Ugh!

I probably love Quicken because any credit card or bank account (MANY) I have had with them, have been easy to download, etc.

Not so for the Fidelity reward card. I can download all my transactions, but only at the end of the month, after the statement is closed.

Um, NOT helpful.

I had just sat down and had a financial meeting with dh, laying out how tight our budget is as we shoulder our own retirement contributions now. Retirement back to 10% is a must, January 1, and our budget is fine, but just not a lot of room for error.

I told dh we had $200/month Misc. spending and that at the beginning of every month we were going to have to keep a running total. Back to PAPER for that.

For the most part, this is fine. I can still look online and make sure I am capturing every misc. item (which shouldn't be that many). BUT, the other side is monitoring our gas usage and grocery purchases. 1 - to make sure we aren't going over budget. & 2 - to know which months we have more wiggle room due to lower grocery bills and stuff like that.

The only thing I can think of is to manually enter every gas and grocery purchase, into Quicken. (Then download the rest at the end of the month!) Manually write down every "Misc." purchase on paper. & the rest is rather fixed and can wait until the end of the month to download it.

It will be worth it, for the rewards. But will take some getting used to. I will also write them a letter about how I feel about their Quicken compatability - boo hiss. My little credit union let me download every day if I like. ???

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Dh landed a $65 focus group next week. IT's funny, because I will come home and literally have 4 messages from focus group companies, but we haven't qualified for any lately. (Actually, BM did one a toy one for a new company, but it turns out it was identical to one he did for our regular focus group company).

They have also been a little more "looking for moms" lately, whereas usually dh is the only one who qualifies for these since he does most the shopping. So he has been rather frustrated. Usually he will just say, "can I do it?" and he may qualify. These days, "women only!"

So, he is happy he got one.

I actually have to pay about $65 to renew my tax preparer PIN this year (it's a new thing, and my boss is being cheap, with the economy). SO, I figure that will pay for that!

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Dh is still working with the computer. He tried to convince me that spending $200 to upgrade our current computer was better than spending $250-ish for some crappy computer off Overstock.

I have been skeptical, and probably rightly so. So far, he has had to buy 2-3 parts rather unexpectedly because the old computer didn't have this compatibility or this compatibility. He had a hand-me-down external hard-drive, but then he couldn't hook it up AND hook up a DVD drive. The workaround cost money. His dad gave him a box that he had laying around, but the printer cable isn't compatible with the new box. Stuff like that! (I guess that would be a new computer problem too - fair enough).

HE worked all day on it Sunday and spent about $200. Yesterday he met his dad for spare/free computer parts. Last night he probably spent another $50. If his dad didn't live 100+ miles away, he'd probably have those parts too. But, he is anxious to complete the project. Was on hold all week until he was able to meet his dad (aka free computer part store - he is a hoarder of sorts).

I am hoping today it is up and running.

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I got my final Chase rebate. My Credit Union now offers remote scanning of deposits, so I am going to try that out this weekend. This check will be my test.