If you are looking for a way to finally get control of your finances, track investments, keep accurate tax records, and/or just manage your budget, Andrew Tobias’ Managing Your Money 4.0 can do all of that and more. This program is truly amazing—powerful, multifaceted, and easy to use.
I received a copy of Version 3.0 in December and worked with it for about a month. Frankly, I had my doubts about ever using it for anything more than portfolio management; I found much of it confusing and frustrating. However, the newly released Version 4.0 has fixed virtually every complaint I had with the earlier version! I am very impressed by the fact that such a powerful program can be so user friendly. The manual has been completely rewritten and is easy to follow. In addition, there is extensive on-line help available at all times. Examples and practice folders are provided to allow you to become familiar with the program before actually getting down to work.
And work it is—at least at first. Typing in all of the necessary data, i.e. all of your financial information and transactions, does take time—lots of time. Especially if you are really thorough and go back to the first of the year in order to have accurate annual budgets and tax records. However, once this rather daunting task is complete, Managing Your Money takes over and does everything from reminding you to pay the mortgage or get a gift for your spouse’s birthday to balancing your checkbook or projecting your insurance and retirement needs. And it does it all in English—no formulas to cope with as in spreadsheets. (A real boon to a mathophobe like me.)
The main window in Managing Your Money is called the navigator. It allows you to access the part of the program with which you wish to work. (See Figure 1.) The buttons on the left are the tools designed to address each feature of your financial needs. (All of these commands are also found in pull-down menus at the top of the screen.)
Remind works much like calendar DAs (although, of course, the program must be running for it to work).
Money is where you write checks, make deposits, record savings, credit cards, etc. Most of the work, except portfolio trades, is done in this part of the program.
Tax takes information from other tools and estimates your Federal income tax liability. It does not prepare your return but will generate detailed statements for your records or tax preparer. In fact, reports can be generated and printed throughout the program.
Invest tracks your investments and their interest or dividend payments, keeps a running tally of your portfolio’s gains and losses, and analyzes your securities. I found the interest and dividends feature to be the most difficult to set up properly. I don’t know if it was my confusion or the manual’s, but I don’t think I did it quite “by the book.” It seems to work okay, so I guess there’s no harm done…
Plan allows to you figure insurance needs, decide whether to refinance the mortgage, and plan for long-range expenses such as retirement or college tuition. It also does loan analysis, inflation adjustments, and allows you to play “what if” games.
Since Money is really the heart of the program, let’s talk about some of the features included in this tool.
After the tedious part— setting up the Asset & Liability Accounts (things you own and things you owe) and Income and Expense Categories (money you receive and money you spend) and entering all of your financial transactions from January 1 through the present in them (see Figures 2 and 3)—you can start really using Managing Your Money.
One option is to use the program to print your checks. Being hopelessly out-of-date (I’ve never even used an Automatic Teller Machine), I’ve opted to skip this feature. If you’re really into this 21st century stuff, you can even take advantage of CheckFree. It’s an electronic bill payment service which allows you to enter your payments in Managing Your Money and then transmit them through your modem to CheckFree (a local call), which pays your bills on the date you’ve specified, debiting your checking account through the Federal Reserve. Nifty, huh? But not for me…
Even if you don’t choose to use those features, you can still keep an accurate record of all your transactions in either the Write Checks/Make Deposits windows (you just don’t print the checks), or my personal preference, the Transfer Money window (see Figure 4). Whichever method you choose, Managing Your Money reflects every transaction throughout the entire program. If you record a $50 check written to Southern Bell, that transaction will be reflected in your monthly budget, your checkbook or transaction register, your Net Worth, and on and on throughout the program. This powerful feature allows you to know your financial status at all times.
Managing Your Money also lets you keep tabs on what kind of profit or loss your income and expenditures are producing via the Analyze Income vs. Expense window. (See Figure 5.) The same can be done for your actual finances vs. your budget by choosing Analyze Budgets vs. Actuals. The Money tool contains many other features, such as a real time saver called Recurring Transactions, which takes much of the repetition out of entering many transactions. We have barely touched on the other tools available, but I hope I’ve given some insight into just what a powerful and well-implemented program this is. I plan to use it for years to come and recommend it highly for those of you who are really serious about managing your money.
Requirements: Any Macintosh with 1MB of memory, a hard disk, System 6.0.2 or later, Finder 6.1 or later. CheckFree option requires an Apple or Hayes-compatible modem.
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