(gentle instrumental music)
- Hey guys, it's Robert from The College Investor here
and today I am excited to go through
Quicken for Mac 2019.
Now, I have been playing with Quicken for Mac,
now for, I don't know, about two weeks.
And I have to tell you that I really like the improvements.
Now, these improvements are not huge compared to past years,
but, there are enough of them that make me
want to use this more than Personal Capital or Mint,
or many of the other free online tools that are out there.
So, that's kind of a big deal.
One of the big game changers for me was the mobile app.
And, they've had their mobile app now for a couple of years
but the incremental improvements they've been making
on their mobile app and the way it seamlessly syncs
across both the desktop
and the mobile app version
make it really a great tool to use.
So, I'm gonna spend a lot of time going through
Quicken for Mac 2019.
I'm gonna show you the desktop here
and honestly, tell me what you think when you're all done.
I know this was really controversial last year,
so I really wanna break it down for you
and see if it's worthwhile this year.
So, let's dive in.
This is the home screen that you're gonna see
in Quicken for Mac.
It's got your spending by category, a budget,
and any upcoming bills and reminders
right here on the home screen.
You have all your transactions listed down the left side.
If you have a blue dot right here, that means that you
have a transaction that needs to be checked and updated.
So if we click this, you can see all
the different charges here,
the categories that are there,
you can do the payments, so on, so forth.
Very simple, totally what you expect
when it comes to Quicken
and I really like the way they do this.
The only drawback that I've found as I go through
categorizing these things,
is that for whatever reason, if I change this to shopping,
it doesn't always update in the future.
So, like these ones have been changed to groceries.
Well, if I get another one of these tomorrow,
well, what happens is it might default back to shopping.
For whatever reason, the logic is not saving it in there,
which is a little frustrating because I have
a lot of recurring transactions.
I shop at the same places all the time
and you'd think it would know to categorize it
and carry those forward.
So, that's one thing that has been a little bit annoying.
The other thing that's a little annoying is,
it's hard to find stuff.
The navigation is still kinda clunky.
They don't let you do a lot of customization.
Like, you'd think that they'd make this
like a widgetized dashboard where I could choose
what I want to see on the homepage,
but that's not the case.
The big screen that I use a lot is the banking tab
because what it does is that it allows you to
have your spending, and it breaks it down
into a little bit more detail,
it has all your transactions down here below it
so it makes it easy to categorize.
Especially when you're trying to categorize against
a bunch of different credit cards, and you know,
this is the main screen.
I hang out here the most 'cause I think
this is the most useful.
Just like anything else you can click on this
and you can dive in on the different categories,
you can break it down a little bit more,
whether you're shopping clothing, electronics.
Any returns, which is so handy compared to what you see
with Mint or Personal Capital,
that don't handle returns or cash very well.
It's one of the big things that
I hate about Personal Capital,
that it categorizes returns as income
so it screws up everything,
where Quicken, handles returns in
the spending categories very well.
And then you have your income breakdown.
The only thing that I wish they had here,
and I wrote about it in the review on the blog,
is that I wish they had income and expenses
right next to each other.
The only way to get it
is you have to go to this reports tab,
and it's on the account summary page
and you can see...
Oh that's not even income and expenses, that's net worth.
Is it spending over time?
Maybe it's category summary?
I don't even remember where I found it.
I just randomly found it when I was clicking through.
And also just net worth, it's so hard to find.
So their navigation, their stuff is very clunky.
Which is funny, because their mobile app
is actually really seamless.
And if you go to the blog, you can see,
I took some screenshots of my mobile app.
It's really, really easy to find.
I'll put some of the screenshots
right here in the video too, so like,
you can see all this stuff really easily.
So, it's just frustrating that they don't have
that all just built right into their app.
The other area is investing, right?
Investing is super important,
but as you can see, it's still got a lot of drawbacks.
So I left a lot of this stuff here just to show you,
on some of these things it imports the cost basis,
on other ones, it doesn't have the cost basis there.
So that's a little frustrating.
You have to go back to your broker, find your cost basis,
enter it right there automatically.
As you could see here by the big, white space too,
it doesn't pull any historical data.
This has been one of the biggest complaints over time
because it only pulls the most recent data.
So you can see when I start testing this,
I got a free trial here,
I started testing it in September,
and I inputted all my data,
seeing how everything was going, and yeah,
it just really doesn't give you great, accurate data.
Then, you know, when you try to do this over time,
the one thing that we've learned with Quicken
is that it does all the calculations within the software.
So if you wanna get these historical returns,
the historical returns aren't necessarily accurate,
because it's just pulling random data over time.
So see, like it's just 4%.
It's all the same numbers all across the whole board
because it thinks you're at zero, so it's kinda moot.
It doesn't do anything for you
and tell you how you've been performing.
But if you have Quicken and you start today,
it'll start building this out into the future for you.
So, after 12 months, you'll have a correct one year return,
after three years you'll have a correct return,
but you have to use their software in order to do it.
So, that's one of the big drawbacks that I think
is really detrimental
when it comes to Quicken for Mac 2019.
The last thing that is really gonna hold
Quicken for Mac back is gonna be the pricing, right?
So, pricing of this has always been the concern,
with Quicken for Mac.
The reason is, is that they
switched to a subscription model two years ago
and that really made a lot of customers upset.
Now, I don't think the subscription model is a bad thing,
because what the subscription model does
is it allows them to keep their software updated.
You see, when you connect to an online service,
Quicken has to pay about a dollar per user, per service.
So like, you know, if you're connected
to 10 different banks, like you know,
your brokerage, your bank, your credit cards,
each one of those costs Quicken a dollar a year,
and that's expensive.
And if they're not charging you on an ongoing basis
but you're using it on an ongoing basis,
that can really add up.
So, I hope with this new pricing model,
they're able to continue to be profitable
so that they can innovate and add new features over time.
The big thing is, is it's expensive though.
The Starter package, is 34.99 a year at full price.
The Deluxe, which I think most people are gonna wanna use,
is 49.99 per year.
And the Premier is, people who want
Bill Pay and premium support, is 74.99 per year.
That's crazy!
I think most people are gonna be extremely happy
with the Deluxe package.
And the trick is, for their pricing, to go onto Amazon.
I'll put the link below in the comments,
but Amazon is running a 30% off deal
which basically makes the price
of the deluxe $2.75 per month.
Which, that makes it a better deal than other paid software
like You Need A Budget, which is extremely popular.
So, Quicken, when you get the 30% off deal,
makes it a really good price and I do like it.
And based on their improvements,
I'm comfortable paying $2.75 a month with that discount.
I don't know if I'd pay full price.
You know, it's funny, it's like an extra $1.50,
like, it's not a ton of money but like,
it's just a psychological thing
that I don't know where the value lies for me,
but I feel good at $2.75 per month,
I feel good with that 30% off savings.
And so, that's where I'm at with Quicken.
So Quicken also launched a credit card,
which I think is a very random approach.
But they have this Quicken World MasterCard,
which they just announced.
This card gives you Quicken Deluxe for free for one year
if you spend $500 or more in the first three months.
Now, I would never get a credit card
just to get Quicken for free.
I think that's so silly to do.
But hey, I just wanna report this to you
so that you know that option's out there.
I think the big drawback with this credit card though,
is it only gives you one year free.
Now, one year free is silly
because if you're gonna use this credit card,
you'd think that you would get Quicken for free
as long as you use the credit card.
Right?
So, I don't know why they just do one year
but that's what they decided to do
and that option's out there.
It's brand new.
You're not going to see a lot
of information out there about it yet,
but you can get a Quicken MasterCard.
And this Quicken MasterCard also
has everything go into their mobile app.
So with their app, you can approve transactions,
categorize them instantly,
which is pretty handy.
Their app is becoming more and more useful.
So their app is the reason why I love Quicken 2019.
So, let's break it down.
What are my pro's and con's of Quicken 2019?
Well, number one, I love their mobile app.
We just talked a lot about that app and it's great.
It seamlessly integrates with the desktop version,
you can see it on the go.
I actually think it's more user friendly
than their desktop version,
which, their desktop version's improved quite a bit though.
Number two, they have improved loan tracking.
We didn't cover a lot about this
but when you have student loans, you have mortgage,
the loans are finally tracking really well
inside of Quicken 2019, and that's great.
That's a huge improvement.
And number three, their spending and budgeting categories,
and spending tracking, is the best out there.
Hands down, it's better than what you're gonna find
at Mint, Personal Capital.
You Need A Budget's close
but you have to like their system of,
you know, assigning every dollar a task.
That's not my style, so that's why I really do like Quicken.
The big cons with Quicken though,
are the navigation and how intuitive it is on Mac.
I really wish they would focus on this in 2020,
because I think that's a big gap.
It's not easy to find things, it's not easy to use,
some commons sense things that should just be like,
boom right in front of you, they're not.
So, I don't know.
And it's still lacking these key investment features
that you find in the Windows version.
I don't know why they didn't make any improvements
in the investment tools going from 2018 to 2019.
Maybe they did.
I didn't see any on the user interface side,
but like, where's the asset allocation stuff?
Come on.
I mean, that's been in Quicken for Windows
since 2007 or '06, or even earlier.
Like, I wanna be able to see how to rebalance my portfolio.
I wanna see the historical data.
Like, you should be able to pull the prices from the past,
put it in a portfolio, give me a better return,
at least with historical data.
And I get the cost basis stuff, but come on,
I think there might be a way to solve these problems
if you'd invest some time and resources
into getting it fixed.
And finally, that subscription pricing,
it's still a hang up for me.
I'm so used to the free stuff that you find out there.
The Mint's, The Personal Capital's.
But I think if you can get a great sale on Quicken for Mac,
I think it really is worth it.
It is really stable, I like the budgeting stuff.
It's the most functional software I've found.
And I find myself using it more than the free stuff,
and so at that $2.75, I think it really is worth it
if you get that Amazon sale,
which I'm gonna link to in the bottom.
So, if you like this review,
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If you think that you're gonna be
looking at Quicken for Mac,
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leave a comment below so that other people can see
what is going on with Quicken for Mac,
and not just take my word for it.
All right, guys, thank you very much,
and I will see you next time.