Alternative to Quicken for balancing checkbook / credit cards

Finance
#1

Didn’t get much response out of the other Quicken thread in OT so I thought I start a thread.

I have used Quicken for a long, long time. Initially, I tried to track “everything” with it but I learned quickly that more trouble than it’s worth so these days I only use Quicken for tracking my checking and credit card accounts. Recently I learned that Quicken is going to a subscription model and even now in my 2016 version it required to “log in” the online Quicken account every once a while for no good reason. After all the crap that intuit tries to pull over the years this is the last straw. I’ll be done with Quicken once it no longer can importing of downloaded transactions.

Now that I think about it with more urgency of a forced transition, there are nice thing I got used to, such as looking up a transaction I had 5 years ago, see how much $ I charge to certain CC X years ago, etc… Having said that, I’m really using it as a gloried register which I found a lot of other older Quicken users do as well, judging by the response I see. Sure, I can use a dump spreadsheet but it’s nice to download transactions per statement and click on each item to reconcile it. I may end up with a spreadsheet anyway but I thought I ask the hive here.

#2

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#3

I used Microsoft Money for several years, so I understand the appeal of ticking off the transactions. I haven’t used a product to balance in several years. I don’t miss it.

YMMV, but it’s odd when we have to write a check for anything anymore. If I did have to write significant numbers of checks, I suppose using a check register would work as it always did before online banking. I pay bills online, pushing from the checking account. If I need to get a quick balance, I just subtract the total of the pending transactions from the balance shown. All bills that can, do go on rewards credit cards first. This simplifies the number of line items coming out of the account as well as earning rewards.

When the credit card statements are available, I check the transactions against my paper receipts and email receipts. Then I get rid of any receipts I don’t need to hang on to for awhile, which is usually most of them. Big purchases or Christmas gifts, items under warranty, are kept longer.

Not sure if any of that helps you, but that’s what I do.

#4

Ya, huge part is doing thing out of habits. Now I have all CC transaction texted to me so there’s no danger of surprise charge on my cards anymore.

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