How can I use a brokerage account like a bank account?

Posted by Eric J. Holtman on January 4, 2007, 7:31 pm

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I'm running Quicken 2006.

I used to pay all my bills online through my bank.

Now, I keep all my money at Fidelity, and enter my bills
through their system. When I download data, everything is
fine. However, when I reconcile a credit card, I'd like
to tell Quicken I'm going to "print a check" off the
brokerage account, so that the transactions match when
I download them.

However, the little dialog box that comes up after I
reconcile only lists bank accounts.

How can I do this?

Posted by John Pollard on January 4, 2007, 8:55 pm

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Eric J. Holtman wrote:

> I'm running Quicken 2006.

> I used to pay all my bills online through my bank.

> Now, I keep all my money at Fidelity, and enter my bills

> through their system. When I download data, everything is

> fine. However, when I reconcile a credit card, I'd like

> to tell Quicken I'm going to "print a check" off the

> brokerage account, so that the transactions match when

> I download them.

> However, the little dialog box that comes up after I

> reconcile only lists bank accounts.

> How can I do this?

I don't understand.

How are you being prevented from creating a check transaction in
your investment account to pay for your credit card?

What you are seeing is left over from the days when there was no
Quicken ability to write checks in investment accounts. Perhaps
one day, the credit card drop down will contain investment
accounts. Hopefully, before that, the "cash transactions" in
Quicken investment accounts will be rid of the rest of their
problems.

The Quicken "Write Checks" dialog shows investment accounts as
sources for the check; or you can enter the check directly in
the investment account.

[Even if I were writing checks to pay my credit card bills, I
would not be writing/generating them when I did my credit card
reconcile. If I have to write checks - which I try to avoid
(and do for my credit card accounts) - I try to do them all at
the same time ... which wouldn't coincide with a Quicken account
reconcile, except by coincidence.]

--
John Pollard
First initial underscore Last name at mchsi dot com
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Posted by Eric J. Holtman on January 4, 2007, 9:16 pm

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$1i1.208620@attbi_s72:

> Eric J. Holtman wrote:

>> I'm running Quicken 2006.

>> I used to pay all my bills online through my bank.

>> Now, I keep all my money at Fidelity, and enter my bills

>> through their system. When I download data, everything is

>> fine. However, when I reconcile a credit card, I'd like

>> to tell Quicken I'm going to "print a check" off the

>> brokerage account, so that the transactions match when

>> I download them.

>> However, the little dialog box that comes up after I

>> reconcile only lists bank accounts.

>> How can I do this?

> I don't understand.

> How are you being prevented from creating a check transaction in

> your investment account to pay for your credit card?

I could enter a transaction in the investment account, but
that requires an extra step. I would have liked, at the
end of a reconcile, to cut a check right then and there.

And that's what quicken won't let me do.

> [Even if I were writing checks to pay my credit card bills, I

> would not be writing/generating them when I did my credit card

> reconcile. If I have to write checks - which I try to avoid

> (and do for my credit card accounts) - I try to do them all at

> the same time ... which wouldn't coincide with a Quicken account

> reconcile, except by coincidence.]

One of the things I like about paying bills with quicken
is exactly the opposite of that... I don't *want* to sit
down and write a bunch of checks. I want to enter each
bill when I get it, scheduled to pay just before it's due.

I've been doing that with Quicken since 1990. I just wanted
to know if there's a way to get the investment accounts to
show up in the reconcile box.