Geek Squad just called. They can recover the Quicken file off my old PC for only $519. I can probably buy a new PC for that, which I guess I will have to do, along with another copy of Quicken, if I want to get back up and running. If you haven’t read previous blogs on this, the short of it is that since I moved to my Mac, I’ve been running my personal finances on Quicken on a computer purchased in 2002. This is the only left over process/technology from my PC days. The Mac version of Quicken just didn’t offer all the functionality I “needed” and most importantly couldn’t import my data, which has every transaction back to 1997.

If a process improvement firm offered me a consultation, they would probably ask me why I’m doing this process anyway. It surely does not change my spending habits. It kind of supports my business expense data gathering, but there would probably be a more efficient way to do that. Really, I just can’t let go of the ability to run all these reports on my data. I find it all kind of interesting. And I get to relive happy moments by seeing where I went to dinner or what fun toy I bought.

It makes me wonder how many processes and technologies are in organizations just because people can’t let go of their old way of doing things. It IS hard … so hard to let go. I promise to be more compassionate when I tell people their processes and technologies are antiquated and not achieving their business objectives.

P.S. I do welcome advice on better ways of managing this; maybe if I can come up with one I can give up on this file, and the antiquated process and technology. I haven’t let go yet, even though I do think this is some kind of sign from the universe that something needs to change.