Technology Tuesdays

Owning (and more importantly USING) personal finance software is a critical component to a healthy financial strategy. Anybody looking to make major purchases in the near future should be committed to a financial regime, whether you are saving up for a car, house or llama ranch.

There are two main elements to personal finance software that are especially important for future homebuyers…

Debt Management

If you are like most Americans you have a significant amount of secured and unsecured debt. The first and most important element to buying a house is getting your debt ratio within reasonable limits and then maintaining your FICO score. Debt management software will help you to categorize and total your debt, create a personalized reduction strategy, understand amortization schedules/payments, save money on interest charges and make overall good decisions with your debt.

Income vs. Expenses
When deciding to make a major purchase like buying a home you need to know exactly what your budget is and what you can afford. The first step is to track and total your expenses and then minus this from your total after-tax income. Personal finance software points out all the possible expenditures to ensure that your every cent is accounted for in your monthly budget. When finished you will have a solid idea of what you can (or can’t) afford.

Software:

Future homeowners should look for software with both debt management and income vs. expenses capabilities.  The top rated personal finance software in the business with both these elements is called Quicken.

Quicken http://quicken.intuit.com/

Quicken has become one of the most famous, comprehensive and easy to use personal finance programs out there since Microsoft Money was discontinued. If you have previously used MS Money the transition will be easy and you can even migrate all your data. Their 60-day satisfaction guarantee ensures that the software is money well spent.

There are both free and paid subscriptions (the paid version has more features and retails between $60 to $90) that function on both Mac and Windows platforms. The features available in Quicken are:

• Budgeting based on categorical expenses.
• Graph-based cash flow reports to show your income vs. expenses.
• Make account reconciliations.
• Set bill reminders to ensure your bills are up to date.
• Import tax info from TurboTax.

• Basic investment tracking tools, including an investment dashboard.
• Debt reduction, retirement planning, tax deduction finding, and saving tools.
• Mutual fund ratings.
• Schedule C reporting.
• And more…

Recently Quicken has created Pocket Quicken, which gives you access to your personal finance solution on the go via your smartphone.

Conclusion

Adding a personal finance software like Quicken will help ensure that you get from where you are, to where you want to be financially. The key to using this type of software though is to stick with it. Now that personal finance software can be taken with you on your smartphone, it is easier than ever to create and stick to your budget.

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This guest post is part of our Technology Tuesday Series. We seek out the latest and greatest technology companies out there whom we feel offer cutting edge products and services to consumers. Our readers are interested in the financial and real estate industries as consumers and professionals. If you feel that you or your company has something wonderful to offer and would like to write about it, please contact us at liz@dalesiegel.com