Quicken For Mac

Here we are in 2012 and it's nice to know that some things never change: Quicken's support for Mac users SUCKS!!

I am still using Quicken for Mac 2006. I forget exactly why I didn't switch to Quicken for Mac 2007 when it came out, but who could have imagined that it would be the last real update of the software for 5 years! I also forget exactly when Quicken Essentials for Mac was introduced-- it made me so angry, I guess I was doing my best to block it out! Intuit actually sent me a free copy to review, which I never did because it would have been such a slam. They basically took a decent financial program with a full set of features and said "oh gee, you Mac users just like things that look pretty and you aren't really numbers people anyway, so here's a financial program that only shows you the big picture and doesn't actually let you DO anything!" If you have any interest in really analyzing and tracking your finances and investments, it's useless. Let me just say it again: it SUCKS!!

At this point, it's almost impossible to buy Quicken for Mac 2007-- you can find it for sale on a couple of websites, including Amazon, but it's $150!! And it doesn't work on the most recent Lion Mac OS. Intuit claims they will be releasing a Lion-compatible update, but I'm not holding my breath. They seem to be more focused on developing iPad and iPhone apps. And while I do use Mint a little bit on my phone just to check balances, I don't consider it a real solution. I need to be able to save all my cash and bank account and investment transactions, categorize them in detail, run reports, export data to Excel for further analysis, etc. My current set-up involves using Pocket Money on my iPhone to enter daily transactions, which I then export to Quicken via a QIF file. I download investment and credit card transactions and enter repeating bills in the Quicken program on my laptop and then export an updated file back to my phone so I can see the most up to date balances.

At some point in the next few years, I'd like to upgrade to a newer Mac-- my current one actually works just fine, so I suppose I should thank the people at Intuit for preventing me from incurring an unnecessary expense. But if they don't release a new version, my options will all involve switching to a new program and losing at least some data. I'm not sure which would be least painful-- switching to Quicken for Windows would probably be the least complicated on one level, but that would involve paying $70 for the Quicken software itself (I think I'd need the Premier version to do the investment tracking I want to do), plus $80 for Parallels software to run Windows on the Mac, plus a copy of Windows 7 for $120. A total of $270 to keep using Quicken on a new computer!?! That SUCKS!! SUCKS, SUCKS, SUCKS!!

Saying that makes me feel a little bit better! :)

What are your favorite financial tracking programs?

Researching Decisions

I have always been a pretty careful shopper for most kinds of purchases. I'm as guilty as the next person when it comes to the occasional impulse buy of clothing or a book or music, but when it comes to major purchases, I usually slow way down and do a lot of research before I commit myself to anything. I look at Consumer Reports, I check web forums, I ask friends, I delay gratification while deciding whether I really want what I think I want. At least I try to!

So when Sweetie's DVD player broke, I was the one who said "whoa, let's check things out here and not be hasty." First I went to Consumer Reports. I saw that Blu-Ray DVD players now seem to be pretty much the norm, and I was attracted by the fact that they all seem to allow streaming video from Netflix. I'm not a big movie or TV watcher, so I'd been on the 2-DVD-a-month plan from Netflix and was perfectly happy with that, but being able to stream an occasional movie or old TV show appealed to me. So I found a Blu-ray player that had the features I wanted and good ratings and found it at an online retailer for a good price.
A few days later, it arrived, we set it up, and everything was good. We had a little trouble getting the streaming to work at first, but it turned out that all I needed to do was switch my Netflix plan to one that allowed unlimited streaming (duh). We watched a few episodes of Downton Abbey and were happy as clams.

We were so happy, in fact, that we almost immediately decided to get another player for the bedroom when we came across almost the same model for a really good price at Costco. We didn't think too much about it-- after all, we'd already done all that research. But in retrospect, I wish I'd thought things through a bit more! After finishing season 1 of Downton Abbey, I wanted to start watching season 2, but it's not available on Netflix yet, or any of the other services we can access on the Blu-Ray player. But I could buy access to watch the whole season 2, both the episodes already available and the new ones as they come out, via iTunes for $19.99. If I had bought an Apple TV instead of a second Blu-Ray player, we could watch them on the TV. The other cheaper option would be to buy a composite AV or HDMI cable adapter so I could plug my phone or laptop into the TV. Of course, the show is still airing on PBS so we could just try to watch the new episodes the good old-fashioned way, but we've already missed a bunch, and we don't have any way to record future ones if we're not home.

In the scope of life's worries, having to wait a few months to watch more episodes of a guilty pleasure soap opera disguised as high-brow drama is really not a big deal. Speaking as someone who has lived without a TV for most of my life and would usually rather read a book, I can't believe I'm even posting about this issue! But it does go to show that you should explore all options before acting too fast on any purchase. And please let me know if there are any other options I should be exploring to watch this show!!

Net Worth December 2011

I ended last year with a net worth of about $565,459, up from $523,133 in December 2010. A gain of $42,326 or 8% is nothing to complain about, but it falls far short of my goal of $600,000.
Here's 2011 vs. the previous year on NetworthIQ:

Dec. 2011:


Dec. 2010:

The good news is that I saved money, and I put more of it into investments. But it wasn't a great year for the stock market. The net worth graph really shows it-- it's the least upward-sloping period since the big crash in 2008. Oh well-- not much I can do about that. I just have to keep controlling what I can control, and hoping for better luck with what I can't control!
More details soon on 2011 spending and savings...

The Employee/Employer Relationship

I've been thinking a lot about this issue lately, for a number of reasons.

I'll start off with a story about a friend of mine who I'll call Karen. She has someone who comes in and cleans her apartment every week. Let's call the cleaning lady Tracy. Karen first hired Tracy about 15 years ago. At the time, she only had Tracy come every other week. As is typical for this kind of situation in New York, Karen paid Tracy in cash. Over the years, Karen raised Tracy's pay a few times, and when Tracy lost some of her other clients, Karen started having her come in every week so she'd have more work. Tracy has rarely missed a week due to being sick, but when she has, Karen pays her anyway. Karen also gives her a Christmas bonus every year. Tracy takes a couple of weeks off every year, which Karen doesn't pay her for, but if Karen is going to be away and doesn't need Tracy to come, she still pays her for the weeks she's canceled.

So is this a mutually beneficial, fair relationship? Tracy offered to do the work on her own terms, and I don't think anyone would describe Karen's treatment of her as in any way exploitative or mean. Of course there's a tax evasion issue-- as you might be assuming, Tracy wanted to be paid cash because she wasn't a citizen-- at first. But now she is a US citizen and could presumably get another job where she and her employer would have to pay taxes. She's already past the age when most people want to retire, and Karen is wondering what to do about it if Tracy does want to stop working-- she's never paid any Social Security taxes for Tracy, so it's unclear what, if anything, Tracy would be able to collect. Tracy's children might or might not be able to help look after her. Karen is thinking about whether she should give Tracy some sort of pension, out of a sense of what's right and also just because she and Tracy have an affectionate relationship and she genuinely cares about what happens to her. That's more than can be said for a lot of people you read about who feel they have to economize by cutting the hours for the hired help just because their mutual funds are down.

Do you think most people feel this sense of responsibility towards those whom they employ? Is this kind of arrangement between two individuals a fair way to decide terms of employment, or should the government always be involved in setting the rules and collecting taxes and providing benefits? Should there always be an obligation to take care of an long-serving employee after the employment has ended?

The other thing that's had me pondering these issues is the TV series Downton Abbey, which everyone seems to be talking about lately. Thanks to streaming Season 1 from Netflix, I can count myself among the fans! It's set at a point when the sun is starting to set on the British empire and the old ways of life for the aristocracy are starting to change. But amongst the servants on this big estate, you have a variety of attitudes towards their situation and the people who employ them. There's a rigid class system, but there's also a sense that master and servant consider each other family, at least in some ways. Of course, sometimes this turns into the masters telling the servants what's best for them, which usually involves their continuing to be servants-- it's a paternalistic relationship where the servants have no real dignity or autonomy or choice.

And then there's what's going on in the US in current times. Some politicians are trying to make laws against collective bargaining, more and more people have to work as "independent contractors" rather than as actual employees of corporations, pensions are underfunded, and some benefit packages have been so aggressively negotiated as to be unsustainable. People are yelling "get a job!" at Occupy Wall Street protesters one minute, and saying Obama doesn't deserve re-election because of astronomical unemployment numbers the next.

If there's anything I take away from all this, it's that ideally, we'd all work for ourselves... but that just isn't possible. How can we best maintain our dignity as equals when some of us have to work for the rest of us? How can people without much power be protected from those who do have power? Would most employers actually treat people fairly if they weren't forced to? What are the best ways for government to be involved? We live in a complicated world, and wishful thinking won't make it any simpler.

And to come back to Karen and Tracy, what would you do? Would you refuse to pay someone cash under the table, employ only legal workers and pay all the taxes so they could collect Social Security? Or would you pay someone cash and just figure they knew benefits were never going to be part of the deal? Or would you feel obligated to help take care of someone who'd worked for you after they'd retired?

Happy Holidays!

My goodness, it's been a busy month. So much for my good intentions of posting at least once a week! I can't say I've had any exciting financial news to report. Here's some off-the-cuff items!

At Thanksgiving, I got one final check for a couple hundred dollars that was the final settlement of my great-aunt's estate.

I've been finding that my cash balance in Pocket Money /Quicken is often way off, by several dollars or more. I'm still pretty good about tracking every penny of my spending so this is starting to make me paranoid. Is there a bug in the program? Is someone stealing money out of my wallet? It's weird.

My year end net worth goal of $600k just isn't going to happen. I'm still saving a good portion of my earnings, but the stock market has been so up and down this year.

I've done all my holiday gift shopping and probably have spent a bit less than usual, though I haven't totaled everything up just yet. I gave small gifts to a few people in the office. I bought my niece and nephew each a sweater, two books, and some wacky wax stuff you can make little sculptures with. My sister and I will give our mom an iPhone for Xmas. I'm not giving my extended family any gifts as I won't see them this year. Sweetie and I are taking a little trip over the holidays that is basically our present to each other. Though of course there have also been veiled mentions of "a few other little things" that have my all anxious about how little those other things are compared to the other little things I bought! But I guess holiday gifts are no fun if you take ALL the surprise element out of it!

Best wishes to all of you and your families for a happy, healthy New Year!

Is There a Point to Being Frugal and Trying to Save?

A commenter left this question on my last post, and I thought it was worth answering separately:

Can I ask you a question, in regards to some long term investments?

I recently did some calculations and the results are very much frustrating, to be brutally honest.
Have a look yourself - they are all published.

If you invest $ 40, 000 a year over 35 years, at modest inflation rate of 2% and administration fee of 1-2% you need stock market to perform at 4% just to preserve value of your money and higher to gain anything.

This means that you are only preserving money you are investing at a very high risk. So it is just plain wisdom - is there a point to be frugal and try to save, if you ended up loosing money?

Feeding financial industry and no living your life in full?

I definitely understand the concern about feeding the financial industry, which seems more and more rigged in favor of the rich and well-connected. And yes, investing has risk. You could look at the scenario this person describes and say "well, historically, the stock market has performed better than 4% on average during many periods," and you could also observe that it has performed much worse during other periods.

But here's my analysis:
If you save and invest $40,000 a year over 35 years and the market totally tanks beyond all expectations and inflation skyrockets and you trust a Bernie Madoff, you could end up with ZERO.

But if you DON'T save and invest $40,000 a year over 35 years and instead spend all that money on "living your life in full," you will DEFINITELY end up with ZERO.

Of course, "ZERO" is your cash balance and doesn't factor in comfort and pleasure and memories. As always, I advocate a balanced approach between using some of your money to enhance your life now, and saving some to enhance it later. If your definition of living your life in full depends on spending every penny you earn, maybe you should stop and think about all the rewarding, memorable things in life that are free. Those are things you'll still cherish 35 years later, more than all the stuff you spent money on.

And I know keeping that balance is never as simple as it sounds-- I've spent money on traveling, and 35 years from now I think I'll be glad I have those memories and not be wishing I hadn't spent the money. I'd hate to be 80 years old and have regrets about not having spent a few thousand dollars to go somewhere I'd always wanted to go. But I'd have even more regrets if I was 80 years old and homeless because I'd blown all my money when I was young. None of us can avoid making choices that we might regret later, but when it comes to saving money, I think it's pretty clear which way you should hedge your bets.

Net Worth July-October 2011

Another belated net worth update. (I was trying to post updates on NetworthIQ but the site doesn't seem to be working and their security certificate is expired. What's up over there?)

Anyway, it's been an interesting few months-- some big ups and downs in my investment accounts. Mostly downs, unfortunately! After hitting a high of $591,390 back at the end of April, the stock market has been very cruel to me. I had a nice recovery in October, but I'm still down quite a bit from where I was.


Not much else of interest to report, other than moving a few thousand dollars from cash into mutual funds and some more I-Bonds at Treasury Direct. My credit card balance is in about the range it usually is, so no unusual levels of spending (and as always, I'm paying it in full every month). I've already maxed out my 401k deductions for the year, so any further changes in the retirement accounts will be due to investment gains and losses alone. At some point in the next few months I'll probably pay some extra principal on my mortgage and increase the home equity amount.

Stay tuned for a long overdue update on my spending and budget categories. Onward and upward!