Delighted that you are successful with an Excel spreadsheet. As you might imagine, as a CPA, I am quite comfortable with Excel. I stipulate that Quciken is fundamentally nothing more than a sophisticated spread sheet in a convenient form. Have you considered though that the average person is not as competent with Excel as you and I are?
Do you really think that a short course in Excel will allow the average businessman/homeowner to construct a sophisticated spreadsheet that will allow him to handle his finances, have one button comparisons for virtually any period of time, memorize payees, account distributions and auto complete entries? How about sophisticated "find" functions that allow searching using any number of specific parameters?
Or automatically generate a paper check with one keystoke that will include the payees address and a memorized account number?
Sorry, but while Excel in the hands of a skilled user may be capable of replicating the functionality of the Intuit software, I suggest that most folks would rather pay $39 for Quicken or $100 for Quickbooks than spend endless hours developing and tweaking and most importantly beta testing such a spreadsheet. I can probably produce the same results using Excel; question is why would I bother?
Point taken - I have a take on Excel work like the mechanical design, you learn as an engineer. The people, who learned it by the basics, using pen and ruler are able to design the same product as the kids, who learned everything just by CAD and can't imagine, how complicated constructs like automobiles where designed by hand just 20 years ago (Adrian Newey, the genius race car designer still does his job by hand and designed winning cars like the McLaren Mercedes or the Red Bull F1).
Excel does everything, with the knowledge and experience, how to do.
My parents, not really into numbers and computers do their house hold just by Excel and self developed spreadsheets. They had their time though:smile:.
I for my self prefer to learn things from scratch - it's a character thing, that helped me through my entire professional life. I never have no diploma, nor any certificates, but I learned my way around my business from using simple tools over machines to mechanical engineering in prototyping and casting to managing a company just by my natural curiousity and will to learn.
Excel is a really small stone in the way and a powerful and necessary tool, to come around in working life.
Other tools (quicken or whatnot) give instant gratification, but do not teach a process. Pull the plug out of the computer and the experienced Quicken user is toast - the Excel guy takes out a pen, a sheet of paper and a calculator and just works. (In Shanghai, there are a few days in the year, where the officials shut down electricity - no reason, to stop working in our company :smile
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Sorry for the lamentating - hope, it helps some young guys, who still pick their path and my bad English (which I learned by watching movies and reading books :wink
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