best personal finance software, personal finance software, software, personal, personal finance, financial, money, budgetingThe beginning of a new year is always a great time to think about improving your money management. Maybe finances are totally overwhelming to you. In these situations I always recommend finding a good personal finance software program.

When I make this recommendation, people always ask me, “What is the best personal finance software?”  There are three features I look for in a good personal finance software:

  1. Ability to set up budgeting categories;
  2. Able to set up automatic payments through the software;
  3. Excellent reporting capabilities.

Do you know what you spend?

Knowing what you spend is an absolute necessity if you are going to get your finances in order. Good personal finance software will help you set up budget categories for every area of your life. For example you would have a category for Home with sub categories of water/sewer/telephone/garbage/cable, etc.

Then you plug in the numbers of what everything is costing you. Once you set up all your budget categories with the monthly costs associated with it, you will be able to keep track of what you have left in each category. Many times spontaneous purchases are what keep pushing us over our budget. For this reason, finding what is the best personal finance software and using it consistently can literally save you thousands of dollars a year because it will alert you when you are about to go over budget. Of course this feature only works if you use the software consistently.

Automatic payments

Setting up automatic payments through your personal finance software will keep you from paying late fees. Using the automatic payment options in your software will ensure that all the payments are also automatically deducted from the proper account so you will never again forget to deduct an automatic payment from your checking account. The benefit of having an automatic payment option in your personal finance software is two fold, you can avoid late fees and at the same time always have an accurate record in your check book of the automatic payment.

When looking for what is the best personal finance software you want to investigate the reporting capabilities. Reporting is very important because reports give you all the information about your finances that you need. For example, what did you spend on entertainment for the first quarter of the year? How much is going into car maintenance? How are your investments doing? All of this and more should readily be available through the software using the reporting feature. We use the reporting feature to see what tax deduction we have for the year. Another important report we run at the end of every year is what we spent in each budget category. This helps us set up a new budget for the coming year.

So what is the best personal finance software?

There are two programs I would recommend. The first is Quicken. This is a very popular program and with good reason. Quicken is constantly listening to their customers for ideas on how to improve the software.  A note of caution, you must buy Quicken Deluxe to access the personal finance portion of the software.

The second personal finance software and my favorite is Mvelopes by www.crown.org. Mvelopes is an online program. This is important for our family because we can access our account via our cell phone. This way all receipts can be entered immediately. Also budget category balances are available at the touch of a finger. This is very helpful in keeping us from overspending.

 

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