<p>College students: do any of you use/recommend Quicken (software program) to keep account of your money fund$? Do you think Quicken is easier than balancing your checkbook manually - or is the old way best?</p>
<p>Quicken is ok, but I just use the Internet banking thing that my bank provides and it keeps track of everything. I have had checking account for 8 years now and have never balanced the thing once. With the advent of debit cards there is no need to write checks. Just keep a mental note of how much is in your account.</p>
<p>You should always keep your own records.</p>
<p>It’s the difference between what the bank tells you you have, and what you have actually spent. Of course the internet banking is going to match your statement, they are the same system. The benefit of software like quicken is that it keeps YOUR records (and it also alows you to do WAY more stuff than internet banking allows). Internet banking is a tool to manage and check up on your account, not to track and catolog usage.</p>
<p>Personally I use the program GnuCash because I keep track of it on my laptop running linux. My mother has been a long time quicken user and it definately is a good program.</p>
<p>ottothecow - I’m aware of the importance of keeping your own records but I can’t understand how banks can be allowed to miscalculate funds. How can there be large discrepancies between bank statements and what you’ve actually spent? Shouldn’t your bank be, above all, an accurate source of financial information?</p>
<p>Well, as they said at the SALT treaty talks:</p>
<p>“Trust, but Verify”</p>
<p>bank’s ARENT allowed to miscalcualte funds. Doesnt mean that it doesnt happen. When it does, they will gladly correct the error in your favor (they may be required to by the gov or their own policy).</p>
<p>What if they misprocessed a check that you wrote or deposited, you simply would not catch it if you used their records. Its really not that hard to keep track, I just get a reciept for everything I use my card for and then take the receipts out and enter them in GnuCash every once in a while (takes no time, you just put in date/amount/and description and it has a wealth of categories to choose from). Then make sure that that information matches your online banking/statement.</p>
<p>okay, I undestand your point - “trust but verify” :)</p>
<p>Thank you all for the information.</p>
<p>OK, now for the slightly longer answer 
:</p>
<p>I’m a longtime user of Quicken and have to say it has made my life so much easier. I used to balance my checkbook manually, and never found it that big a deal, but Quicken totally spoiled me. It makes that little task even littler! And yes, you DO have to do this regularly because you must confirm that “what I think I have” is the same as “what the bank thinks I have”. However, Quicken is always urging you to download your bank or credit card transactions from the institution to save yourself the trouble of entering them manually, but I believe this is a very bad idea–again you’re simply trusting everyone else’s story and there’s no “your story” to check theirs against. Although it is true, banks rarely make mistakes, you must always keep in mind that nobody is EVER going to look out for your interest the way you can. </p>
<p>The other feature of Quicken I like is that once you’ve had it memorize all your scheduled income and bill expenses, you can see a graph of your bank balance out in the future. So if you’re wondering say, if you should buy a new laptop this month, you can plug in the amount and see if that will make you go “in the red” next month.
I hope this is helpful.</p>
<p>I need to start using some more advanced features of GnuCash, I only started a little while ago when I got a checking account (when I only used an ATM card, it wasnt worth keeping track of, just check the machine reciept each time). Once I have a more stable income, it would be nice to make graphs and such.</p>