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.

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.

Nicholas emailed me with this question.

I’m trying to find some kind of free accounting software for balancing my checkbook, and that sort of thing. I already use Mint.com, but it isn’t much good if I plan on writing a check, or if I want to create a recurring transaction.

I don’t need something to actually connect to my bank account, although it would be convenient to be able to import transactions. I just need to be able to keep track of everything. Right now I’m using Excel, but Excel really isn’t meant to be this kind of tool. I’d appreciate any recommendations you might have. Thanks!

Nicholas is right about Mint, Yodlee MoneyCenter, and other online services. These websites rely on downloading information from banks, and banks don’t know when you write a check unless you have sophisticated business services. For Nicholas’s purposes, these services fall short.

If Intuit Quicken and Microsoft Money Plus are out of the question—and Nicholas’s requirement according to his email is free—then there aren’t many solutions available.

I would suggest GnuCash. GnuCash is free accounting software available for Linux and other flavors of Unix, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows. Like Quicken and Money, GnuCash allows you to track your financial accounts, including cash, credit, and investments.

Unlike Quicken and Money, the designers of GnuCash take an approach more true to professional accounting principles like double-entry accounting. While the more popular (and more expensive) software programs use “accounts” to represent assets and liabilities and use “categories” to record expenses and income, GnuCash considers assets, liabilities, income, and expenses to all be accounts. That means that every transaction is recorded as a transfer between two accounts.

It’s a little weird at first, but it begins to make more sense as you have more practice.

GnuCash will let you easily track your checkbook. When you create a new book of accounts (which GnuCash calls a file because the database is stored in a computer file), the default options include a checking account. You can use the default checking account, or add more if you have more than one to track, to keep your checkbook up to date.

When you write a check, you could record a decrease (GnuCash calls this a “withdrawal”) to your checking account and an increase (GnuCash calls this an “expense”) to the appropriate expense account, such as your telephone expense account. In this manner, your checking account in GnuCash will always match your checkbook. You will be able to see at a glance how much money you have truly available in the account, to help prevent overdrafts.

The problem with tracking a checking account is the reconciliation between your book of accounts (ledger) and the bank statement. If you have outstanding checks—checks you have sent out but haven’t been cashed by the recipients—then the balance in GnuCash won’t match the balance at the bank.

While the above method will be fine for most people and has the benefit of tracking the usable balance in your checking account, if you want to keep a true reconciliation, then you need an additional account. The other option is to create a liability account called “Outstanding Checks.”

When you write a check, record an increase to Outstanding Checks and an increase to the appropriate expense account, perhaps the telephone expense account like above. Then, once the phone company deposits your check and your bank has decreased your balance, you can record a decrease to Outstanding Checks and a decrease to your checking account.

Both options are accurate, so it’s up to you which method to use. If you download GnuCash, both options are free as well. GnuCash does more than just balance your checkbook, as well. It does more than you might expect from free software. Here are some of the features you might find useful:

• QIF and OFX support, so you can download files from your bank and reconcile your accounts
• Schedule recurring transactions
• Track your investment accounts and download stock prices
• Use multiple currencies
• Generate reports and graphs to illustrate your finances

There’s one drawback. If you want to run GnuCash on an operating system other than Windows, you’ll have to “compile” the software yourself. There are instructions for installing and using GnuCash here.

When it comes to tracking my daily spending, I’m not as diligent as I used to be. That’s due in part to laziness and part to the lack of necessity. Let me explain.

First, this topic was inspired by a recent email I received from a Consumerism Commentary reader. Nat asked: How do you keep track of all minutiae of sending? Do you charge everything on your credit card? All the little daily things. And then review your bill periodically? Or do you keep receipts? Jot it down?

Flashback to the 20th century. I had played with programs like the Microsoft Money free trials before so I was familiar with the notion of tracking spending with the intention of finding opportunities for improving my financial management. I was also familiar with my personal need to do something; I had a job but nothing in the way of savings to show for it. I did, however, have increasing debt.

It wasn’t until 2002 when I was out of work for a short time did I finally knock some sense into myself. Without spare funds to buy Money or Quicken, I downloaded the free (at the time) Moneydance and began tracking my expenses. I didn’t get very far right away, however.

When my monthly reports showed “Cash Withdrawal” as one of my largest expenses, I knew I wasn’t getting the information from the software necessary to make decisions about my finances. I knew what I had to do—I had to track every expenditure, even if I used cash.

I changed my methodology moving forward. I created a tracking account in Moneydance called “Cash.” When I withdrew money at the ATM from my checking account, I recorded it in the software as a transfer rather than an expense. Then when I spent that cash, say at the cafeteria at my new job or at the movies, I could list the transactions as outflows of cash, categorized as “food:convenience” or “entertainment:movies.”

For this to be successful, I had to be very diligent, almost (but not quite) obsessive. It was actually a very simple process. I would ask for receipts for everything and save the receipts in my wallet. At night I would dump my wallet onto the table and enter the day’s expenses, whether paid by cash or credit card, one by one into the software.

I’m saying that this is “not quite” obsessive. If I had been obsessive, I would have written down every purchase for which I could not be provided a receipt. I relied on my memory for many expenses, and I was usually able to do so because I opened Moneydance every evening.

I used the knowledge gained from tracking the minutiae, as well as from discussion boards like The Motley Fool where I learned about cash-back credit cards among other financial tidbits, to make better-informed decisions about spending and saving.

This continued for a while. As the availability of cash back credit cards increase, more and more of my spending was electronic. Eventually, I switched from Moneydance to Microsoft Money and finally Quicken to take advantage of more features, such as the automatic reconciliation of credit card transactions with the bank’s information, but the process remained fairly the same.

As the next few years progressed, I was managing to net anywhere from one thousand to several thousand dollars each month. That’s mainly due to increased income from a variety of sources, but also due to smart spending. I went without anything but the basic cable television for a while, I kept my rent expense low even when I was living alone, and I made sure I had a reliable car that did not guzzle gas and required little maintenance. For much of that time, I had no car and made use of public transportation almost exclusively, and even in New Jersey, that wasn’t easy.

In a few short years, I went from spending more than I was earning to just the opposite. And for the most part, the difference between my income and expense was large enough I wasn’t in any immediate danger of increasing my debt to pay for necessities. At this point, tracking every single cash expense is not worth the effort. I still collect my receipts, particularly for anything that may be a business-related expense, purchases with the possibility of being returned if defective, or large expenses in general. The receipts generally get filed away.

Every few days, I open Quicken to enter transactions. Now I rely on my memory for a large portion of my cash expenditures. I don’t fret over whether I get something exactly correct or if I miss something. I generally round up when figuring my cash expenses, so that pay make up for forgotten transactions.

This does affect the accuracy of my monthly financial reports, but the purpose of these reports has changed over the past few years. At first, I needed to know with good accuracy where my money was going in order to find ways to chip away at it from different angles. Now, I look at the big picture: how are my investments performing, am I seeing a decline in business income, how big of a vacation will I be able to afford, etc. This information and the decisions based thereon are not affected by the $7.00 I spend at the office cafeteria. I still try to account for everything, but I’m past the point of pseudo-obsession.

Photo credit: PPDIGITAL

Over the past week, I’ve been sharing some ideas for taking your savings to the next level. Try to take advantage of high-yield savings accounts while you sill can. With the economy in bad condition, it’s likely the Federal Reserve is going to lower the target interest rate, which will mean lower interest rates for savings accounts. Get the risk-free 5% interest rates while you still can. Compounding interest in these accounts is the acceleration that reaches “hyperdrive.”

But there is a challenge. In order to make the most of compounding interest, you can’t withdraw the money while it’s working for you. The more you don’t see or otherwise come into contact with your money, the less tempted you are to access and spend it. So here’s tip number five for putting savings in hyperdrive.

5. Hide Your Savings From Yourself

Once you have a positive approach to saving, including the prior hyperdrive suggestions of using a high-yield savings account and automating your savings, two clichés are important to remember: “Set it and forget it,” and “Out of sight, out of mind.”

While common sense says that the more attention you pay to something, the better off you are, I disagree in this case. More attention given to something that’s boring—interest accumulation, like watching grass grow—will sometimes create a frustration and a desire to do something more. Of course, investing for the long-term in the stock market will provide better returns, but for now, we’re just talking about short or medium-term saving. So if you have a tendency to fuss or futz, or if ATM access to your account introduces the desire to withdraw and spend your savings, cut off all but essential contact with that account.

I am not suggesting hiding money from your family. Hiding your money from yourself doesn’t mean you should keep accounts without your spouse’s knowledge.

1. Open a high-yield account at a new bank. Accounts at new banks are easy to forget about. By opening an account at a bank new to you, you haven’t created a habit of checking the balances online. Avoid starting this habit.

2. Sign up for paperless statements. Ensure you use an email address you don’t check often. This way you can access your tax forms and statements when you need to, but you don’t have a constant reminder.

3. Don’t include this account in your net worth. If you track your finances in software like Quicken, Microsoft Money, or Mint, leave this account out of your calculations. In Quicken, you can hide the accounts by clicking the “Customize” button at the bottom of the account sidebar. With the account hidden, you can still manage it within Quicken but keep it out of view and not include it in the totals. With Microsoft Money, Mint, and other software there is no “hide” function, so delete the account.

With your savings hidden away, your interest is free to accrue approaching light speed without interference.

Image credit: jpctalbot