New Quicken user needs encouragement

I don't want to have to tell you this, but my budget is nine months out of date.

I love spending time on financial planning and all things money-related. The problem is I only have a finite amount of time. For years I was meticulous about keeping tabs on what we spent our money on. At first I did it on paper. Then I graduated to Excel. Last fall, four things happened.

1. I bought a new computer
2. That computer had Quicken on it and I decided to take the plunge
3. I started this blog
4. I took on a big freelance project and increased hours at my dayjob

Well, I decided to abandon my painstaking Excel budget, so I began to configure Quicken. I got as far as adding a couple of accounts. Then work and the blog started to absorb more of my time and I just never finished configuring Quicken. I've been muddling along with no real monitoring of my spending ever since, beyond a general committment to frugality.

Well, with my recent overspending debacle, and a general feeling of suppressed panic whenever I open my checkbook, I've decided it's time to dust off my budgeting skills and see where all that money is going.

Tonight I'm trying to get Quicken configured. There have been a few distractions along the way. I downloaded a Quicken update. I downloaded the data from my primary checking account. Then I started to try to download data from ING, but realized if I was going to have to configure my browser to do it, I'd rather NOT use IE, and my only other choice is Firefox. I've been meaning to download Firefox at home for months, although I'm pretty happy with Safari for everything except dealing with Blogger. So now I gotta download Firefox.

While I was doing that I thought I'd write a post looking for a chorus of encouragement from the Quicken devotees among us (Julie? And who else?)

The big problem here is that I've been putting this off for so long that it's taken on all the weight and dread of the geometry homework I handed in MONTHS late in the tenth grade. My parents were getting divorced, so my teachers gave me all kinds of breaks and extensions. That meant that for months I had a boatload of homework hanging over my head. No matter what I was doing, I felt that I should really be doing that geometry work. It got harder and harder as time went on.

I'm determined to get Quicken up and running. Any tips for me? Any rave reviews of Quicken? Is it worth all the trouble? Anybody want to come over to my house and set it up for me? My honey is making potato salad from scratch in the kitchen while I'm working on this in the dining room. I'm sure if you came over here he'd make a nice batch of raspberry ice tea, and give you some fresh potato salad with leeks. Any takers? Please?

You can see how badly I want to get out of this. They should have made procrastination one of the seven deadly sins.