Personal Financial Software Comparison

Easy to Use Personal Financial Software

There are lots of ways to get your finances under control. Personally, I like to use my computer for just about everything financial.

I check my brokerage accounts, checking accounts and credit card statements, make payments and money transfers and pay all my bills online.

I believe that just about every bill can be paid online, either through the creditor’s website or by using Checkfree or other bill paying services. I think once you try this, you’ll quickly get hooked on saving so much time and money not writing checks, licking stamps, etc.

Paying online also eliminates a lot a problems arising from late payments. Many of us cut the due date too closely and the check might arrive a day late. Or the bank will only credit payments received before a certain time on the due date, say 10 AM. Miss that and here comes another $35 late charge.

With online payments you can schedule a payment for a certain date and be pretty sure it will get there on time, although it’s still a good idea to try to schedule the payment at least a day ahead of the due date.

Personal Financial Software Comparison

Microsoft Money and Intuit’s Quicken are the major competitors in the individual and small business financial software field. If you aren’t already using one of these financial software packages, you should consider doing so.

Each company sells various grades of their financial software packages from regular through deluxe and premier.

Each has a different set of features, with the higher grades usually having more financial planning, investing and accounting tools.

Each also sells a small business package: Microsoft Business and Quicken Premier Home & Business. These packages offer tools specifically oriented to small & home business needs, such as invoicing, inventory control and customer management, as well as the personal financial tools the other programs offer. If you have a small business, these financial software programs should meet all your needs.

Money Premium and Quicken Premier do pretty much the same things. Both are easy to set up and use. Both give you the tools you need to download and pay your bills on-line, manage your investments and plan for your retirement.

You can schedule your bills to be paid months in advance. In the long run, it’s best to pay your bills early anyway. Using the automatic features of these programs, you can forever avoid making a late payment again.

Another handy feature is automatic checkbook balancing, although this is not as perfect as it should be. I have been using this feature for at least 10 years now and about once every six months or so, either a payment fails to show up or a debit is charged twice. So you still have to keep a eye on things. However, it’s much more exact than manual methods and you should be able to avoid overdrafts more consistently.

Finally, the higher end versions of these financial software programs contain planning modules, one of which is a program to help you retire debt more quickly. It pulls all your debts from other parts of the program, asks you the interest you pay on each and how much more you can afford to pay down debt each month.

It then generates a report outlining exactly what you have to do to be debt free by a certain date. Following a plan like this can cut years and thousands of dollars off your total debt.

This service can be bought elsewhere for $20 - $25 dollars. But you must reveal your indebtedness online to some business that will prepare the report. Some of these businesses will use the information to sell you their financial products. With Money and Quicken, you can keep this information to yourself and get the same results.

Once you’re debt free, these financial software programs help track your savings and investments and help you plan for major expenses, like a house purchase, college tuition or retirement.

Recommendations

Money Premium used to include a lot of extras that Quicken charged extra for, like two years of online bill paying.

But that is no longer the case. Money still includes a year of tax preparation and a free credit report and credit monitoring. This would cost extra if you use Quicken.

If you don’t want to pay for online bill paying through these financial software programs, there are some options to explore. The bank where you maintain your checking account might offer this service for free or at a reduced rate.

Most credit card companies have there own websites which you can register to use. You can pay that company’s bill there (some allow you to schedule payments in advance). You might also be able to pay all your bills on some of these sites. It’s a hassle to go to every site every month, but it saves you a bit of money and also gives you the opportunity to see if any unauthorized charges are taking place.

You’ll soon be able to get credit reports for free from each of the major credit bureaus once a year (in some parts of the country this program is already in effect), The only real extra Money provides is the tax return, which would cost you $20 using Quicken’s Turbo Tax. Since reviewers of Money have given it poor marks for some of the same problems I experienced when I tried to use it, mainly having to do with the initial setup, I would recommend Quicken Premier .

I have used Quicken Premier for years and have been very happy with it. It is a full featured, but easy to use personal financial software program.

Once tax time comes, you can export the necessary numbers directly into Quicken´s popular Turbo Tax Federal & State tax preparation software packages.

It also includes just about every financial planning module and calculator you´ll every need.

Incidentally you are supposed to be able to transfer your data between Money and Quicken using the import or export feature. But I have found that something always gets lost in the translation.

So I would recommend you pick one of these programs and stay with it if you should decide to upgrade. Both are excellent and I don't think there is anything to gain by switching back and forth.

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