Back in November, I heard the news that Intuit plans to sell Quicken. I would have written about it earlier, but I think it deserves more attention than getting lost in the Thanksgiving holiday and Black Friday shopping hysteria. The go-to personal finance software for 30 years has earned that and much more.
There’s probably a lot more we don’t know than what we do know about the potential sale. I haven’t seen any news on a potential buyer yet. I’m fairly sure someone isn’t going to pay a lot of money just to watch it die. I’m not sure if the software engineers come with the sale for a time to get everyone up to speed with the software. Everything is a big question mark.
Personally, I could never get into Quicken. It wasn’t for lack of trying either. If I recall correctly, around 2000, you’d have to pay a fee to get automatic syncing with some banks and brokerages. Typically, I could download the last 30 days an import it for free, but if I didn’t update it, I had a huge mess one my hands. I finally gave it up and went to tracking my net worth with a spreadsheet. I learned to budget by asking the question, “Do I really need to buy that?” and answering myself, “No.” It was just easier.
Over the past few months, I’ve been using Personal Capital and I’m really impressed with it. It is a online personal finance manager similar to Mint that has been around for years. It’s a very good complement to my spreadsheet. While I’ve gotten good at updating my spreadsheet in about an hour, Personal Capital does most of it instantly.
I have to qualify that because it doesn’t do the mortgage from a small local bank (but surprisingly it does do the savings and checking from them.) It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot closer than Quicken ever was for me. (That said, it is extremely unfair of me to compare Quicken 2000 to Personal Capital 2015).
I’m not alone in recommending it as I see almost all personal finance bloggers doing the same. It seems to be particular popular for the early retirement blogs that I’ve really started digging of late such as Root of Good and Retire by 40.
I noticed that Personal Capital seems to be taking advantage of the Quicken uncertainty. Here’s a comparison they created. These comparisons always show the strengths of the product by the company who creating the product, but it is worth noticing that Personal Capital does most of the major things that you’d want. I have found anything that it’s lacking (other than the aforementioned small bank).
There’s something to be said stability and Personal Capital might be worth exploring.
I, like you, have never been able to get into quicken. It has made assumptions which are not there, unable to provide the information/reports I want to see, and just never has been up to par. It focuses on things like budgeting, with no way to turn them off, and does not focus on what I would call power user type things.
I don’t know, I have never found a program to do what I want, so I wrote my own. At least I can get a glimpse of my financial situation quickly without having to go through five tabs and a calculator to determine where I am.
It generates about 100 million a year in sales. It’s not losing money. Its future may not be as robust as some other software products Intuit is choosing to focus on, but it can still be a successful business for someone.