Woody Allen once said that 80 percent of success is just showing up. You could also say that 80 percent of financial success is just keeping track.
Knowing what you have stops you from bouncing checks; knowing how your investments are performing helps you move toward your goals. Trouble is, keeping track can be a royal pain in the posterior. A personal-finance program can ease the ache. Here are our six faves.
• Microsoft Money Plus, Windows; $20 to $90, depending on version
• Quicken, Windows, Mac; $30 to $100
These two programs dominate for good reason. Both let you download your bank and credit card info and pay bills and manage investments online, creating cool charts and tables along the way.
Both offer everything from a cheap basic version (if you're looking for little more than a system for balancing your checkbook) to a pricier one with sophisticated tools to help you pay down debt, save for retirement and more.
Both give tax advice and let you transfer your data into tax prep programs like Intuit's TurboTax and H&R Block's TaxCut .
The 2008 editions of these programs, out this month, include several new features meant to help you budget and track expenditures more precisely. (The 2008 versions were unavailable at press time; we tested the 2007 versions.)
Bottom line: You can't go wrong with either program. (If you're a Mac user, your only option here is Quicken.) Quicken and Money aren't perfect, though. They're so big that they can run slowly and be difficult to navigate.
Annoyingly, both try to sell you on other products and services. And they're not cheap especially if you factor in their monthly fee for online bill paying ($6 with Money; $10 with Quicken).
Reference: http://www.yoolk.my/Business-Services/
Knowing what you have stops you from bouncing checks; knowing how your investments are performing helps you move toward your goals. Trouble is, keeping track can be a royal pain in the posterior. A personal-finance program can ease the ache. Here are our six faves.
• Microsoft Money Plus, Windows; $20 to $90, depending on version
• Quicken, Windows, Mac; $30 to $100
These two programs dominate for good reason. Both let you download your bank and credit card info and pay bills and manage investments online, creating cool charts and tables along the way.
Both offer everything from a cheap basic version (if you're looking for little more than a system for balancing your checkbook) to a pricier one with sophisticated tools to help you pay down debt, save for retirement and more.
Both give tax advice and let you transfer your data into tax prep programs like Intuit's TurboTax and H&R Block's TaxCut .
The 2008 editions of these programs, out this month, include several new features meant to help you budget and track expenditures more precisely. (The 2008 versions were unavailable at press time; we tested the 2007 versions.)
Bottom line: You can't go wrong with either program. (If you're a Mac user, your only option here is Quicken.) Quicken and Money aren't perfect, though. They're so big that they can run slowly and be difficult to navigate.
Annoyingly, both try to sell you on other products and services. And they're not cheap especially if you factor in their monthly fee for online bill paying ($6 with Money; $10 with Quicken).
Reference: http://www.yoolk.my/Business-Services/
1 comment:
Nice and to the point review. I have posted a review myself on my blog.
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