Tracking Coupon Savings in Quicken

Nov
11th
2008

Filed Under Saving
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My wife is a coupon freak.  Each week we buy the Sunday paper and she can barely wait to pull the leaflets of coupons out and scan through them.  An hour each week is spent cutting and clipping, until we have a pile of coupons awaiting a trip to the local grocery store.  She even clips coupons for friends and relatives, and collects coupons from other folks who “don’t need to clip coupons” (aka lazy people, in my opinion).

After the trip to the store, my wife makes me guess how much she saved in coupons.  Some weeks it’s a LOT, other weeks it’s not as much, but I can usually estimate by the size of the smile on her face.  I typically congratulate and thank her for saving the family some money by being frugal with the groceries.

But it recently hit me that while she is saving our family money on items we would buy with or without the coupons, we are not actually saving any money (my fault, not hers).  The $10, $20, or $30 she may save just goes towards some other expenditure and we never “realize” the savings.  I can’t tell you (as evidenced above) exactly how much she has saved us over the years.

So, I’ve decided to create a new category in my Quicken file called “Coupon Savings”.  After each trip to the grocery store, I’ll take the receipt, note the amount saved with coupons, and transfer that amount from our checking account into our savings account at ING.  We’ll be “feeding” our savings account with the coupons savings while feeding the family.

It will take one additional transaction in Quicken, but I’ll then be able to track our coupon savings and boost the amount saved each year.

DK


A Christian Perspective on Money Management - Week 2

Nov
9th
2008

Filed Under Christian, Credit Cards, Saving
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The sermon series at Hope Pres about money management and financial peace continued this week.  Last week was a summary of sorts, and this week Craig started to delve into specific things you can/need to do in order to achieve “financial peace”.

While most of the suggestions are old news for me and my family, they do prompt some new ideas on ways to save, be more frugal, and manage money as a family.  Perhaps the most important thing that keeps coming up is the necessity of good communication within the family unit.  That’s something I probably don’t do as well as I should, but we’re working on it.

A nifty little tool developed by Dave Ramsey called The Gazelle Budget was showcased.  For those of you who do not have a budget, this is an easy way to get started.

The Cliff Notes from the sermon are as follows:

One man pretends to be rich, yet has nothing… - Proverbs 13:7 (NIV)

From a Quicken perspective, this sermon seemed to be related to the Debt Reduction Planner and Budgeting tools provided in the software.  I plan to do a short post in the next couple of days about these two powerful tools.

DK


Using Quicken With Your Annual Credit Report

Nov
5th
2008

Filed Under Credit History, Organization
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If you’re not familiar with your credit report, you should be.  At annualcreditreport.com, you can get one free report from each of the three credit agencies (TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax) per year.  It’s relatively easy to check, and can prevent you from costly errors that could affect your credit history for years to come.  Identity theft is not something you want to be a victim of, nor do you want to have a bank’s error cost you several points of interest on a future loan because you didn’t catch their mistake.

But this post isn’t about why you should check your credit report.  I wanted to share how I use Quicken to help remind me to check my (and my bride’s) report, and then store the data within my Quicken file for future reference.  This method will insure you stay current with your credit history every four months, and have the data available electronically if you should need to reference it again.

Transaction Setup

  1. Create a Category called “Credit Reports” or something similar.  This will allow you to easily search for past “transactions” by reporting on that category.
  2. You’ll need to set up a Scheduled Transaction for each of the three credit agencies.
    1. Payee:  the name of the agency
    2. Category:  “Credit Report” (or the category you established in step 1)
    3. Memo:  Use this to store info particular to this credit check if needed
    4. Account to Use:  doesn’t matter what you put here
    5. Method:  doesn’t matter what you put here
    6. Amount:  $0.00 (because it’s FREE!)
    7. Scheduling Start On:  Pick three different dates that are four months apart from each other.  For example, TransUnion may be on 11/1, Experian on 3/1, and Equifax on 7/1.
    8. How often:  Yearly, on the dates you establish
    9. Schedule the transaction with no end date

Credit Check

After this, you’ll need to actually go check your credit report.  Visit annualcreditreport.com and follow the links.  At one point you’ll be prompted to pick the appropriate credit agency which will take you directly to that agency’s website.  You can also create user id’s with each of the agencies for future transactions, purchases, etc.

Once you get to the web page where you’re able to see the report, you’ll need to save the page and store it in Quicken.  I’d suggest just storing the Summary page, but if you have any problems, negative issues, etc that you may want to store, you may need to save multiple pages.

Storage

  1. Save the webpage to a single file.  You can use PrintScreen and paste the image in Paint, a third party screen capture program, or even “Save as Webpage” and zip the folder into a single file.  Make a note of where you save it…I’d suggest a folder to store the files.
  2. Go back to Quicken and enter the Scheduled Transaction you set up.
  3. Before you accept the transaction, click the “Attach” button associated with that transaction.  This will open a window which will allow you to attach the saved file of the credit report to the specific transaction.
  4. Verify the file has been attached…you’ll see a small icon under the date of the transaction that has a sheet of paper with a paper clip.
  5. If you saved more than one page, attach the additional pages in the same manner.
  6. Accept the transaction.

You have now saved a copy of your credit report and attached it to your yearly transaction.  You can quickly recall it by searching for the Payee, reporting on the category, or simply going to the specific date if you know what it is.

If you have problems with this method, please feel free to email me and I’ll try to help.

DK

A Christian Perspective on Money Management - Week 1

Nov
3rd
2008

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My pastor at Hope Presbyterian started a new sermon series yesterday on money and achieving “financial peace”.  It’s based on the Dave Ramsey series of the same name, but he (Pastor Craig) does an excellent job of relaying the principles of money management from a Christian perspective.

Here’s the Reader’s Digest version of his sermon along with a few Bible passages:

The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty. - Proverbs 21:5 (NIV)

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. - Matthew 6:21 (NIV)

Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter… - Proverbs 6:5 (NIV)

Just more substantial (if you subscribe to the Christian beliefs found in the Bible) proof that good money management (whether you use Quicken or some other tool) is essential to real happiness.

I’ll be posting the next few week’s of sermon notes here as well…

DK

Back in Action

Nov
3rd
2008

Filed Under Misc
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After a long hiatus away from the homestead due to travelling with work, I’m finally getting back into the rhythm and plan to post a little more often here.

Considering the state of the economy these days, I’d expect there a few folks looking for help in restoring order to their finances, and my hope is that QuickenEngineering.com can assist in explaining ways Intuit’s Quicken software can manage one’s personal finances.

I’m normally not big on “joke” emails, but here’s one that I’ll leave you with….

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Delta Airlines one year ago, you will have $49.00 today.

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in AIG one year ago, you will have $33.00 today.

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Lehman Brothers one year ago, you will have $0.00 today.

But, if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the aluminum cans for the recycling refund, you will have received $114.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment plan is to drink heavily & recycle.