SOFTWARE - PART 2

Financial Software

Financial software can save you time and money. You can record checks, print checks, easily balance your checkbook, electronically pay bills, set reminders you to pay bills, print reports and more. The two major financial programs are Quicken and Microsoft Money.

Quicken

Quicken Basic 2007 is the version that I would recommend for most home users. It is not expensive and has all the features you'll need. Setting up your bank accounts is a simple process. If your bank supports online banking, you can pay bills through Quicken Bill Pay.

• The program's home page shows all of your accounts, cash flow, upcoming bills and deposits, and more. There's also a calendar which shows due dates of bills.
• Most of the time, you'll be using account registers. You manually enter your deposits, checks, withdrawals and Quicken assists you in creating and tracking them. You can easily choose a transaction by type by picking from a list (which you can add to) that has choices such as ATM withdrawal, deposit, online payment, or printed check. Quicken Basic also lets you print checks if you desire.
• Quicken remembers payees you've already entered, letting you pick them from a list. New payees automatically go into the list.
• In addition to assigning a type to each transaction, you can also associate categories you create, such as "Food", letting you track your spending habits. When you go to the category field of a transaction, the last category you entered for that payee appears, but you can override that. The software lets you split transactions among categories, assigning a certain portion of one purchase to "Food" and another part to "Household" for example.
• Reports and graphs are available as well. The program can easily manage the basics of investments, property, and debt.

Quicken Basic 2007
Rating:
Price (Dec. 2006): $29.99
Click here for details on Quicken's unconditional 60-day money back satisfaction guarantee.

Click here for a review of Quicken Basic 2007 from PC Magazine.

Microsoft Money Essentials

Microsoft Money Essentials is the most basic version of this program. It was designed for those who haven't used personal finance software before.

• This program has all the tools to manage personal finance basics such as paying bills, tracking account balances and cash flow and monitoring spending.
• You can create a simple budget with preset categories for regular expenses such as "Food" and "Auto Maintenance".
• Schedule and pay bills automatically with Microsoft Money Essentials Bills.
• Create reports such as budget reports, spending by category or payee, net worth, credit card debt and investment portfolio reports to analyze your personal finances.
• Microsoft Money Essentials which includes free downloads from financial institutions for one year. There will be an annual fee for continued downloading when a year of use is up. Money Essentials won't import data from any other other personal finance software.

Microsoft Money Essentials
Rating:
Price (Dec. 2006): $19.99
Click here for a free 90 day trial of Microsoft Money Essentials.

Click here for a review of Microsoft Money Essentials from PC Magazine.

Tax Preparation Software

TaxCut
Rating:
Price (Jan. 2007): $29.95 for State and Federal edition
TaxCut is ideal for simple tax returns. Also, TaxCut offers "Worry-Free Audit Support" to defend your tax return at an IRS audit for no additional charge.

TaxACT
Rating:
Price (Jan. 2007): FREE to $19.95
TaxACT is recommended for people with simple tax returns to prepare. TaxACT has an interview-mode called "Q&A".

TurboTax
Rating:
Price (Jan. 2007): $19.95 for Basic edition (State package not included)
TurboTax features an excellent tax interview system and easy to use navigation. The "Maximize My Deductions" button, will guide you step-by-step through the most popular deductions.

I personally use TurboTax Deluxe at $29.95.

• Electronically retrieves W-2 wage, and 1099 investment data for hundreds of participating employers, and financial institutions. Enters data on the right forms - eliminating manual data entry errors.
• One-click Updates gives late-breaking IRS and state forms - without interruptions. You can work on your return while you update your TurboTax software.
• Refund Monitor constantly displays and updates your refund or tax due as you complete your return.
• Minimize audit risk. TurboTax compares your deductions to national averages, so you can quickly see if your deductions fall outside the norm - and might trigger an audit.
• Double-checks your return for accuracy and completeness.
• Electronically file and get your refund in as few as 10 days.

Photo Management

Picasa

• Picasa is a free download from Google that will help you manage all of your photographs. It is a simple tool and does all that is needed. It starts by automatically finding all the image files on your hard drive. You can then view, sort, print, edit, send copies by email or upload them to a web album for others to view. Editing is easy and useful, and there are some nice special effects.
• Picasa has an easy-to-use "Folder Manager" which enables you to pick the folders you wish to scan for pictures and set those folders in which pictures will be added or removed to be "watched" by Picasa for new pictures. You can go back at any time and alter the settings for any folder.
• In the normal "library" view, there is a section that lists your albums and folders, with a main area showing thumbnails for the currently selected folder. This area contains thumbnails for all your folders, and you can scroll up and down through these. You can select small or large thumbnails and you can then magnify these further with the zoom control. (See Figure SW-1)
  
  Figure SW-1
  
  
• Picasa's Slideshow is easy to use. Select the images you want or select a whole folder then click the slideshow button.
• There are simple editing tools that come with Picasa. There are buttons that automatically correct contrast, color, brightness as well as crop and straighten your pictures and remove red-eye. You can adjusts the changes as needed and also apply several special effects. (See Figure SW-2)
  
  Figure SW-2
  
  
• Picasa can make backups of your images on CD or DVD, so that you won't lose them if your computer fails. It keeps a record of images you haven't backed up and can show them to you, so you don't forget any of them. You can also make 'Gift CDs' to give to other people. (See Figure SW-3)
  
  Figure SW-3
  
  
• Picasa makes it easy to print your photos, in standard or custom sizes to your own printer. It makes it simple to print more than one picture to a page if you want to. (See Figure SW-4)
  
  Figure SW-4
  
  Among the creative features it provides is the ability to create several different styles of picture collages with groups of photos. (See Figure SW-5)
  
  Figure SW-5
  
  If you want a really big picture, it can make a poster image using multiple sheets of paper in your printer. You can also select pictures and connect directly to your favorite on-line printing service to order prints.
• Another option for sharing your photos that are built into Picasa include web albums. It takes only a few minutes to set up a free Picasa Web Album. Picasa gives you 250 megabytes of storage for free. Check out my Van Gogh Gallery to see what a web gallery looks like.
  Additional web storage can be purchased:
  6.25GB ($25 per year)
  25GB ($100 per year)
  100GB ($300 per year)
  250GB ($500 per year)
  
• Picasa also helps you avoid sending embarrassingly large images to your friends by email, automatically resizing your images (the default is a sensible 640x480 pixels) and opening your email software with them attached to a message.

Picasa
Rating:
Price (Jan. 2007): FREE

Click here for a review of Picasa from PC Magazine.