Quicken Naggers

In the genx conference, which is essentially a placeholder for talking about anything and everything, there's a topic (1801) called "HELLO forevermore", a long-standing WELL tradition of topics called "HELLO" where the postings can be about anything but usually start as "HELLO, my car didn't start today, and I found out it's going to cost $1100 to fix" or "HELLO, my boss just fired the whole department, then said he was kidding!".

Today someone posted something about his having to pay taxes using money from his 401K. The reponses that followed alternated between gasps of horror and comforting reassurances. Then (lendie), an accountant, replied urging the original poster to reconsider tapping money out of their 401K, that there were other, safer methods. I responded:

Finally, an instance where a talking Microsoft paperclip might be useful: you're in the middle of Quicken, and it notices you're withdrawing money from your 401K to pay other bills, and before you can do the withdraw a Quicken wizard pops up and says, "Whoa dude, you'e doing what? Here. There's a better way that avoids penalties..."

Call it Lendie[tm]!

Another WELL person (mtrbike) responded with a great idea of "Quicken Naggers" -- and provided a list of things a Quicken Nagger (think Intuit version of that awful MSFT paperclip) would nag you about, as if it were your own personal comptroller.

Intuit, are you listening?

Posted by brian at April 14, 2004 02:51 PM | TrackBack

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