Quicken User Error
The other day, I almost had a heart attack.
I was looking at our budget in Quicken, and comparing our spending to our one income budget. Our spending was in line, all of our bills had been paid or scheduled, and we had one more paycheck coming in for February.
Then I looked at the forecast for the next 3 months. This shows a nice little graph of what your bank account balance is projected to be based on expected income and expenses.
Our balance was forecasted into the negative. I freaked out. Sheer panic. How can that be? I have reviewed this budget over and over and, while it is tight, we should not be going into the negative.
After determining that Quicken was a piece of garbage, and vowing to try another budgeting software, I saw something little in the corner. Something that said “Extra Monthly Expenses”. A value that should have been zero, but instead was listed at $3800.
Oops.
Due to some user error, the software was projecting an extra $3800 to be taken out of my bank account every month. No wonder it had projected into the negative.
So, Quicken, this is my public apology. I will no longer blame you for errors that are clearly my fault. And I will vow to double check all my numbers before I freak out and think that our new budget is going to bankrupt us.
May 7th, 2011 at 1:05 pm
If you have the flexibility it is best to measure your unfettered spending flow then fine tune down the areas that you can live without. Importing your statement for tracking is the truest way to make a budget happen long term. My MS Money application no longer works so I searched and found a program called bank2budget (www.bank2budget.com). This program cuts my time down in paying bills and tracking expenditures by 90%. I spend about 1 hour a month and can show you trends and many other charts. It requires MS Access version 2002 or higher though. Good luck to us all.