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


Account Information

Feb
15th
2008

Filed Under Organization
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quicken_logo.jpgLet’s assume that you, as an average Quicken user, have several accounts that all have different account information that you want to keep in a single place. How do you effectively store the information and retain some form of privacy and security?For example, your “Cash Flow” accounts may have a checking and savings account and a credit card or two. Your “Investing” accounts may include a 401k, Roth, or brokerage accounts. And, your “Property and Debt” accounts would include a mortgage, car loan, student loan, and their associated asset accounts. All of these various account will probably be at different institutions and have different websites, usernames, and passwords for account access. As a precaution, I’d suggest keeping a record of the important account information in a separate, secure place.

To do this, enter the website, username, password, and any other pertinent information in the Comments section of the Account Details screen. This information won’t be visible unless you open up the Details screen. Do this for each account.

Once you’re complete, you can print the account information. To do this, open the Account List. At the top right of the screen there is an Options menu. You’ll want to select “Print Additional Information”. Then select the Print menu item. Your account information, along with the website information, will be printed in a nice report.

Take that report and keep it in a secure location. A fire-safe, relative, or other location can be used to keep your data secure, but also provide a backup in case your computer (and Quicken backup file) fail or are destroyed.

DK