Best Software to Manage Your Money
Your computer can greatly simplify your financial life–especially if you have the right software. The following programs can balance your checkbook, pay your bills electronically, create a budget, simplify preparation of your tax return, track spending…even provide financial advice.
Manage Money
Quicken and Microsoft Money are the leading software competitors in this arena. Both give you extensive control over all your finances in one place—and they’re easy to use.
In addition to the standard functions, the advanced versions of Quicken or Money allow you to monitor a wide range of investment accounts at a variety of locations, compare investment values and organize your financial planning more efficiently. Just tell the program where you have individual brokerage or mutual fund accounts. It will guide you to each company’s Web site, where you can set up an easy download of your investing details into your software.
Various versions of each program are available. You might want to start with the most basic version of either Quicken or Microsoft Money to see how much you like it. Quicken, which has 70% of the market for this type of software, allows you to automatically connect to many more financial institutions—without reentering your individual passwords—than Money does.
How to Buy
- For Quicken: At www.Quicken.com, you can download Quicken Basic for $29.99 or order a CD that will be mailed to you. The Deluxe version, for $49.99, and the Premier version, for $69.99, allow for more elaborate financial planning, investment tracking and tax-related decisions.
- For Money: Go to www.microsoft.com/money. The basic version, called Essentials, is $19.99…the Deluxe version is $29.99, after a $20 rebate…and the Premium version is $49.99, after a $30 rebate.
Prepare Taxes
Once you have organized your finances on-line, it would be a shame to go back to paper and pencil when tax time comes.
TurboTax and TaxCut integrate with Quicken and Money, respectively. Each offers on-line and telephone help if you need it, although the programs are so simple that you probably can do it all on your own.
For an extra $39.95, TurboTax users can E-mail federal tax questions to a tax adviser and get personalized help by phone or E-mail within 48 hours.
TaxCut works in conjunction with H&R Block tax professionals, for an additional fee of $19.95.
Compare features at www.TurboTax.com and www.TaxCut.com.
TurboTax costs $14.95 to $49.95, plus $25.95 for a feature that transfers information to a state form. TaxCut costs $9.95 to $59.95, which includes state tax transfer in some versions.
On-Line Portfolio Help
You don’t have to buy a software package to get help with your portfolio. One of the best programs is available free on the Internet.
Well-known mutual fund rating firm Morningstar offers elaborate portfolio-tracking tools on its Web site (www.morningstar.com), and many can be used for free. Click the “portfolio” tab on the site to open an account. When you enter your investment holdings, the site examines how sensitive your portfolio would be to changes in interest rates…determines whether you have overweighted an industry or investment style…and whether your funds charge too much for expenses.
For $145 per year, you can sign up for the site’s Premium features, and Morningstar’s software will take a look inside your mutual funds to see whether your combination of fund holdings has created a potentially dangerous concentration of any particular stocks.
Premium users also gain access to Morningstar’s detailed reports on thousands of stocks and mutual funds.
Bottom Line/Personal interviewed Terry Savage, syndicated personal finance columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. She is author of numerous books on personal finance, including The Savage Truth on Money (Wiley). www.terrysavage.com
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