Debits of Our Lives Episode #9: Quicken Makes Her Cry

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Joan hung up the phone for the third time in 2 hours, determined not to call her daugher Holly again for the rest of the day, “so help me God.”

It had started out to be such a promising Saturday morning. Breakfast dishes washed and put away, Joan waltzed into the upstairs office in her PJs, hot mug of coffee in hand, and set about the next organizing task on her list. What a relief it was, after months of less-than-happy Saturdays, to reach a stage where she could fantasize about the ultimate office: a light-filled space with clean surfaces, well-placed computer workstation, shelving, and file cabinets. For now she had to settle for a temporary table with a computer and four neatly arranged piles of grossly sorted papers: 1) bank, credit card, and brokerage account statements; 2) deposits and receipts for payments; 3) bills, insurance policies; 4) real estate, mortgage loan and other legal records.

Holly had bugged her to process the paper piles right away, but knowing her own limits, Joan decided to spend only the first 15 minutes of her Saturday organizing sessions processing paper, then move on to more interesting tasks, like picking out Bisley® 2-Drawer file cabinets from The Container Store or looking at other attractive filing solutions. That was how she kept herself sane. Just when she wanted to shoot herself—after having identified and sorted yet another bank statement, brokerage disclosure, tax-related document—the kitchen timer jingled you are free.

But not really free, because the next 30 minutes were allocated to the dreaded Quicken.

In the beginning, Holly had helped considerably by installing Quicken and setting up Joan and Stephen’s personal accounts for online banking and downloading, then training Joan on how to keep the accounts up-to-date. Holly’s presence was reassuring—Joan knew that Holly was sensible and on task—but also intimidating. Joan’s eyes tended to glaze over as Holly explained things, and she could sense Holly’s impatience. Mom, why don’t you get this?

Not one to argue with her bright and accomplished daughter, Joan held her tongue yet inwardly resented Holly’s obvious judging of her financial illiteracy. In her own generation, a woman was not expected to excel in the field of personal finance, and besides, Stephen had been a fine financial planner for the family, though admittedly not a very organized one. But Stephen’s recent medical problems had changed the family assumptions regarding division of labor. It pissed Joan off that she was trying to do the right thing—get an understanding of the family finances—yet in doing so exposed her gaps in financial and technological knowledge.

On this particular Saturday morning, having accomplished the prerequisite 15-minute paper processing, Joan confidently fired up Quicken to update the bank account transactions. Always a little nervous about Quicken, she nevertheless expected it to go well, because downloading the last several Saturdays had gone smoothly. But this time, in attempting to download transactions from Chase she encountered an error and couldn’t update transactions.

She called Holly, who suggested various workarounds, which she tried, but after the third phone call and no luck downloading, Joan was frustrated. She tried downloading a few more times on her own, got nowhere, then gave up, tears welling in her eyes.

At this point she grabbed a pen and paper, and started jotting down expense categories and numbers, from both Quicken data and paper statements—within an hour she had a reasonably accurate estimate of the family expenses year-to-date. Despite lack of Quicken expertise, she had a handle on the cash flows, and a sense of confidence that family finances were on track.

Joan sees the advantage of accounting software tools, especially when Holly is around and can show her lots of cool features. But Joan needs to understand how she will make sense of the finances even if Holly isn’t there and the software doesn’t work. The pen and paper solution may be crude, but it’s simple, and it works.

Tagged as: Accounting, financial organizing, Quicken