our decision to follow a “reverse budget” – but the data that I’ve collected has been invaluable when it comes to showing us exactly where we stand, whether or not we’re headed in the right direction, etc.

Finding info in a snap

A less obvious benefit of having a financial database such as this is that I can now look up a wide variety of information in a snap. It’s really amazing what you can deduce from your checking account register, especially if it’s digitized and searchable.

Some examples:

Earlier this year, my wife needed to know how much we paid for Taekwando lessons last summer. I happened to be sitting at my computer as was able to provide her an answer in less than ten seconds.

I couldn’t remember when we had our water heater installed – and hence when it was due to be drained. I know we have the paperwork somewhere around here, but I’m not sure where. Fortunately, the answer was just a quick search away – I was able to dig up the payment info in a matter of seconds.

When we moved here back in 2006, we hired a guy to re-assemble our backyard playset. Recently, a friend was looking for someone to do that same. I fired up Quicken and had the guy’s name in no time flat.

Nostalgia

And finally… I discovered earlier this week while migrating our data to Moneydance that having this sort of financial history is great for nostalgia’s sake. As I paged through our account history, I was reminded of all kinds of fascinating and wonderful things…

How little I earned (and how cheaply we lived) when we were first starting out, the shockingly high CD rates that we used to get, the wonderful trips that we’ve been on, when and where our kids went to preschool, and so on.

It really was fascinating – and fun – to sift through the data. Having a detailed financial history such as this is a bit like having a detailed (albeit passive) journal of our life.

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Moneydance as a Quicken Replacement?

Nickel — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 10:00:34 +0000

On Monday I talked about my experiences moving from Quicken to iBank. In short, iBank is a solid option, but it’s not right for me. I’m a bit of a power user when it comes to tracking investments, and the reporting features (and lack of a true portfolio view) were deal killers for me.

So… I next turned my attention to Moneydance from The Infinite Kind and crossed my fingers that I wouldn’t need to go further down my list of Quicken alternatives. Unlike iBank, which has a 30 day free trial, Moneydance has a free trial that is limited to 100 manually-entered transactions.

Given that Moneydance costs $50 (though you can easily get a $10 discount; more below) I wasn’t too crazy about this highly restrictive trial. A limit of 100 transactions really isn’t enough to thoroughly test out the software, and I thought twice about even giving it a shot. However, I had read enough reviews that I was convinced that Moneydance was the next best option on my list. Thus, I took the plunge…

Getting your data out of Quicken

The process here is identical to what I went through for iBank. In fact, I used the exact same QIF export file for Moneydance that I used for iBank. If you need details on exporting to QIF, check out my previous post.

Getting your data into Moneydance

The next step is to install and launch Moneydance. When it comes up, choose “Import File.” Next, be sure that the “From Another Program” button is selected – if you don’t, your categories will get screwed up.

From there, the official guidance from the Moneydance creators is to check the “Import Account Info Only” box and run the import to create the account so you can verify that they’re right. Once you’ve verified the accounts, uncheck that box and repeat the process to import your data.

The trouble with this approach is that it didn’t work very well for me. The accounts got set up properly, but when I imported my transaction data, it was a mess. I ended up with bizarre (and hugely negative) balance in our bank accounts, etc.

I thus decided to start from scratch, but skip the “Import Account Info Only” step. Ahhhh… Much better. Some of the balances were off by a bit, but it was close enough that I figured I could sort it out.

Double-checking the import

The most obvious problem was that certain types of split deposits got screwed up. I’m talking here mainly of payroll deposits that included numerous deductions as well as a transfer out to a retirement account. This latter bit – the transfer out – got included in the split deposit, but then got duplicated on its own.

Once I figured this out, however, it was an easy thing to cruise through out accounts and delete the duplicates. This not only fixed underages in our bank accounts, it also fixed the overages in our investment accounts. All in all, it was pretty straightforward. Yes, it took a couple of hours before I was completely up and running, but I was dealing with 14+ years of data.

The only other glitches were that I wound up with an extra bank account called “Unknown: PAYEE” (I ended up deleting this with no problems) and one of our investment accounts, somehow got split into two identically named accounts. Fortunately, it was easy to re-assign the errant transactions from one account to the other such that I could ultimately delete the duplicate.

Strengths and weaknesses

Right off the bat, I noticed that Moneydance isn’t nearly as pretty as iBank. The interface is rather utilitarian, and the graphs are line and pie graphs similar to what you might cook up in Excel if you didn’t have a lot of time to pretty things up. But aside from this minor (very minor) complaint, Moneydance is a very impressive piece of software.

In short, it shares none of the operational weaknesses that I identified in iBank:

It allows you to customize your investment types (beyond a default list of options) for tracking purposes
It has an excellent portfolio view
It allows you to enter exact transaction amounts to avoid rounding errors (and the need to compensate with $0.01 commissions) in investment accounts
It supports specific ID of shares for tracking tax lots
Investment returns are rounded to the nearest hundredth of a percent (as opposed to whole percents)
It also supports online billpay, though I haven’t messed with this as I use our bank’s billpay interface

In terms of user support, there aren’t any built-in help files, but there is a very detailed pdf manual. Like iBank, Moneydance also has online support forums where you can mingle with other users as well as support staff – or just search for people who have asked similar questions in the past.

Another very nice aspect of Moneydance is that it has a public API, which means that users can right custom extensions to add desired features and customizations. I’m not a programmer, so I won’t be doing any of this myself, but it’s nice to know that it’s a possibility, and that some other users have already written some handy extensions.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention… Moneydance is available for Mac, Windows, or Linux so you won’t be tied down to a single platform if you decide to use it for the long term.

Getting a 20% discount

If you’re interested in buying Moneydance, be sure to swing by their Facebook page first. In the left sidebar, you’ll see a link for a “Discount Code.” Go ahead and click it – no code… But if you “Like” their page, a 20% discount code will appear, bringing the total price down to $40. And yes, you can “unlike” the page later if you don’t want it cluttering up your account.

The final analysis

In the final analysis, Moneydance looks like a winner. No, it’s not as pretty or polished as iBank, but the interface is definitely serviceable and it has a very robust feature set. If you have a lot of data, the post-import cleanup might be a bit tedious, but it shouldn’t take too long to straighten things out.

So far, after a couple of days of use, I haven’t run into any show stoppers. I’m sure a few annoyances will crop up here or there, but I’m confident that I’ll be able to adjust and work around them – just like I did when I was first getting used to Quicken.

Just be aware that the trial is (as I noted above) somewhat crippled, in that it can only handle 100 manually-entered transactions. You can, however, import an unlimited number of transactions, so you should be able to at least test out the import and mess around a little before making a final decision.

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iBank as a Quicken Replacement?

Nickel — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 10:00:15 +0000

Over the weekend I spent some time migrating my 14+ years of Quicken data from Quicken 2007 to iBank, which was at the top of my list of Quicken alternatives. I’ll be providing lots of details below, but the executive summary is that iBank (currently version 4.2.4) is a great piece of software, though I’m not convinced that it’s right for me.

While the good folks at IGG Software were kind enough to provide me with a review copy, iBank comes with a 30 day free trial that can upgraded to the paid version at any time. That should give you more than enough time to decide whether or not you like it – and if you do, simply register your copy and keep on using it.

Okay, back to the topic at hand…

Getting your data out of Quicken

For starters, I had to export my data from Quicken into a QIF (Quicken Interchange Format) file. This is one of several data formats that Intuit has developed and then abandoned over the years, and it’s the preferred format for importing into iBank.

In Quicken 2007, you can export to a QIF file by going to File > Export > To QIF. In my case, this took a few minutes as I have a ton of data – when all was said and done, I wound up with a 1.8 Mb text file.

Also note that Quicken is unable to export the price history for securities without a ticker symbol. This isn’t a huge deal, as most of our investments either have ticker symbols or are tracked as dollar-denominated investment – click through for more details on how I track CDs and Lending Club investments.

Getting your data into iBank

The next step is to install and launch iBank. When it comes up, tell it that you want to import from Quicken for Mac and then simply drag-and-drop your QIF into the window. Once again, you may need to wait patiently at this step – it really depends on how much data you’re dealing with.

NOTE: If you’ve been using Quicken Essentials for Mac, you’re out of luck, as it doesn’t support QIF export.

Once the import is done, you’ll get a window that asks you to verify the account types. Be careful with this step, as there’s no way to change account types after you create your file. For me, the only glitch at this point was that all bank accounts defaulted to checking accounts, and I had to change a few to savings accounts – though this is mostly a matter of aesthetics.

Double-checking the import

Okay, now that my data was in iBank, I needed to double-check the import and make sure there weren’t errors. The easiest way to do this is to open Quicken alongside iBank and cross-reference the balances for each account to make sure that they agree.

Given the huge number of accounts and transactions that I was dealing with, I expected to find a number of errors, but there were surprisingly few. Moreover, as far as I could tell, most of these errors appeared to be Quicken artifacts as opposed to iBank import errors. Regardless, this cleanup step was very fast and easy.

Strengths and weaknesses

My first impression of iBank once I got everything imported and started poking around was that it’s a very nicely polished piece of software. It’s much prettier than my old version of Quicken, and it’s fairly easy to navigate. The built-in help files are extremely helpful, and IGG also hosts some very nice support forums where you can mingle with other users as well as support staff.

One particularly awesome feature was the ability to cut/paste transactions from one account to another. This comes in especially handy if you make a mistake when setting your account type. You can’t change the account type after it’s created, but you can create a new account of the right type and then select all and cut/paste (be sure to cut and not copy!) the transactions into the new account. From there you can simply delete the old account. Slick! (And useful in other scenarios, as well.)

As I dug deeper, however, I ran into some unexpected limitations and annoyances. For example, when looking at how securities are set up, you can’t customize the the investment “Type” or “Risk.” Rather, you have to choose from a pre-set list of plain vanilla options.

Once again, this lack of customization isn’t a huge deal, but it could be an issue if you like to visualize your asset allocation with more granularity than Stock vs. Mutual Fund vs. ETF, etc. and Growth vs. Income vs. Speculation vs. Hedge. It would be nice to be able to specify things like domestic vs. international, large vs. small cap, etc.

Another annoyance is that iBank lacks a default portfolio view where you can see share numbers by account, returns, etc. While you can access this info through a custom report, the report has to be generated on the fly each time you view it, so there’s a bit of a delay when clicking over to review your portfolio. One tip here is to open your report in a separate window so you don’t have to wait for it to regenerate if you click in and out of it for any reason, but still… I miss the Quicken portfolio view.

I was also disappointed that you can’t enter total transaction amounts when recording an investment transaction. Rather, you have to rely on share price and number of shares and hope there isn’t a minor rounding issue. I often have things like a $1000 transaction that totals up to $999.99 or $1000.01 due to rounding errors from multiplying the share price by share number.

In Quicken, you can set the transaction amount and that spare penny will automatically get added or subtracted in the “commission” field to make the numbers work out right. In iBank, you have to do this manually. Yes, I’m anal – why track your finances with a computer if you’re not? And yes, I do a lot of manual updating, so that might be part of my problem.

If you’re a hard core investment tracker, then you might also be disappointed that that all investment basis tracking is done on a first-in-first-out (FIFO) basis, which might be a major sticking point if you’re into tax loss harvesting and prefer to specify tax lots. I do this, but I’ve always kept a separate spreadsheet for tracking this, so iBank’s use of FIFO tracking isn’t a show stopper for me.

The reporting is a bit cludgy, in that it tries too hard to make you use specified intervals, such as the past week, month, quarter, year, etc. While you can set custom date ranges, but there’s no easy way to generate reports for all of your data. Rather, you have to specify the relevant date range to get a look at all of your data at once – and then you’ll have to update the date ranges as time goes by.

Oh, and for some odd reason, it rounds of all you investment returns off to the nearest whole percentage in the investment reports. Why? Seriously… Why?

Finally, it’s worth noting that iBank doesn’t support billpay. This is a complete non-issue for me, as I use our bank’s billpay interface, but it might be an issue for you if you’ve grown accustomed to paying your bills from inside of Quicken.

The final analysis

In the final analysis, I was reasonably impressed with iBank, but I’m not convinced that it’s the right solution for me. I had extremely high hopes going in, the data migration was a snap, and I think it will be a great solution for many. That being said, I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to things like investment reporting, and I suspect other “power users” might be likewise disappointed with some of the limitations that I ran into.

Given the above, I’m going to keep poking around. My next (and hopefully final) stop will be Moneydance. Stay tuned for more updates…

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Quicken Mac (or PC) Alternatives

Nickel — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 10:00:47 +0000

So you’re a Quicken addict (like me), you use a Mac, and now you’re worried about how to keep that addiction rolling when Mac OS X Lion kills Quicken 2007. What to do? We’ve already talked at length about running the windows version in a virtual machine, waiting for Intuit to (hopefully) update or even running 10.6 in a virtual machine (if it ends up being allowed).

But what if you want to just make a clean break? What are your options? Below, I’ve rounded up ten desktop alternatives as well as five online alternatives. Note that a number of these are also Windows-friendly, so if you’re a PC user and are looking to ditch Quicken, you might want to check out this list.

Not surprisingly, the various options have different feature sets and capabilities, and I haven’t had an opportunity to test them out myself. My current plan is to start with iBank to see if it’s a suitable Quicken replacement and, if necessary, move on from there. I will, of course, report back on my experiences in a future post.

Desktop software

First up… Desktop solutions. This is a mix of commercial, shareware, and open source options. I’ve listed them alphabetically to avoid any favoritism.

AceMoney (link) – Lite version for free, or $30.00 with 30 day trial
Buddi (link) – Free!
GnuCash (link) – Free!
iBank (link) – 30 day free trial, $59.99 to buy
MoneyDance (link) – Free trial (limited to 100 transactions), $49.99 to buy
Jumsoft Money (link) – 15 day free trial, $18.99 to buy
KMyMoney (link) – Free! (but complex to install)
Quicken Essentials for Mac (link) – No trial, $49.99 to buy ($39.99 on Amazon)
SEE Finance (link) – Free trial, $29.99 to buy
You Need a Budget (link) – Free seven day trial, $59.95 to buy

Wow. Ten options. I’m sure you could find even more with a bit of looking. As noted above, I’ll start my search for a replacement by testing out iBank. Hopefully that’s as far as I’ll have to go. The one thing I know for certain is that I won’t be using the overly-simplistic Quicken Essentials…

Update – Reader Suggestions:

Moneywell (link) – Free trial (limited to 200 transactions), $49.99 to buy
Checkbook (link) – Free trial, $14.95 to buy (or $19.95 for Pro version)

Online options

Next up… A handful of online options, most of which are free:

Buxfer (link) – Free!
Mint.com (link) – Free!
MoneyTrackin’ (link) – Free!
Mvelopes (link) – Free 14 day trial, starts at $39.60/quarter
Yodlee Money Center (link) – Free!

The primary downside with most of the online options is that you’ll lose your historical data. Mvelopes actually allows you to import your old Quicken data for archival purposes, and you can run reports and search it, but you can’t otherwise interact with the data.

Roll your own solution

And, of course, you could always roll your own solution using an Excel, OpenOffice, or Google spreadsheet. This isn’t particularly easy to do if you want any sort of complexity, but it offers maximal flexibility.

If you’ve tried any of these options, please share your thoughts in the comments. Likewise, if you have any other suggestions, please share them in the comments.

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How to Run Quicken 2007 After Upgrading to Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)

Nickel — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:23:51 +0000

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I have a bit more info on the Quicken/Mac OS X Lion debacle… According to MacRumors, OS X Lion will allow you to run multiple copies of OS X in virtual machines on a single computer. This means that you should be able to update to Lion (10.7) but continue running Snow Leopard (10.6) or earlier using VMware Fusion or Parallels.

Translation: If you have (or are willing to buy/install) Fusion or Parallels, you can update to the newest version of OS X while still running an older version that supports Rosetta, and thus Quicken 2007.

This is a somewhat clunky workaround, but if you’re willing to run Windows in a virtual machine in order to keep using Quicken, then you’re probably willing to run a second version of Mac OS X in the same fashion.

In other news, I received an e-mail from Intuit last night finally acknowledging the lack of compatibility. Their recommended solutions were to “upgrade” (i.e., downgrade) to Quicken Essentials for Mac, switch to Mint.com, or switch to Quicken for Windows.

Of course, there are other (non-Quicken) options out there. I will try to put together a list of these options sometime in the near future. If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments.

Source: MacRumors via OS X Daily via George from Tulsa

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PSA: Export Your Quicken 2007 Data Before Upgrading to Mac OS X Lion

Nickel — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:57:37 +0000

I’ve talked in the past about the fact that the release of Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) will mark the end of Quicken compatibility on the Mac platform. In the absence of a workable solution from Intuit, your options will be to stick with OS X 10.6, switch to Quicken Essentials for Mac (no thanks!), run Windows on your Mac, or switch to another software package entirely.

Whatever you decide, please be aware that your Quicken 2007 data will become inaccessible the moment you upgrade to Lion. Thus, you need to export your data into an accessible format before making the jump. I’m bringing this up now because Apple has said that Lion will be available sometime in July, and it’s now July…

With that, have a great weekend, and a Happy 4th of July!

Hat tip to Scott Marc Becker of IGG Software for the tip.

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Intuit to Update Quicken 2007 to Run on Mac OS X Lion?

Nickel — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 19:58:45 +0000

Here’s an interesting little nugget of information related to the Quicken 2007/Mac OS X Lion debacle. In case you missed it, Apple has decided to drop Rosetta from their next major update of OS X (10.7; dubbed “Lion”). This means that software that hasn’t been updated to run on the Intel chip architecture won’t run on Lion.

To me, this is an understandable move by Apple. They’ve accommodated developers for years by including the Rosetta environment in their OS, and the vast majority of software has since been updated. It’s not Apple’s fault that Quicken hasn’t been updated in years, and they can’t be expected to be held back by Intuit’s inattention.

Anyway, back to that interesting little nugget…

A commenter named George pointed out a recent MacObserver article in which an Intuit exec named Aaron Patzer revealed that they’re negotiating with Apple for permission to embed critical bits of Rosetta into an updated version of Quicken 2007, thereby enabling it to run on Lion.

It’s still not clear if Apple will allow this, or if Intuit will be able to make it work, but there’s a chance that Quicken 2007 will be capable of running on Lion by the end of the summer. In the meantime, Intuit is hopefully working to make Quicken Essentials for Mac suck less – but that’s a pretty tall order.

In related (and very welcome) news…

Patzer also stated that the ability to import your data into Mint.com is “likely coming in the next six-to-nine months.” Given that Patzer founded Mint, which was later acquired by Intuit, so he hopefully knows what he’s talking about.

What do you think? Would you switch to Mint if you could keep your Quicken data? To me, it would largely depend on whether or not it has the ability to track investments down to individual trades, keep track of tax lots, etc.

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Six Ways to Teach Your Kids To Be Money Savvy

Guest Contributor — Thu, 05 May 2011 10:00:20 +0000

This is a guest post from Ed Avis.

You’ll teach your kids thousands of lessons as they’re growing up, but make sure you don’t overlook one key area: how they can be money savvy. Kids who learn the value of money when they’re little are far more likely to make smart financial decisions as adults. They’ll thank you for those lessons one day!

Here are six simple ways to teach your kids about money.

1. Let them shop

When your kids are under age 4, they have no concept of money. When they need something, it magically appears out of your hands, as far as they can tell. Around age 5, they should start becoming aware of the wider world – especially as they enter school – and it’s time to demonstrate that mommy and daddy don’t pull toys out of their hats.

Explain commerce in the most elementary way. Mom and Dad get money because they go to work. People at stores want money, too, so we go to the store and trade some of our money for things we need, like food, clothes, and toys.

Then let your kids do it. Give them some of the money they got from Grandma and Grandpa, take them to the store, and show them what they can get for the money. Let them complete the transaction at the counter, so the exchange of money for things is explicit. The slight pang they feel when they give up their money for a toy is a good thing – hopefully they’ll feel that pang the rest of their lives!

2. Pay them interest

Delayed gratification is vital for kids to learn. One example is the concept of saving up money for something you want. But anyone with kids will tell you that talking about saving money bores kids.

Instead, give them a piggy bank and tell them that when they put money in there and leave it, it will grow. Then make it grow yourself by adding a few coins every couple of days. Don’t do this in secret – show them that you’re rewarding them for saving their money, just like banks reward people for saving money. They’ll get the idea, and, hopefully, become life-long savers.

3. Say no sometimes

Perhaps the most poignant way to teach kids about the value of money is to deny them sometimes. It’s likely that you have more disposable income than your parents had, and chances are you can afford to buy your kids pretty much whatever they want (at least until they start asking for computers and such).

But people of all ages generally don’t value things that come easily, so if you buy your kids whatever they want, the connection between earning money and getting things becomes blurred. So, the next time your kid asks for some unnecessary item, tell her that you just can’t afford it at the moment.

This will reinforce the connection between those green pieces of paper in your wallet and the things she wants.

4. Make them pay for certain things

Establish a category of items that your kids will always pay for, such as candy, video games, or a hobby (Pokemon cards, Barbie accessories, etc.). If your kids know that those items only come from their own money, they will have a stronger incentive to save for them, and they will value them more than if you purchased them. And they won’t nag you for them at the store!

5. Help them buy something for the family

The next time you’re on vacation, tell your kids that each of them will be responsible for one family meal during the trip. Help them budget this expense, choose the restaurant, and complete the transaction at the restaurant.

This idea teaches your kids several lessons. First, it will reinforce the idea of having to save money for a future expense. Second, it shows them that not all expenses are necessarily “fun.” And finally, it will show them that paying for things that other people benefit from can be as satisfying as buying something for themselves. That last lesson will serve them in many situations!

6. Set a good example

This is perhaps the most important tip. Your kids learn from you whether or not you mean for them to. So the next time you’re tempted to make some boneheaded financial move – like using your credit card to pay for something you can’t really afford – imagine explaining it to your kids. If you can’t stomach the idea, don’t make that move. By showing financial restraint, you will not only be setting a good example, but possibly saving yourself some money as well!

These six tips are just a beginning of a lifelong education in money. Your kids may not explicitly remember these lessons, but if they grow up to be money savvy, you will have the satisfaction of knowing they learned from them.

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When Do You Stop Being a Beginner?

Neal Frankle — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:00:20 +0000

When do you give yourself credit for knowing what you’re doing? This is not a rhetorical question in the least. Knowing the answer to this question will have a huge impact on both your personal life and you career, as we’ll discuss shortly.

This question occurred to me today as I was doing some blog-related work. I’ve been in the blogging business for more than two years. Compared to my 26 years as a financial planner, that’s nothing. But in the world of bloggers, it’s an eternity. Most bloggers are out of business within six months. So by that standard, I’m a pioneer.

Unfortunately, my technical knowledge is still limited and since I’ve only been at it for a short time, I tend to think of myself as very new. As a result, I’ve wasted a lot of time doing things I really don’t need to do anymore. I’ve missed opportunities to outsource and I ended up taking too long to leverage my blog. This misguided thinking has cost me a great deal.

Why do I bring this up to you?

Because it occurred to me that you might also struggle with this issue from time to time. Let’s say you’re trying to get out of debt. Assume that over the years, you’ve paid off most of your debt, but you still owe some money. Because you are still in debt, you might tell yourself that you are a debtor, and that you don’t know what you’re doing when it comes to spending. You might completely shut down and become a financial bulimic. This actually happened to a client of mine.

When I first met her, she was $75,000 in debt. She overspent on her business and was badly in the red. She was struggling with a combination of expensive small business loans and low self-esteem. Slowly, she whittled it down. But even after she was debt free, she refused to spend any money on herself. She thought it wasn’t okay to spend money. Even though she was on her financial plan, she kept telling herself that she couldn’t trust herself with money, so she locked herself away in her home and refused to enjoy her life.

Don’t get me wrong. If you still have a spending problem, such an admission is really important. But once you get yourself on track, it’s important to celebrate your success and go on to the next challenge. A healthy dose of modesty is important but, at some point, you have to tell yourself that you know what you’re doing – right?

The same thing can happen in your career. When I first started in the financial services industry, I was trained by a man who became a good friend. As the years went by, he went in a different direction in the industry and tried to convince me to follow in his footsteps. I thought it was a mistake – and it was. But because he was my mentor it took me years to feel comfortable with the fact that I didn’t take his advice.

Your situation might be different. You might work for a boss who trained you from the ground up. Maybe they taught you everything you know. But at some point, you integrate that education, synthesize it and come to your own conclusions. When do you go with your gut feeling and break the old model?

Of course there is no hard and fast rule to answer this question but here are a few rules of thumb I’ve come up with.

1. Longevity

Think about how long the “experts” were in the field before they were awarded “expert” status. In my career as a financial planner, anyone in the field for 15 or more years is considered a veteran. In the blogging world, anyone who survives for a year or more is also considered rather stable.

2. Income

If you’re self employed and your earnings are average or above average, that might tell you that you know what you are doing. Of course, you’ll could always do better, but income is a good gauge of competency at times – assuming you run your business ethically, of course.

3. Authority

Do people come to you with questions? Does your boss lean on your input? Do customers compliment you to your superiors? Do people tell you they trust you? These are all signs that you really do know what you’re doing – just in case you doubt it.

Putting it all together

Deciding that you aren’t a newbie anymore – and that you know what you are doing – is powerful. If you’ve overcome obstacles, celebrate that success. Don’t dwell on past mistakes. This confidence might be just what you need to tackle other issues in your life – to start investing for retirement, or maybe to start looking into being self-employed. Or it might be the push you need to ask for raise. Or it might be the confidence builder you’ve need to go back to school to advance your training.

Have you taken too long to recognize your own value? How did you discover that were no longer a beginner? What changed in your life as a result of your realization?

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Thoughts on Tipping – Pardon the Rant

Nickel — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 13:41:19 +0000

It’s been awhile since I’ve had a good rant, so here goes… We’re currently on vacation and we went out for lunch yesterday. When the bill came, they had a handy little tipping guide at the bottom of the receipt. They listed suggested tip amounts for “good,” “excellent,” and “outstanding” service.

So far, so good, but… When I converted the dollar amounts into percentages, I discovered that their base recommendation for “good” service was 18% of the full bill, and it went up from there. Call me old fashioned, but if a server provides nothing more than “good” service, they’re getting nothing more than a standard 15% tip – calculated on the pre-tax total.

Restaurant tipping standards

Before you call me cheap, consider that none other than etiquette guru Emily Post recommends tipping your waiter or waitress in the range of 15-20% of the pre-tax total, depending on the level/quality of service. I have no problem tipping generously for excellent service, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to goad people into tipping more for standard service.

And yes, I’ve heard the argument (mostly from current and former waitstaff) that the base tip should now be 18% due to inflation, but I’m not buying it. After all, inflation produces higher prices across the board – including on the menu. This means that the actual dollar amounts being tipped increase in lockstep with menu prices.

Auto-gratuities for groups

Oh, and don’t get me started on auto-tipping for groups…

There are a few restaurants in our area that automatically apply an 18% gratuity to groups of six or more. On the surface, this is understandable. After all, groups often require more in the way of service (split bills, and so forth) and many people use being part of a group as cover for their under-tipping ways.

That’s all well and good, but my family isn’t a “group.” We’re a family. Yes we have four kids, but we ask for nothing over and above the standard level of service. There are no requests for split-checks, and you don’t even have to deal with all six of us – my wife and I go ahead and order on behalf of our younger kids.

If you insist on treating us as a “group,” then the least that you can do is to let us know that you’re doing so. But in most cases, you don’t. Rather, you slip that 18% on the bill without so much as a word. Sure, it says (in fine print on the back of the menu) that groups are subject to an auto-tip, but most people don’t consider their wife and kids to be a group.

As such, I’d be willing to bet that most families don’t check for the auto-gratuity, and many end up double tipping. This has (almost) happened to us on more than one occasion, so I now check the bill carefully before deciding whether or not to leave an additional tip.

The funny thing is that, in many cases, I would have left a larger tip than what was automatically added to the bill. And if the waiter does me the courtesy of telling me that they’ve added an auto-gratuity, I sometimes still will – if it’s deserved. But if they don’t bother telling me, then they’re not getting another penny. And if the service was abysmal, I’m not above adjusting the tip down.

Why I’m still in favor of tipping

Despite the above, I don’t actually have a problem with our tip-based restaurant economy. People often argue that they’d rather pay a higher menu price in return for having the restaurant pay the waitstaff a reasonable wage. The problem with this approach is that, in the absence of a tip, your waiter’s interests are no longer aligned with your own.

If you’ve ever visited a country in which tipping isn’t expected, you may have noticed that the service isn’t as good – or at least that’s been my experience. By tying a portion of the waitstaff’s compensation to the quality of their service, you’re helping to ensure that they do a good job.

Of course, this won’t work if everyone just tips blindly, without regard to the quality of service. And guess what? It’s been argued that tips often don’t correlate well with the actual quality of service provided. Rather, many of us tip in response to custom, flirtation, etc. So do us all a favor and think before tipping.

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How to Win the Lottery: Grab a Snickers!

Nickel — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 10:00:21 +0000

Have you ever dreamt of winning the lottery? Well, the dream recently came true for a group of seven New York state IT workers who chipped in to buy what turned out to be the winning Mega Millions ticket. Apparently, this was the fifth largest Mega Millions jackpot on record, worth an estimated $319M!!!

In case you haven’t heard, the story of how it happened is pretty cool:

A guy named Michael took up a collection and headed to a nearby convenience store to play the lottery. As he approached the counter, however, he hesitated and picked up a Snickers bar. Meanwhile, someone reached past him to buy a Mega Millions ticket. That ticket – the one that was nearly Michael’s – turned out to be a loser. But the next one – the one that Michael actually bought – was a winner.

Another interesting twist of fate was that one of Michael’s coworkers wasn’t feeling very lucky last Friday, so he decided not to chip in for this particular lottery run. If he had, the so-called “Albany Seven” would’ve been the “Albany Eight,” and he would’ve been on East Street.

But honestly, I can’t really blame the guy for not playing. After all, the lottery is a sucker’s game. Don’t believe me? Then click through to check out a cool lottery simulator over at GetRichSlowly:

Note: I tried to embed the simulator here, but it’s too wide to fit in the center column. Oh well, I guess you’ll have to hop on over to GRS to check it out. Just don’t forget to come back!

After playing around with the lottery simulator, I found that I was consistently losing around 90% of my money. JD went a step further and tracked his results over 100 different 10 year periods in which he simulated buying two tickets per week. Overall, he “invested” $104k in the lottery simulator and wound up with a grand total of $11,554 for his efforts. That works out to an overall return of -89%.

As they say, the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math. While it can be fun to play every once in awhile, you certainly shouldn’t get in the habit of playing on a regular basis.

Oh, and please be sure to let us know how your lottery simulations turned out. Did you strike it rich? Or did you lose the bulk of your money like JD and I did? Please leave a comment and share your results.

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Putting Your Spare Change to Good Use

Laura Martinez — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 11:00:28 +0000

My husband and I each have our own jars that we deposit our loose change into. I keep my loose change in my car until the little coin compartment can’t fit anymore and then dump most of it into my jar at home. My husband is more systematic, and empties his pockets each day to feed his jar. He’ll sometimes take out a few coins in the morning for the vending machine, but most of it stays in his little coin collection.

Growing the coin jar

Over the weekend, I noticed that his jar was full. Thus, I decided it would be a good time to see how much he had collected. I have to admit, I was impressed. His little container weighed in at 11.4 lbs, and was mostly filled with dimes and quarters. He clearly had enough to warrant a trip to the bank.

After sorting and counting everything, we found that he had saved a total of $112 – much more than the $50 in my coin jar. Looking at the nice chunk of change that he had set aside, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to come up with a list of options for putting his spare change to use.

Deposit it in your savings account

Since he only touches the very top portion of the jar to grab some loose change for the day, one option that would be to deposit the excess into a high yield savings account. The primary advantage in this case would be that he’d earn a bit of interest on what he’s already saved.

Right now, we bank with ING Direct. While it’s not offering the highest rate, it’s certainly better than what we’re getting at our brick and mortar bank. For our joint savings account we have several options for parking his money:

General savings: Besides bulking up our emergency fund, we’re also including some savings in anticipation of a decrease of work-related income when the baby comes. I’m self-employed, and I’ll be taking it easy for a bit as I make the transition. I don’t know how long it will take, but thinking about the worst case, I’m looking at 3 months of decreased income.
Baby expenses: Doctor visits and delivering at a hospital can get pretty expensive, so we’re setting aside some money to cover the expected expenses.
Car replacement fund: Our cars are both 10+ years old. While they’re still going strong, we’re planning ahead and saving for the next car.
Vacation fund: We enjoy traveling together and plan on visiting family towards the end of the year. If we save now, we’ll be able to take advantage of travel deals as they come available.

My husband also has a “splurge fund” that he can put the money into for future gadget purchases. If he continues to deposit his coin jar money, he’ll have a healthy splurge fund in no time.

Use Coinstar to get bonus deals

If you have a ton of coins piling up in your house, Coinstar can be a useful option. If you have a specific savings goal in mind, like a purchase at Best Buy, Coinstar will count all your coins and give you a gift card with no service fee. With some retailers, you can even get an additional bonus added to your gift card purchase. Check online to see what the current deals are.

If you just want to turn the coins into cash, there’s a fee, with Coinstar taking 9.8 cents per dollar for the service. So if you’re looking at cashing in your coins, you’ll probably want to skip the direct cash conversion.

Donate it to charity

Last but certainly not least, I wanted to mention an option that gives a great return: donating to a charity that matters to you. I just want to highlight one that we care about – the education focused DonorsChoose. As the name implies, you can specifically choose which classroom you want to support.

Donating to this cause is something that we enjoy doing because we know where the money is going and how it’s being used to help the students. In fact, we occasionally receive cards from the students. While $100 might not be a huge amount for other charities, it can go quite far at DonorsChoose.

Even though it’s probably not your main reason for doing it, if you decide to make a contribution to charity, there are also tax benefits. Just be sure to keep receipts from all of your donations throughout the year.

What do you do with your spare change?

Since I know a lot people like to collect their spare change, I’d love to get some more ideas on how best to use it. How many of you collect your loose change? How do you use it? Have any of you tried Coinstar as an option?

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Will Mac OS X Lion Kill Quicken 2007?

Nickel — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 22:47:59 +0000

It’s no secret that I love Quicken. While it’s not perfect, it’s what I’ve come to depend on since I first started tracking our finances in January 1997. As such, I’ve accumulated a treasure trove of personal financial data, and I can’t stand the thought of losing it.

It’s also no secret that I’m a diehard Mac user, which means that I’ve been stuck with Quicken 2007 for quite some time. While the Windows side has seen upgrade after upgrade, Intuit has essentially abandoned development of its Mac counterpart. This hasn’t really bothered me, though, as Quicken 2007 already does everything that I need it to do.

Unfortunately, it appears that the next major Mac OS X system update (10.7; dubbed “Lion”) will relegate Quicken 2007 to the junk heap. The reason for this is that Apple is reportedly scrapping the Rosetta environment, which is necessary to run software that hasn’t been updated to support the Intel chip architecture.

I really can’t say that I blame Apple for making this move. After all, they began transitioning over to Intel chips way back at the beginning of 2006, which means that software developers have had five years to update their software to run on the new hardware. Unfortunately, Intuit hasn’t bothered to do this.

And yes, I realize that Intuit released Quicken Essentials for Mac about a year ago, but that is an entirely different program that is just a shadow of the full-blown Quicken. Gone are many many of the “advanced” features that I depend on, like any sort of detailed investment tracking. It’s now little more than a check register and budget tracker – and pretty much everyone hates it.

Don’t believe me? Check out the reviews at Amazon, where it’s averaging somewhere around 1.5 stars. Perhaps Intuit plans to restore feature parity between “Quicken Essentials” and real Quicken at some point in the future, but it’s looking more and more like Mac Quicken users will have to choose between upgrading their system software and continuing to use Quicken.

And before you suggest it… Yes, I also realize that I could buy the Windows version and run it on my Mac via Parallels, VMware Fusion, or the like. That being said, I’m not interested in continuing working around Intuit’s lack of Mac support. Instead, I’ll hunt down a suitable replacement and migrate my data elsewhere.

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Intuit to Update Quicken 2007 to Run on Mac OS X Lion?

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