re quicken vs tobias managing your money in article apr twg com q twg com michael wiesenberg writes anyway is anyone aware of a comparitive study of the two programs or can someone just give me their own personal impressions maybe pc magazine january had a review of several personal finance management programe as did pc computing january pc world december also had articles about quicken and managing your money i can email you copies of these articles if you can t find them at your library i ve been using managing your money for several years and i have several friends who use quicken though i ve not used it myself my overall impression is that quicken is a financial accounts manager while managing your money will help you more completely manage your finances here are some features that i believe managing your money and quicken share the ability to keep records for each of your financial accounts checking savings charge cash or brokerage you can reconcile your account statements with the records the program keeps the ability to make a budget and track your spending against that budget a checkfree module which will allow you to use the checkfree bill paying service to pay your bills via your modem the ability to print checks on your printer the ability to keep loan records and set up automatic loan payments the ability to import stock quotations to keep your brokerage accounts up to date i know managing your money can do this automatically via modem quicken probably can as well but i m not sure about it the ability to export tax information to popular tax preparation programs here are some features that i believe managing your money has that quicken does not a tax prediction module this looks at your accounts and budget to predict your tax liability for the coming year it s usefull to fine tune your withholding so uncle sam doesn t get his due too early an insurance and vital records module this is a place to keep records of your insurance policies as well as other vital records it can also compute your life expectancy a financial analysis module this computes compound interest effects of inflation loan payments term or interest yield to maturity for bonds savings account yields days between dates and loan amortization schedules it also has functions to help you decide whether to refinance your mortgage whether you can afford a particular home whether a particular rental property is a good investment whether you should buy lease or rent and whether a particular investment s cash flow is adequate for your situation this module can also help you plan for retirement and for helping your kids with their tuition a net worth module this is a place to record all your assets and liabilities your net worth can be computed from this information any assets or liabilities recorded in other modules are automatically included here a desk module this includes a small word processor a card file you can use to store names addresses phone numbers and other vital information about friends and associates a perpetual calander a rudimentary calculator a to do list a reminder list an appointment list and a place to record your phone calls for those who need to track such things your appointments reminders and to do list can be made to display automatically when you start the program there are probably some things listed above that quicken has but i m almost sure that quicken doesn t do everything i ve listed if i m wrong i m sure hordes of quicken devotees will flame me to a crisp one thing that quicken has that managing your money does not yet have is a windows version meca software is rumored to be working on a windows version of managing your money for release late this year i hope this information is of use to you i ve found managing your money to be a very usefull program for keeping my financial records on the other hand i know many people who are equally as happy with quicken if quicken has all the features you need or want i d go with it if you find any of the managing your money features that quicken doesn t have to be useful i think it s well worth the price
