But I have yet to see anyone pay homage to a feature in Quicken called the Memorized Payee List, so I'd like to do that now. Because it just saved me a bunch of freakin' hassle, as well as a return visit to the School of You-Men-Can't-Remember-Anything-That-Matters-In-A-Relationship-Can-You. This school, of course, is headmastered by my lovely wife. And because I'm a Busy Guy, with lots of Busy Guy Things going on in that Busy Guy Brain of mine, my trips to the Pricipal's Office are fairly routine.
Here's the scenario: Let's pretend it's slightly more than a week until Christmas. You and your Significant Other (S.O.) have agreed to buy each other something small — say, $50 or under, in antipation of a much larger "joint gift" (read: foundation repairs for your home) to be coming in the near future. You know for an ironclad fact that your S.O., being female and thus imminently capable of superhuman feats such as Kid Hairstyling, Non-Boxed-Gift Giftwrapping, and Holiday Pre-Planning, has already gotten your "small gift" handled.
You, however, are still spinning tires. You're wondering what the heck you can get her that can POSSIBLY live up to the glory that was the gift you MEANT to give her last year — the gift you WOULD have given her, at EXACTLY the right time, if ONLY you'd have remembered to put it in her stocking, INSTEAD of in that outside pocket of your briefcase that you only open about once every 3 leap years.
Anyhow, it's just over a week 'til Christmas. You overhear a woman in your accounting department lament the sad quality of the last batch of makeup she purchased from someplace just outside Seattle. It occurs to you that there's an obscure, mail-order cosmetics company whose products your SO just adores, just can't get enough of, and that this company could provide a near-perfect solution to your gift-giving quandary. Why, you could have them send your wife a Gift Certificate! Yes! That would work fabulously! Like mistletoe works for kisses!Except, of course, that there's a roadblock, and it's called Reality.
Look, you're a Busy Guy. Your Busy Guy Brain cannot possibly be expected to remember the name of some regional cosmetics company — if you can't remember the name of the cosmetics conglomerate that a hottie like Josie Maran (Obligatory Guy Linkage (NSFW)) modeled for, there's no way you'll remember the name of some rinky-dink local outfit on the west coast, no matter how great their Raspberry Scalp Balm is. Not any more than your brain could remember the fourth ingredient in your wife's mom's family-secret recipe for peanut brittle. (Who needs to know that, anyway? Other than your wife. And maybe her mom. Sheesh.)
So what do you do, Busy Guy? Well, you search Google, of course. You look for cosmetics distributors based around San Francisco. (That much you do remember, if only because your feeble Busy Guy Brain knows San Fran has a pro football team, and so it was able to make a tenuous connection of sorts.)
But Google, of course, comes up empty.
What then?
Well, you refill your stapler. Check your email. Organize a few claims.
And then it hits you.
Quicken.
Ah yes. The Memorized Payee List.
You've bought from these guys before, right? So they'll be in your Memorized Payee List! Yeah, it's been a while, but that doesn't matter; they're in there!
You fire up the list, scroll down slowly, and sure enough, there's the name of the outfit. It gleams back at you like the lights of a Coast Guard cutter gleam at a castaway on some remote island:
DHC.
One phone call, maybe five minutes tops, and you are golden.
Go ahead, Busy Guy. Buy yourself a Coke. You've earned it.
And some people think Quicken is overpriced.
