Quicken 2009: The Missing Manual

Chapter 9. Tracking Property and Debt

As you learned in Chapter 3, you use asset accounts to track the things you own (property) and loan or debt accounts to track what you owe (debt, also known as liabilities). You don’t have to monitor every last penny in Quicken, but the more you do, the more benefits you’ll reap. For example, set up a mortgage account, and the program automatically reminds you when it’s payment time. So you can say goodbye to those pesky late fees and, more important, measure your progress in that long journey toward actually owning your house. And, with a clear picture of assets and liabilities, Quicken can do things like calculate your net worth (the value of your assets minus whatever you owe)—a good way to check your financial health.

This chapter shows you how to set up Quicken to track assets and debts. Once you’ve done that, you can spend your time thinking about more exciting things—like what to do with all that money Quicken saved you in late fees.

Property and Debt: An Introduction

To make the most of Quicken’s property- and debt-tracking features, it helps to understand a few basic concepts:

• Assets are things you own that have value: your house, car, appliances, and that baseball signed by Mickey Mantle. By tracking the value of your assets in Quicken, you’re on your way to figuring out how much you’re really worth.

  Quicken’s asset, loan, and debt accounts have registers—just like checking accounts. As you can see in Figure 9-1, transactions you record ...