Archive for January, 2007
Jeff in Japan
Jeff January 26th, 2007
No not me Jeff, my friend Jeff. We went to school together at Western and while we both went traveling, he never quit. He is now in Japan teaching English as well as making trips to all different parts of that area of the world. Definately check out his latest pictures from China. Man I wish I could go to! He is right, it is changing really fast so I need to go soon…
Quicken
Jeff January 18th, 2007
Well after a long hard battle with Quicken, I think I finally have it figured out. After much reading of the help file (most applications help systems have come a long way!) and reading/posting on their support forum, I am worken it! I am also thankful that it looks like it was actually worth the hours spent getting it to work as it certainly beats the Excel spreadsheet I was using for budgeting.
If I can pass on one huge ‘n helpful tip for you Bank of America people (such as me) it is this: Do NOT sign up for their one step update during Quicken’s install as it will mess up your accounts and place transactions from one account in another and vice versa. Instead, I would highly recommend performing the following steps to save you a bunch of time. (after you have installed it)
- Create your individual accounts in Quicken (savings, checking etc)
- Log in to your B of A account online
- Go to each account that created in quicken (ie checking, savings etc)
- Download the Quicken file
- Open it with the Quicken tool
- It will automatically import to each account
Do this with all of your accounts as it will save you hours of headaches trying to get the account set up within Quicken. I believe it is primarily a Bank of America issue as their computer systems are ancient. (especially if you are a member in WA or ID). If you want a little more detail on the problem I encountered, it was that when I tried to do the one step update while installing Quicken, it told me it failed at one point but succeeded at another. When I finally got Quicken installed, I noticed that my account balances were way off and transactions were in the wrong accounts etc. Apparently the problem is that my checking account has an account number of 12345678 and my savings is 0012345678 and Quicken wasn’t recognizing the difference for some reason. After banging my head on the desk for a few hours, I went to their website and got in line for tech chat. I ended up with a guy named “Bob” from India and after he went through his 20 minutes of reading scripts to me from his computer screen, he dropped this bombshell of a great idea on me: Tell my bank to change my account numbers.
Right.
Thanks Bob!
So I hope this long post helps some of you out there that are trying to get a solid budget going and learn just how much money you are NOT saving each month. 
