• Kobac

    Kobac

    @slatus

    Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 58 total)
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    • in reply to: The Quickening #2651492

      I am not happy with the price increase $55 two years ago. $64 last year and $72 this year.

      In December, I paid $48.87 including sales tax for the downloadable version of TurboTax Deluxe from Amazon.

    • in reply to: The Quickening #2651404

      I’ve used Intuit Turbo Tax for over 15 years. After retiring and collecting Social Security, I was using the Online Free version of Turbo Tax. This year, they tried to make me pay $150.00 for the Online Deluxe Edition. It kept telling me I had a “Foreign” account and couldn’t use the free edition. There online chat is total garbage as they also said I had a “Foreign” account, but they couldn’t show me where.

      In December, I paid $48.87 including sales tax for the downloadable version of TurboTax Deluxe from Amazon.

      I don’t know why you had grief regarding a foreign account. Maybe you inadvertently answered that question, “Yes?”

    • in reply to: The Quickening #2651401

      To <span class=”bbp-author-name”>Mitchell Hymowitz</span>:

      That has not been my experience.

      1 user thanked author for this post.
    • in reply to: The Quickening #2651400

      To KingGeorgeN:

      Electronic connections:
      It sounds like you may not have set up credit card accounts within Quicken to record the individual charges and that you’re just recording your payments to the credit card companies and using a split transaction to record the details of what each payment covers (please correct me if I’m wrong). When I first started using Quicken back in 1989, that’s what *I* did. I quickly realized that was *not* the way to handle things. That method really mucks things up since (among other problems) the date that you pay the credit card bill is not the same date as the transaction dates for the various charges that the payment covers. That can be especially problematic when it comes to items that affect your income tax returns. For example, you may have charged a charitable contribution in 2022 but not have paid the credit card company until 2023. If you itemize, that is properly a 2022 deduction, not a 2023 deduction. You can see how that would play havoc with any Quicken tax reports.

      I, too, record all of our transactions manually, with memos, into the appropriate credit card accounts, pretty much as soon as they occur or shortly thereafter. I also download transactions from our credit card companies, usually once or twice a week. As a result, almost all the downloaded transactions are marked as “Matched.” Those matching transactions are already properly classified (because I manually entered them). All I have to do is check them off as “Accepted” for purposes of reconciling with the credit card online balance. Sometimes the downloaded transactions do include some that I have not manually entered, for example, Amazon purchases that get charged as the goods come in. No problem; I just verify them by going to my Amazon account and looking at my orders. Then I can accept the transaction and edit it to properly classify the items that I bought, usually with a split transaction with memos for the items bought. Then I reconcile my Quicken credit card balance to the online balance that the credit card company shows.

      Reporting:
      I do searches all the time, usually doing a “Find All” to search across all accounts for a particular transaction. I’m *guessing* that your poor search experience is related to the issue mentioned above.

      Constant updates:
      Quicken often fixes bugs or improves certain things in the program. Sometimes the updates may also have something to do with online access but usually not. I actually like that Quicken regularly rolls out updates to make things work better. I’m in Quicken almost every day so the frequency doesn’t strike me as happening too often. I just checked—there were two updates in January, none in February, and so far in March there have been three updates. If you go to “Help/Release Notes” in Quicken, you can see all the updates that Quicken has installed and what issues they addressed.

      You’d love our other PC that runs Linux; there are update notifications for the OS and programs pretty much every day.

      Other:
      I hardly use tags, either. About the only time I’ve used them is to group various charges together regarding various trips. You couldn’t get a meaningful report using categories or payees since they are all different. If you add a tag like “California 2024” to those transactions, then you can group them and get a report for all the expenses for that trip.

    • in reply to: The Quickening #2651357

      To WSila:

      Our Quicken data file is currently 102 MB and I’ve seen people report data files that were much larger.

      Whenever I finish a Quicken session, I instantly do an online backup. Every few days I do an image backup of the entire data drive to an external HD with Macrium Reflect (the OS and programs are on C: and all the data is on D:).

      1 user thanked author for this post.
    • in reply to: The Quickening #2650742

      It looks like I’ll be out of step with the rest of the commenters on this thread, but I think that Quicken is well worth the money. I do not use it for a business, only for personal finances.

      I’ve been using Quicken since 1989 and am currently using it (Quicken Classic Deluxe) under a subscription. Was I happy that it went to a subscription model? Not really, but I understand the rationale behind it. I used to update the program about every other year, back when Intuit owned it and used to offer annual updates. I do download transactions for my accounts and reconcile with the online balances (after having first entered my transactions manually), but I do not use Quicken Mobile or the web app; I keep all my data on my PC.

      I’ve always been a big fan of Quicken. It’s one of my favorite and most helpful programs. In this era of mostly online statements and bills, it enables me to keep track of everything and to plan properly. For example, what did I pay for those PUR water filters last year or when does that magazine subscription expire? Easy—look it up in Quicken. And I seriously don’t remember when I last kept a balance in a manual checkbook register. Why should I? It’s all in Quicken.

      Especially if you’re running a business with it and making a good buck, the expense of buying a subscription for Quicken seems to me to be a rather minor issue in the scheme of things.

      P.S. Will, as an aside, what does Quicken Business & Personal do that Quicken Classic Deluxe does not (aside from invoicing, I mean)? If you don’t do many invoices, it wouldn’t seem terrible to me to do them in Quicken just to keep track of them but to keep doing the actual send-to-client invoices in Word. Just a thought.

      1 user thanked author for this post.
    • in reply to: All the places a “missing” email can be hiding #2642524

      Of course, the very instant that I posted my last comment, my original comment showed up.

      Sheesh.

    • in reply to: All the places a “missing” email can be hiding #2642522

      My last comment seems to have gone into the bit bucket so I’ll try to reproduce:

      My ISP (Optimum) has a spam filter and I have exactly the problem mentioned in the newsletter, namely, that some messages get marked as spam by my ISP and get put into the online Junk folder. I never see those messages in my email client (Thunderbird) since they’re not in my online Inbox but instead are in my online Junk folder. It used to be possible to opt out of my ISP’s online spam filter (which I had done), but for the past few years that option has no longer been available. Though most of the emails put into the online Junk folder by my ISP are, in fact, spam, I do catch a few legit emails in there from time to time. So now, in order to make sure I’m getting every legit email, I also have to log in daily to my ISP’s webmail interface in order to review the messages in my online Junk folder. It’s annoying since I dislike working with webmail—the interface is slow and clunky and is more limited in what I can do (the same applies to the gmail interface).

      I don’t know why they changed things. The default was to enable spam filtering, which is fine, but at least make it an option to disable it.

    • in reply to: All the places a “missing” email can be hiding #2642349

      My ISP (Optimum) has put in place a spam filter and I have exactly the problem mentioned in the newsletter, namely, that some messages get marked as spam by my ISP and get put into the online Junk folder. Since I use the Thunderbird email client to access my email, I never see those messages in Thunderbird since they’re not in my online Inbox but are instead in the online Junk folder and therefore do not get downloaded. It used to be possible to opt out of my ISP’s online spam filter (which I had done), but starting a few years ago, that option is no longer available. Although most of the emails put into the online Junk folder by my ISP are, in fact, spam, I occasionally catch a few legit emails in there as well. So now if I want to make sure I’m getting every legit email, I have to log in to my ISP’s webmail interface in order to review what’s in the online Junk folder. This is quite annoying. I dislike the webmail interface—any webmail interface—and much prefer using an email client since you can do more with one, and it’s not clunky and slow like webmail. I would much rather handle the spam by myself on my end and not have to, in essence, log into my email twice.

    • in reply to: Can you use a free password manager, or must you pay? #2640448

      I use KeePass on our Windows 10 Pro PC and KeePassXC on our Linux Mint Cinnamon PC. One nice thing is that the format for each program’s database is compatible, so I can copy a password database from, say, our Windows PC to our Linux PC and it’ll work.

      1 user thanked author for this post.
    • in reply to: Can you use a free password manager, or must you pay? #2640434

      I use KeePass and chose Monaco as the default password font because it displays a zero with the slash through it.

      I also use Monaco for certain lists in MS Word that contain alphanumeric serial numbers.

    • in reply to: Uninstalr — “World’s best cup of coffee” #2592464

      I would think not, unless the file size shown in those posts was incorrect. The PowerPoint executable itself was actually deleted. I only noticed it when I glanced at my taskbar, saw that the pinned icon looked a bit odd, clicked on it and was informed that the target had moved or been deleted. I then went to the Start Menu and saw that the PowerPoint entry was no longer there. I also tried unsuccessfully to open a PowerPoint file from File Explorer.

      I was too trusting (often a dangerous thing). I should at least have taken a screenshot of the leftover entries before letting the program delete them. I’m usually pretty cautious, but in this instance, I can only plead temporary insanity.

      1 user thanked author for this post.
    • in reply to: Uninstalr — “World’s best cup of coffee” #2592397

      I, too, had problems with Uninstalr. I tried to be cautious and I deleted only the items marked as “Leftovers.”

      Well . . .

      After the program did its thing, the PowerPoint icon on my Win 10 taskbar became nonfunctional (I’m a Microsoft 365 subscriber). That’s because Uninstalr had deleted the PowerPoint executable. I have no idea why that file was considered to be a “leftover.”

      Fortunately, it was an easy fix. I just went online to Microsoft and reinstalled Microsoft 365. Again, fortunately, none of my Word or Excel preferences had been altered.

      I am left wondering what else it may have deleted that I haven’t noticed yet.

      I deleted Uninstalr.

    • in reply to: KB4023057 #2585925

      Done.

      1 user thanked author for this post.
    • in reply to: KB4023057 #2585843

      I decided to install it.

      I got out of all my running programs and proceeded with the update.

      It took just a few seconds to download and install, with no reboot required. I got the “all clear” from the update so I guess I’m OK on that front.

      Thanks for all the replies!

    Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 58 total)