Continja - Latest Comments

Re: Toshiba Portege M700 RAM Installation Guide

robin stern — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:57:31 -0000

Thanks man, so much easier then the Sony vaio I just did... appreciate your info!!

Re: http://chadgoode.com/post/13579783723

Chad Goode — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:37:55 -0000

My brother-in-law provided me with this link... provides a somewhat comprehensible explanation. :-)

http://www.defectiveyeti.com/a...

Re: http://chadgoode.com/post/13471587683

Anne Marie Petersen — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:12:21 -0000

Chad, congratulations, first of all.
Secondly, I agree with you. Living in this day where everything is available at a moment's notice, I miss the days of getting Christmas cards in the mail and know that that's the first pictures I'd see of some people all year. Not that I don't want to know them, but just because of the level of anticipation.
I ponder, now, and again, about canceling my online accounts and starting over. These days information is just too attainable and too easy to share, making the lines of privacy, property, and rights incredibly blurred. The more time that passes, the deeper the blur.
Kudos to you.

Re: Mint vs Yodlee vs Quicken

Chad Goode — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 09:05:35 -0000

Hi, Byron - Actually, I believe nearly all banks support one-step update without a fee. We only have one bank, a local, one-branch credit union, that isn't supported at all. None of them charge any fees for access.

Anyone else have a different experience?

Re: Mint vs Yodlee vs Quicken

Byron — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:45:51 -0000

I was wondering which Banks support quickens one step update without having to pay the bank for that feature.

Re: Mint vs Yodlee vs Quicken

Mitoids — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 16:32:38 -0000

@79a231dc81426fcb3eabc71566498fc8 : Thanks for you feedback. I had basically come to the same conclusion--that Quicken is still the way to go. I find it ridiculous, two years after Intuit announced their acquisition of Mint, that Intuit has not found a way to integrate their two products--at least a little. There is so much Intuit could do in this area. I would be willing to pay a monthly fee for Mint if the product team would address some of the basic shortcomings.

I've played around with Yodlee, and actually found that although it meets my needs better than Mint, it's still not sufficient.

Check out Buxfer. Unlike Mint, it offers better reporting by custom date range, full customization of tags/categories, and primitive reconciliation capabilities. It even allows you to import Quicken files--ironically, something that Mint does not yet do! If I were to give up Quicken altogether, this is clearly a better option at this time. However, I'm going to continue with Quicken for now. Will have to see whether it makes sense to use Buxfer and Quicken together. After all, this is about trying to be efficient, right?

Re: Mint vs Yodlee vs Quicken

adam — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 13:49:51 -0000

Man, my sister and I have been through the same trials and tribulations. Quicken has lots of old-fashionedness that is annoying, so we tried Mint. It's way more convenient, you can access it anywhere, you can use team work with others... But it's missing too many features and has too many bugs. Seriously. In quicken I can attach a receipt or invoice to every single transaction and have a paper trail. In mint, no way. Solution, use Quicken and Dropbox, make sure you close it (and backup) every time you finish, so that when someone else or another computer opens your quicken file, you won't lose changes. Make your Quicken file password-protected, and you'll be pretty safe and have ALMOST the same convenience as Mint, with so much more power.

I still use Mint, just as a day-to-day little cute way to check up on all my accounts in one place. It's really just like a checkup tool that is faster than logging into each bank account separately. So use it daily to check in, and when it's time to actually do personal finance WORK, use quicken with your file saved in Dropbox. Save yourself the disappointment of trying to make Mint your only personal finance tool. Cloud Convenience has not yet caught up to old-school programming.

Re: Mint vs Yodlee vs Quicken

Mitoids — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 04:46:23 -0000

I've used Quicken for many years. Its reporting is great. I find it useful preparing tax schedules and tracking reimbursed and unreimbursed business expenses. However, as another Guest noted, it can easily be a time sink.

More recently, I've been trying to move to Mint. Like many, I am not impressed by their customer support team's responsiveness to enhancement requests. I've also spent a lot of time trying to make Mint do some things that I previously took for granted in Quicken, like reconciling my accounts.

Has anybody tried Mvelopes, Neobudget or Inzolo? They all offer cloud based financial management solutions that appear to be closer to Quicken in their capabilities than Mint.

Re: 10 Business Travel Hotel Safety Tips

Kiev — Wed, 25 May 2011 13:03:11 -0000

Thanks sharing such Nice Tips for Safety.... it's really helpful who can travel for business... :)

Re: Mint vs Yodlee vs Quicken

Meclaudius — Mon, 23 May 2011 20:28:04 -0000

Mint used to leverage trusted Yodlee to gain access to your bank, but it appears that's changing or changed on or around 4/1/11. Not that Mint or mother Intuit is a small slipshod organization, they're not, but according to their site, it appears they are now going directly to your bank, so they must have decided to hold your bank credentials themselves. Just something to consider as the security landscape changes.

Re: Mint vs Yodlee vs Quicken

Kelly — Fri, 13 May 2011 17:48:07 -0000

I'm pretty happy with Quicken 2011 and I used 2008 before hand. I like the forecasting better in the newer version.

Re: So I reluctantly upgraded to Quicken 2011

Neville Sarkari — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 19:21:13 -0000

Hello, I upgraded from Quicken 2008 to 2011 some time ago. My main complaint is performance. It seems to be a CPU hog. I have not found any huge functional issues or any fabulous new features. It's just slow. One step updates take 5 minutes for me, compared to about 2 minutes before. I do love the "Savings Goals" feature, which is basically like unlimited virtual savings accounts. You can sequester the money in there without actually moving it, and the program takes care of the reconciliation...

Enjoyed reading your blogs.

Neville

Re: So I reluctantly upgraded to Quicken 2011

meClaudius — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 08:15:47 -0000

Check this article

http://tinyurl.com/4y295ot

Re: So I reluctantly upgraded to Quicken 2011

Chad Goode — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:35:28 -0000

Thanks for the tip, Claudius. I'll do some experimenting with mounting a TrueCrypt volume inside Dropbox. And DropBox does a decent with the version control... at least insofar as not letting one of us overwrite the other's changes accidently. In that respect, I think it's better/easier than having the Quicken file on a local file share.

Re: Mint vs Yodlee vs Quicken

Chad Goode — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:25:53 -0000

No. We have to coordinate. If we both try to open Quicken at the same time, one of us will successfully sync our changes to Dropbox. The other's Quicken file will be saved to Dropbox, but with a different filename making the discrepancy obvious. That person's changes are effectively lost and have to be re-entered.

Re: So I reluctantly upgraded to Quicken 2011

meClaudius — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 08:48:24 -0000

Chad,
Personally, I would advise against using DropBox to store highly sensitive financial information for the present. Yes, they do encrypt but they do not support creation of a "private key". At least at present. If they were ever compromised, they or someone acting as Dropbox could conceivably access your information.

http://www.dropbox.com/help/28

Alternately, you could double encrypt the data yourself with something like BitLocker or Truecrypt of course that becomes more work

Also, if both you and your wife will be updating, you need some version control and a full WebDav solution.

Re: Mint vs Yodlee vs Quicken

Claudius2k — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 08:36:49 -0000

Interesting points. I used Quicken for years but I found Mint to be a lot less work for (primarily) monitoring expenses.
meClaudius

Re: Mint vs Yodlee vs Quicken

lusr — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 04:08:12 -0000

Does DropBox protect you in some way from you and your wife updating the same file at the same time? Or do you just have to both carefully co-ordinate changes? I can't believe it's the year 2011 and there's still no decent online solution for two people trying to manage their shared and personal finances!

Re: Mint vs Yodlee vs Quicken

Chad Goode — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 19:06:11 -0000

Hi, Stan. Not sure if you saw my other article about Quicken 2011, but I found the perfection solution to having access to the Quicken database file(s) "in the cloud" and from multiple computers. Check out DropBox. Just put your Quicken files there... and you'll be good to go.

Re: Mint vs Yodlee vs Quicken

Stan Duncan — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 10:34:18 -0000

I haven't tried Mozy, but I use logmein often, and was wondering, when reading your article if it could be used with quicken. I have several old programs on my lap top at home that I choose not to upgrade, that won't work on my new ones, so when I want to use them I simply go to them from logmein from wherever I am. It works perfectly, and I have a hunch I could do the same with Quicken while on the road.

Incidentally, I also have two defunct hard drives cannibalized from old dead mainframes on that lap top, giving me something in the neighborhood of around fifteen gigs of memory accessible from anywhere. It's a bit like having my own private online data storage.

Re: Mint vs Yodlee vs Quicken

Stan Duncan — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 10:19:18 -0000

I would add a couple of comments to your article. I moved from quicken to Mint for precisely the mobile in-the-cloud reasons you mention, but I'm going back. In addition to not having the features that you mentioned, Mint is also a flawed program with abysmal tech support. And don't take my word for it. Read through the questions (and few answers) on their forums and you'll see people begging for help for months at a time. When the tech support people finally read the questions they often respond with boiler plate answers (copy and paste) from the manual that have little to do with the questions. (A question about how to get a stuck transaction label, for example, was answered by generic instructions on how to fill out the transaction labels.)

The flaws are not many, but are frightening. One is the "Auto-categorization Feature." It automatically assigns a random label to a transaction downloaded from your bank. So, if I buy gas on day, it will list it as groceries. Or if I buy wine, it will be listed as furnishings. There doesn't seem to be much connection with its labels to the products purchased. It forces us to have to run home every evening, turn on Mint and make the corrections by hand. (Making me wonder how Mint is an improvement over a spreadsheet.) The tech support response to this has been --for well over a year--that their engineers are working on it. Another problem is that many transactions get hung up in a "pending" category (gray and in italics). I have some that are five and six months old. Again, the response is that the engineers are working on it. But it makes it impossible to have any accuracy in budgeting and making totals. Recently one of the tech people said that they had discovered and run a script that allowed us to delete those transactions and re-enter them by hand. But that was barely helpful, because we can only enter them as cash transactions and most were company deposits or credit card charges or other. So the totals may be correct, but the sources are still thrown off. And the tech people seem to be unable to acknowledge this as a problem.

So, I am going back to Quicken. It's being linked to one computer may be a problem, but its problems (I hope) are a trade up from Mint's. Mint is "free" but it is clearly too expensive in terms of time. The forums are full of conversation about what alternatives to Mint might be. I think eventually Mint will discover that its business model (sell advertising and ignore customers) will cause it to fail.

Stan Duncan

Re: Mint vs Yodlee vs Quicken

Cameron2 — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 15:06:52 -0000

I experienced the same issue with mint - only after using it for 2 years. It has caused such a mess of my financial life. I now regret terribly that I depended on mint so heavily. Their customer support is horrendous.

Re: Mint vs Yodlee vs Quicken

Chad Goode — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 21:19:33 -0000

I may have to write an update to this entry.
I started using Mint.com along with the Android app... as a supplement, not a replacement... for Quicken. The app is definitely handy to get a quick glance at things when it's convenient and/or I otherwise just don't feel like opening Quicken.
The dilemma I have right now is whether to upgrade to Quicken 2011. My Quicken 2008 will cease to function next month. The reviews on Amazon say it's horrible.

Re: Mint vs Yodlee vs Quicken

Blaineb99 — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 12:15:41 -0000

I recently bought update for Quciken Home & Business. But also bought Verizon iphone and was looking at financial apps and came acroos Mint app which sounded good. But wondered about comparison with Quicken H&B,. This article really helped me. Staying with Quicken for now.

Re: Mint vs Yodlee vs Quicken

Cindy M. Brown — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:30:13 -0000

Howdy again,

For everyone else. I also tried the Mint.com thing being they said had mobile apps.

Mint didn't ask me where to start downloads. I just wanted to start with the new year. So right away had 3 months of a data not properly categorized, dated (WANT TRANSACTION DATE, NOT BANK POST DATE) or named (nearly 300 transactions with gobly gook names). I couldn't delete ANY of the transactions for the extra months I didn't want. Mint didn't ask me for starting balance or outstanding items. The balance listed NEVER matched any balance I could reconcile to. It didn't make my last posted balance. It didn't match my banks "available balance" and of course it didn't match my reconciled "real balance". Mint.com never answered my questions about figuring out how they determine the balance so I could fix it. I had no desire to commit too much time trying to fix Mint.com if it wasn't going to work. I tried calling "duplicate" but just left it there shaded. I then saw the "exclude from Mint" option. Because I had already marked "duplicate" so many transaction it APPARENTLY would not let me reselect on those duplicates using the multiple edit to change to "exclude from Mint". I had to change one by one. In the end, it still didn't remove the transaction. Did search and discovered lots of others would like to just be able to DELETE.

The real reason I signed up was for Mobile app (being I really didn't like giving a 3rd party my bank information). The mobile app didn't do the only thing I really wanted ... to ADD TRANSACTION when on the go. After reading feedback on their customer service website it seems that Mint doesn't even allow you to "match" bank transactions against manually input transactions!! I've followed Mint.com since before Intuit took over. They do not seem very responsive to major feature points from customers. So I deleted my bank account and on the hunt again.

Sigh...

Fun & Smiles,
CC Heart Cindy :)