Keep Track of Your Money and Investments with Personal Financial Software

Personal financial software for home accounting is an excellent way to keep track of all your income, investments, expenditures and budget.  There are several personal financial software programs available.  Personally, I have used Quicken for many years and am very satisfied.

The diagram shows some of the top 10 financial planning software programs with the best one on your left. The first four have several more features than the rest.

What do you want to look for when choosing a program?

• The ease of installation and is it user-friendly.
• Personal finance software should include online banking features.
• Personal investing is another important feature as almost everyone has a 401K, IRA or some type of retirement fund even if they don’t have individual stock holdings.
• Financial planning which allows you to plan your retirement, purchases, taxes, lifetime events, home purchases, debt relief and other financial goals.
• A financial calculator to help estimate costs, plan college funds, etc.
• Some programs are able to export all your financial information into tax software.
• The types of reports and summaries are also very important.

Quicken is the top rated program on the market. The new program comes with the ability to see all of your financial information on the main page. You can enter as many accounts as required to meet your needs, for instance, checking, savings, cash account, IRA’s, 401Ks and stock investments. You can set it up to automatically record direct deposits or bills that are paid directly out of an account. You can download all of your banking information automatically, as well as, your stock investment account data. I bank at a credit union and I can download information from them with Quicken, which is the only program they offer.

Standout Features

• Easily organizes your personal and household budget: shows your bank and credit cards in one place
• Automatically schedules bill reminders so you can avoid late fees with alerts on upcoming payments
• Shows exactly where your money's going: expenses are tracked and categorized automatically
• Gets you up-and-running fast with step-by-step guidance

Another great feature that I love is the ability to generate many types of reports which makes working on your annual taxes very simple as everything is categorized. There is a financial calculator as well. The program can generate itemized categoryreports, cash flow reports, tax reports and net worth reports. Also the program gives you instant access to over 4,000 banks, credit cards and other accounts, plus it has the ability to connect and manage accounts.

The second most popular program is MoneyDance from The Money Kind. It also has online banking capabilities, operating system reports and bill paying. It's features are very comparable to Quicken. A feature that Quicken doesn’t have is the ability to export your information to Excel, CSV, TXT and HTML.

Standout Features

• Online banking and bill payment
• Manage your budget
• Stay on schedule
• Track your portfolio
• Generate useful reports and graphs, quickly

AceMoney is number three and it is a super-user-friendly product. There is an account over view factor that allows you to see all your money at once, meaning accounts and investments. AceMoney has a free download version of this program available online. It might be something you would want to try out before buying the program that has a few more features.

Standout Features

• Manage multiple accounts of different types
• Create and manage budgets
• Track performance of investments
• Do your financial math in multiple currencies
• Track your spending habits and see where the money goes

BankTree Personal has similar features to the first three programs with the exception of no tax options. BankTree is a product made in England so there could be some cost considerations according to the survey. It is an easy to install program and allows you to import files also.  It would be a good program to evaluate if you live in England.

Standout Features

• Helps you to budget your expenses and reconcile your accounts.
• Offers eight different cash flow charts
• See where your money has been, where it is and where it's going.

There are also several home financial software programs that you can download for free.

Buddi 3.0 runs on Windows, Mac and other operating systems and has been translated into multiple languages. Features include budgeting, tracking accounts, personal finance reports and an envelope budgeting feature called Prepaid Accounts.

Microsoft Money Sunset Deluxe was made available online after Microsoft Money was discontinued. The disadvantage of this program is it has no internet support features, however, if that is not important to you this program might meet your needs.

Using personal financial software will assist you in managing your finances conveniently and stress free. It will also help you make better investments and increase your net worth. It takes very little time to enter transactions and you have a printed reconciliation report each month when you easily reconcile your bank account. Personal financial software is easy to use and once you get used to it you will probably wonder how you managed without it before.

The copyright to this article is owned by Pamela Oglesby. Permission to republish this article in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.