The new versions of all the Quicken products are available to purchase starting today, and shipping of the new software will begin on September 9. Intuit, the company that develops the Quicken software and owns the brand, is offering some special discounts to certain websites including Consumerism Commentary. I was not selected to be included in the Quicken 2009 beta test, so I have not seen the software yet. I will most likely download the latest version and share my thoughts as soon as possible.
I’ve been generally happy with my switch from Microsoft Money to Quicken several years ago. There were some improvements I hoped for last year after my dissatisfaction with the earliest release of Quicken 2007 and my reconsideration after Intuit released some fixes. None of the ideas on my wish list were included in the 2008 version, so I’d like to get a look at any improvements in the newest release.
Here are the products now available as well as the discounted price for each. These prices beat even those listed by Amazon.com. All of these products except for the Online Edition can be ordered as CD-ROMs to be delivered to you or as direct downloads.
| Quicken 2009 Home & Business | $79.99 (20% discount) |
| Quicken 2009 Premier | $71.99 (20% discount) |
| Quicken 2009 Deluxe | $44.99 (25% discount) |
| Quicken Mac | $38.49 (23% discount) |
| Quicken 2009 Rental Property Manager | $119.99 (20% discount) |
| Quicken Medical Expense Manager | $44.79 (36% discount) |
| Quicken Home Inventory Manager | $23.99 (20% discount) |
| Quicken Online Edition | As of October 13, 2008, Quicken Online is free |
More discounted Quicken products and other deals are available here.
I will continue to be a Quicken user. There have been many attempts to develop web-based software for money management, including Mint, Geezeo, and even Quicken Online (review here). None of these programs suit my needs at this point.
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8:54 am (reply)
Your link for Quicken 2009 for Mac points to an Intuit page for Quicken 2007 for Mac. There won’t be a new Quicken for Mac users until Quicken Financial Life for Mac is released this winter, and it won’t be anywhere near feature parity with Quicken Windows.
9:03 am (reply)
Andy: Thanks for pointing that out. Quicken Mac hasn’t been updated; neither has Medical Expense Manager or Home Inventory Manager. It’s a shame that Quicken Mac isn’t on par with the Windows software.
The deals above are for the latest versions of each software—I’ve removed the “2009” from the software that haven’t been updated.
10:32 pm (reply)
Cool! I used Quicken for a few years and then switched to Google Docs Spreadsheets since my expense tracking is relatively straightforward. Maybe I’ll look into Quicken again.
12:36 pm (reply)
We’re looking forward to your review of Quicken 2009. We are new users of Quicken, still stumbling our way through, and wonder if 2009 will be worth it for us.
6:03 pm (reply)
We tend to upgrade only every-other year as a way of staying current, but not spending too much money on money-management software. Don’t forget that it’s only 12 months till Quicken 2010, which will have all the improvements in 2009 and more :).
Quicken Premier 2008 (what we have) isn’t perfect, but especially after the latest fixes, works well enough for us for the time being.
9:38 am (reply)
Quicken gets worse with every year’s release. There are so many bugs in Quicken 2009 that I would not recommend it even to my bug exterminator. I had been a Quicken user for 15 years, and have participated in the last two years beta tests. The final product was as bad as the beta version. Head my warning, use Microsoft money, and do not buy this product.
1:29 am (reply)
Warning – Do not purchase your new 2009 copy of Quicken in response to the mailer advertising a $50 Amazon gift card for the 1st 50 people to order online. It’s false advertising. There is no Amazon Gift certificate. I was the fool and fell for it – no mention about a gift card anywhere on their site during the multi-page ordering process.
I contacted all three support options – chat, email and phone – and none were aware of the offer. When I produced the mailer I got this explanation: “This is because if you would be 51st customer to avail this offer, then you would not be able to avail this offer. Unfortunately, we would not be able to tell you if you are availing this offer.” Their response, no edits.
I realize I was probably the 542nd person to place the order and had no chance at the card but the principal of the issue is, if you advertise it, it better be on the site.
7:19 pm (reply)
Don’t waste your time. All you have to do is read Quicken’s own community blog on their website. For those who wish to track their investment performance on their Quicken.com website forget it. They recently released a new un-working version which has been out of commission for over a month since they released it. You will also get an earful about all the problems users are experiencing with the 2009 product.
8:56 am (reply)
I strongly suggest NOT upgrading to Quicken 2009. I’ve been working for two weeks to get my Expense statements to function properly. So far, I have made no expenses in September, and all my September income is also added to August. Data downloads from financial institutions work only as manual data downloads and entry. As Pam above indicated, if you peruse the Quicken Community Forums, you’ll notice that there is NO online support from Quicken for multiple errors. After weeks, they have not even had the courtesy to say, “We’re working on it.”
The product is not ready for use, and if you actually need a money management program, you will waste hours needlessly.
9:31 am (reply)
I upgraded to Quicken 2009 Deluxe six weeks ago. Q2008 and all prior versions back to 1996 used to change the account order instantly: now it takes 60 seconds to change the order of each account. Moving one account up 10 places takes 10 minutes. After long discussions with their Helpdesk in New Delhi and their many unsuccessful attempts to improve performance, the best Quicken can come up with is for me to chop off many years’ data, make the file smaller! They claim that no-one else has reported this problem, that I am the only one in the world experiencing this, so it must be my problem, not theirs.
7:00 pm (reply)
I am a long-time user of Quicken (with our household’s data since early 2001 still all in one file!). Our current version is 2006 Deluxe and we use it on a Windows 2000 machine at 550gHz. There are times when I get a delay of several seconds, but nothing very long (as described by Jimfrisco 10/4/08).
We recently bought a Vista machine for household use. The 2009 upgrades will not work on the Windows 2000 machine where our current Quicken program and files are, so I will have to move them over to this new machine if I would like to upgrade.
TWO QUESTIONS:
IS IT IMPORTANT TO UPGRADE FROM THE 2OO6 VERSION? WHY?
ASSUMING AN UPGRADE IS DESIRABLE, WHAT WOULD BE THE EASIEST, CHEAPEST, AND SAFEST WAY TO MOVE OUR WHOLE QUICKEN OPERATION OVER TO THE VISTA MACHINE?
8:55 am (reply)
Three more phone chats with New Delhi: Mang, Preet and Deepak, probably aliases. The first and second acknowledged that I am not the only one with this problem, but it is not widespread. The third said that (1) it is known issue with many complaints (2) he personally has the same problem with his own data on Q2009 and (3) management is well aware of the problem but so far have refused to do anything about it. Mang and Preet both said it was caused by my own corrupt data, but after validating and then supervalidating my data file, both opined that the problem is caused by my data file being too big.
Deepak explained that when moving account positions in Q2008 and earlier versions, small blocks of accounts were put into memory; Q2009 puts ALL the accounts into memory. No wonder movement is so slow!
So, I saved my data file for years 1996 thru 2006 (271 accounts) and now have only 2007 – 2008 data accessible (121 accounts) with Q2009. Still slower at 10 seconds per move, but a great improvement over the 60 seconds per move I had previously suffered.
Summary: I sincerely regret upgrading to Q2009, what a colossal waste of my time that has caused. Never again!
2:36 pm (reply)
I have purchased quicken every year for years until last year. Last year there were not enough bells and whistles added to justify the expense. This year I was going to upgrade until I visited the Quicken website and noticed all the problems. I am not willing to purchase a product with all the problems people are encountering. I will stick with my version of two years ago. I know someone who was just laid off of Intuit. I wonder if something has happened to Intuit.that is making the company falter. I am interested in this sites review of the product.
2:48 pm (reply)
Mark: I’ve also heard there are a few bugs. I now have Quicken Home & Business 2009 in my possession. I hope to post a review shortly.
3:43 pm (reply)
I bought and used Quicken 2009 for about a week. I returned it for a full refund – Intuit is good about that! The program has many flaws and if you are of user of Goal Accounts you should be aware that Goal account functionality has been removed. The accounts remain, but the task associated with them have to be accomplished differently. The downloading of stock prices didn’t work even for the indexes so most investment reports were trash. The “fixes” given on the website did not work. The one function they should have thrown out – My Savings Plan – they left and it’s as seemed worthless as ever.
I’ll be sticking with Q 2008…