You know you’ve been ordering take-out too often when Quicken believes it’s a bill and wants to schedule a regular recurring transaction to Sultan Wok Chinese and Japanese Restaurant.
By the way, I have a copy of a free copy of Quicken Basic 2007. Comment here with the strangest thing you’ve ever entered into Quicken (or Microsoft Money, or any other financial tracking software), or just say hi. I’ll pick a random commenter to receive the free software, provided by Jim Del Favero, Quicken Product Manager.
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All of my entries are boring, but I have to say that you just made me feel a WHOLE lot better about my eating-out, since I’ve never had Quicken try to do that :)
The strangest thing that I’ve put into Money, hrm…I’m not sure. I haven’t had any odd things try to come up as recurring transactions.
I do have a lot of marathon entry fees in there; that would be strange for most people I would think. Does that count?
Sure, I think that counts. You could make it stranger by setting up a new currency to represent miles and track how far you run each day.
I once entered snorkeling gear rental as a work related expense. I was down in Key Largo and I needed to see a coral reef restoration project for my job. I never thought I’d have snorkeling gear as a work related expense. My office’s accounting department even questioned the expense. The guy in accounting never really did believe me, lol.
Strangest? Hard to say, but we put in absolutely everything, from penny bets to cars, so there must be something in there. If I had to guess, it’d be either child related or vacation related (you can find some weird stuff out there).
Similar to too eating so much take out that Quicken suggests them as scheduled transactions, it once suggested that we schedule Mon Ami Gabi, a restaurant in Vegas. We don’t live in Vegas.
I haven’t used any budgeting software yet, so I don’t have a “strange thing” to comment with. Although once I put a dinner at IHOP down as a school expense – I had to take my roommate out to dinner there as payment for driving me around for film school related things.
Um… I just checked and my 2005 Quicken wants to schedule something called “U2 Red Lobster 00062 Overland”. I’m not going to say what that is, other than I am ashamed to print it here! Maybe I should take another look at the budget feature on Quicken??
As the best man I threw a bachelor party road trip to Chicago. One of the passengers was a blow-up doll, that was a pretty interesting ledger entry.
Streetwise or donations to homeless people I encounter during the day. I categorize the cash donations as ‘charity’, but obviously, I don’t deduct the amounts when I do my taxes.
I don’t use quicken right now…I use a pretty ghetto excel spreadsheet to track everything. Time to upgrade!
$1.20 late fee I accrued sometime during my last semester at college that prevented them from sending me my diploma.
You couldn’t pay me to use Quicken, but the strangest thing I would put in there is the cost of that software. Ha!
Hey. Don’t have anything to list as I currently don’t use any program. Interested to see if it might benefit me though.
Thanks for the blog.
Hi!
Hello,
I just started using MSMoney last year. So far I have liked the pretty graphs, but would love to try out the competition’s software.
I have no weird entries yet : )
I currently enter everything into ledger by hand. This software would allow me to save time, but still remain fiscally responsible.
Thank you!
I definitely need to work on getting my finances in order – I know Quicken is only one of the programs out there that does this right?
Some people might think “vegan dress shoes + shipping” as multiple levels of strange, but not if they know my avoidance of leather. :)
(Skip me for the giveaway; I already have “Premier” as a gift from someone.)
I want quicken!!
I have a “God only knows” category. It’s used for cash expenses mostly when I am on vacation or otherwise computer-less. It has, on one occasion, been used for something I would have preferred to not see in writing…
(I already have Quicken and don’t need another copy)
Nothing because I don’t have Quicken (yet)! :)
I had an entry from a little over a year ago out of my misc. cash as, Phoenix Zoo, drunken shenanigans, and Dimondbacks baseball game. Probably should have been separate entries, but based on the drunken shenanigans I probably didn’t remember all the details :)
I had some other weird ones from when I first started using Quicken, but I thought that was kind of funny.
I used to enter dating as an expense category and the name of the date in the memo field. I could then run transaction reports filtered by the name in the memo field.
“You never take me anywhere…” Oh I disagree and so does Quicken.
Clearly I need to get out of the office more.
i haven’t used tracking software yet!
does it cause more guilt than the purchases list on credit card statements (which i do pay in full monthly)?
Hi, I want Quicken…
Thanks, everyone! The winner has been selected, but a new contest is starting tomorrow morning.