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Posted by Joseph O'Brien on February 9, 2008, 10:08 pm
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Hi folks. I'm thinking about making a major shift in my Quicken usage.
For years, I have tried to track the details of my paycheck, mortgage,
loans, and other accounts. For as many years, I despite countless
hours of nitpicking, I have failed to make any real use of this data.
I am coming to believe that it is simply too complicated for someone
like me (who is not an accountant) to track all of the miniscule
details of his financial life.
So, I'm thinking about tracking ONLY the net amount of each
transaction on a daily basis. By that, I mean when I deposit a
paycheck, I simply code the net depoit as "Net Income." No taxes, IRA
transfers, healthcare premiums, mortgage principal, interest, etc. On
a regular basis (quartery or yearly), I might do several bulk
transfers to bring my asset and liability accounts up to date.
My reasoning behind this is that, on a daily basis, I don't care that
I paid $250 on my $89,000 mortgage. or $22 in Federal income taxes, or
$15.23 in interest on my student loans. I barely care how much of
these categories I pay in a year. What I do care about, though, is
knowing how much cash we have right now, how much we're going to need
in the future, and (most important) being able to confidently share
that information with my wife.
Does anyone have any opinions about this?
Thanks.
Joseph
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Posted by Laura on February 10, 2008, 9:13 am
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> Hi folks. I'm thinking about making a major shift in my Quicken usage.
> For years, I have tried to track the details of my paycheck, mortgage,
> loans, and other accounts. For as many years, I despite countless
> hours of nitpicking, I have failed to make any real use of this data.
> I am coming to believe that it is simply too complicated for someone
> like me (who is not an accountant) to track all of the miniscule
> details of his financial life.
>
> So, I'm thinking about tracking ONLY the net amount of each
> transaction on a daily basis. By that, I mean when I deposit a
> paycheck, I simply code the net depoit as "Net Income." No taxes, IRA
> transfers, healthcare premiums, mortgage principal, interest, etc. On
> a regular basis (quartery or yearly), I might do several bulk
> transfers to bring my asset and liability accounts up to date.
>
> My reasoning behind this is that, on a daily basis, I don't care that
> I paid $250 on my $89,000 mortgage. or $22 in Federal income taxes, or
> $15.23 in interest on my student loans. I barely care how much of
> these categories I pay in a year. What I do care about, though, is
> knowing how much cash we have right now, how much we're going to need
> in the future, and (most important) being able to confidently share
> that information with my wife.
>
> Does anyone have any opinions about this?
>
> Thanks.
> Joseph
It probably is not the correct way of managing finances but that is how I
have dealt with them for years. It goes along with the discussion earlier
this week...the official numbers that go on your tax return come from your
1099s, w-2s, etc and not what is in Quicken. Let those companies track the
official numbers for me. I have better things to do than record the petty
details that I am not going to use at year end.
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Posted by Andrew on February 10, 2008, 11:59 am
Please log in for more thread options Joseph O'Brien wrote:
>
> Does anyone have any opinions about this?
>
> Thanks.
> Joseph
Hi Joseph! Ur sure to get opinions! Here's mine:
I use Q only to track details of items that I do indeed care about or need
to track to verify other 2nd party supplied records.
For example, I DO track details about my paycheck because I want to verify
that the W2 at the end of the year match my records. That's one example of
why I choose to track that.
I do NOT, however, track what portions of a contribution to my 401K *I* make
vs. my company match in the purchase of the security. Why? Because THAT
doesn't affect (I think) anything I care about. My ultimate tax liability
is going to be on the entire amount without prejudice to my portions vs.
company match. So that's a detail I don't care about. (I do, of course,
track the DEDUCTION of my portion from my paycheck as explained in the 1st
paragraph - different from the company match).
Everyone has their own way of doing things in Q. But one thing you should
try to remember is that if you give up recording certain types of details
now, be sure you don't think you'll need that in the future because it might
be difficult to recreate missing details!
Good luck - I look forward to reading comments from others.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------
Regards -
- Andrew
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Posted by Doug on February 10, 2008, 5:14 pm
Please log in for more thread options If I rememeber correctly, Quicken started life as a very basic program
that did little but print checks. It is perfectly reasonable to use it
that way. If it weren't so useful as a check printer, I'd advise you to
just use an Excel spreadsheet to track your balances. But it is.
Doug
Joseph O'Brien wrote:
> Hi folks. I'm thinking about making a major shift in my Quicken usage.
> For years, I have tried to track the details.... I have failed to make any
real use of this data.
>
> So, I'm thinking about tracking ONLY the net amount of each
> transaction on a daily basis.
> I barely care how much of
> these categories I pay in a year. What I do care about, though, is
> knowing how much cash we have right now, how much we're going to need
> in the future, and (most important) being able to confidently share
> that information with my wife.
>
> Does anyone have any opinions about this?
> Thanks.
> Joseph
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Posted by Bernie on February 10, 2008, 9:36 pm
Please log in for more thread options On 2/9/2008 9:08 PM, Joseph O'Brien wrote:
> Hi folks. I'm thinking about making a major shift in my Quicken usage.
> For years, I have tried to track the details of my paycheck, mortgage,
> loans, and other accounts. For as many years, I despite countless
> hours of nitpicking, I have failed to make any real use of this data.
> I am coming to believe that it is simply too complicated for someone
> like me (who is not an accountant) to track all of the miniscule
> details of his financial life.
>
> So, I'm thinking about tracking ONLY the net amount of each
> transaction on a daily basis. By that, I mean when I deposit a
> paycheck, I simply code the net depoit as "Net Income." No taxes, IRA
> transfers, healthcare premiums, mortgage principal, interest, etc. On
> a regular basis (quartery or yearly), I might do several bulk
> transfers to bring my asset and liability accounts up to date.
>
> My reasoning behind this is that, on a daily basis, I don't care that
> I paid $250 on my $89,000 mortgage. or $22 in Federal income taxes, or
> $15.23 in interest on my student loans. I barely care how much of
> these categories I pay in a year. What I do care about, though, is
> knowing how much cash we have right now, how much we're going to need
> in the future, and (most important) being able to confidently share
> that information with my wife.
>
> Does anyone have any opinions about this?
>
> Thanks.
> Joseph
I guess one question is whether it is really going to be easier to do
those quarterly "bulk transfer" than it is to do the monthly splits on
an on-going basis. I have memorized transactions for my paycheck and
mortgage payments so doing the actual recording each month takes very
little time.
There are some years when I've needed to file estimated income tax
payments during the year, or at least to figure out if I need to do
that. I hate doing that kind of work so I think that having accurate
numbers in Quicken on an on-going basis makes it less onerous then it
would be if I first had to make quarterly adjustments in Quicken so that
I have the correct information to determine estimated tax payments.
Fortunately the flexibility of the program lets us each satisfy our own
comfort level as far as tracking details or not.
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