A Word About Failure

But what if it doesn’t work? Then you’ll know quickly and you can try something else. Failure is an answer to a question at that particular point in time. If you were unable to get yourself out of credit card debt that doesn’t mean you can’t do it right now but you learned some important lessons last time that will help you be successful this time. Failure is a tool that can be used to course correct your journey. Don’t let that be the reason you never start.

Take Steps Today to Win with Your Money

No matter where you might be in your financial life there are some steps you can take today that will help you achieve your goals. And perhaps that’s step number one. Think about what your goals might be and right them down. “I will retire comfortably at the age of 62.” “I will pay off my house in 6 years.” “I want to be debt free in 2 years.” Think about your current financial status and we’ll cover some different aspects of your financial life. If you’ve got a section covered move on to the next and choose your own adventure. If you’ve got all of these areas covered than maybe you should contact me because I’m sure the readers would love to benefit from your experience.

1. Start a Budget

If you have no idea where your money is going this is the best step you can take to set you up for success with the next steps. Managing your budget and looking at your past spending is going to give you the best idea of what money you can direct towards your goals. Write it down and live it for at least 3 months. You will see results. This step was life changing for my wife and myself on our journey. Actually living on a budget is allowing us to win.

2. Start an Emergency Fund

If you don’t have a stockpile of anti-calamity money squirreled away bust one today. Start selling stuff on eBay or craigslist today. Pick up a seasonal job. Anything to get you a solid foundation with which to get your plan in gear. If you’ve got outstanding debt I would recommend starting with $1000 and moving on to tackling your debt but you might be more comfortable with a larger stash. Here’s how I saved $1000 in a month, actually we did it in about 2 weeks truth be told.

3. Pay Down Debt

Relieving yourself from the yoke of debt could radically change your financial life. Again start today. Get out some paper or use this fantastic spreadsheet to get a clear understanding of where you stand. Then start attacking it with reckless abandon. Everything you didn’t sell building your emergency fund is next. I’m a huge proponent of the debt snowball because it breeds action. Small steps made today cascades into huge strides tomorrow.

4. Start Saving for Retirement

If you have a 401k plan at work it’s time to kick that into gear. Go to their website or talk to your HR representative on how you can have that come out of your paycheck today. If you’ve done your budget you should know what you can comfortably direct towards your investment. This is especially a good deal if your company matches some of your contributions. Everybody loves free money. If you don’t know what investment choices to make right now choose an index fund option that mirrors the Standard and Poor’s or similar stock market index. This is a good choice and will give you time to investigate your plan’s other offerings all while taking positive action.

5. Fund your Kids College

You may be all for Johnny and Sally paying their own way through higher education or you might not have kids at all then move on. Otherwise you can again setup automatic contribution plans to build their education fund. There are couple of investment choices here and I breakdown the different options of the Coverdell ESA vs . the 529 vs . Coffee Cans in the backyard.

6. Educate Yourself

If you are looking for some advice beyond FiscalGeek which I highly recommend you can frequent some of my fellow writers in the left sidebar who will offer a collection of helpful advice all of their own. Head out to your local bookstore or order online two of my favorite books. The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness a fantastic start through most of these steps. And for those looking for more towards investing The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing I have found no better primer for most any investing related topic.

That’s it. START! Get out there and start winning and be sure to share your success stories with us heree.

Photo Courtesy Jon_Marshall

It’s been a long week with respect to my day job and frankly I’m longing for new adventures charting my own course. I have a variety of ideas in the works and certainly my success here at FiscalGeek has helped bolster that plan. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely thankful for my day job which rewards me well but I can’t squelch that entrepreneurial flow that is anxious to be let loose. I’ll keep you all posted as my ideas start to manifest into realilty but for now they exist largely in my enormous noggin. Enough of that on to the roundup.

New Stuff I’m Looking At

Groupon

This is a great idea that I wish I had developed it’s kind of a merge between Woot! and a coupon site that allows you to get a great deal daily on service in your town. For instance today’s deal in Seattle is a $50 credit at a local Bistro for only $20. This is a terrific service for both the small business offering the deal and the users looking for a great value. It functions similar to an eBay auction with a reserve price so that the business offering the deal can specify that they’ll only provide the deal if over 50 people buy the deal as an example. Today’s deal had a requirement of 50 people for the deal to be valid and there are currently 150 people who bought it. Very cool. Arguably everyday isn’t something you’d want to purchase but a fantastic site to add to your bookmarks list. Sign up now and tell them FiscalGeek sent you! Okay there’s nobody to tell but definitely something worth checking out, no cost to sign up.

Stuff I participated In

I was the Editor’s Choice at the Money Hacks Carnival for my post on What’s a Good Credit Score? Should you Care?. Woot!

I also participated at The 246th Edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance

Other Goings On around the Personal Finance Blogosphere

Peter presents Ways To Make Extra Money Series: Guide To Diversifying Your Sources Of Income

My Dollar Plan presents 5 More Ways to Earn Some Extra Cash

Tom @ Canadian Finance Blog presents Financial Lessons Learned From Hiking

Ryan presents How to Organize Small Business Finances

Ron presents 101 Common Money Myths

PT from PT Money presents You Need a Budget 3: A Principles-Based, Powerful Budgeting Tool

WellHeeled presents Eat, Pray, Love, and Money

Evolution Of Wealth presents Defining Financial Planning

CJ Bowker presents What Do You Do?

Stay at Home Mom CFO presents Maternity Coverage and Health Insurance Choices

Little House presents Rain Water Collection Ideas

Financial Samurai presents Home Refinancing Tips For A Smarter You

FinEngr presents Maximizing Value, The Opposite of Earn More Spend Less

Craig presents New Credit Card Rules Taking Effect

Austin presents The 5 Books that Changed My Money Life

Jeff Rose, CFP® presents How to pay quarterly income tax payments

Consumer Boomer presents Don’t Miss The IRA Contribution Deadline For 2010

Joe Plemon presents People Are Begging for Financial Help. Five Things You Can Do

Elle presents One Car Family

Jason @ MyMoneyMinute presents Wine On A Budget: Oak Creek

Photo courtesy tipiro

This is a guest post from Darren Norman, a new blogger at Enter The Norman. Darren writes about his experiences and struggles with exercise for the lazy and weight loss in an ever fattening world. He was featured for his extraordinary weight loss on NBC’s Today show be sure to watch his story below. Norm’s also on Twitter.

All that Glitters Costs about as Much as Gold

Don’t get me wrong. All that fancy equipment: the nicely balanced pulley system, the treadmill with the TV on the wall silently blasting to your FM tuner, it sure looks nice and I’m sure it cost the gym a lot of money. The first time you walk through, you picture yourself getting bigger by the minute as you power through day one of bi’s and tri’s, day two of chest and back, day three of abs and legs and day four of cardio. The reality of the situation is you probably got suckered; at least I did the first time. I went to my local gym and signed up, probably like you, shortly after New Year’s back in 2005.

They draw you in with what seems like a reasonable monthly fee, anywhere from $25 to $50 per month or more, depending on the facility. What they don’t tell you right away is that you have to sign a one or two year commitment to get that price, along with paying a sign-up fee of $100 or more. Now you start to question things. You know you need to get more exercise and this place also has a pool and hot tub. Who wouldn’t use that? Plus, if you pay the sign-up fee, then you get that low monthly price instead of paying $75 a month without the fee. What a deal! The thing that killed me when I went through all this was the fact that the application form called for my social security number. Yep, they also check your credit score. The final nail is the fact that after you’ve signed up, it hits you that you’re locked into this thing for the length of the contract and now you are helplessly handing money over whether you take advantage of the services or not.

Frugal Exercise Options

The fact is that you can get nearly all the benefits of working out at a gym, and more, for much less money and on your own terms. Along my path to losing weight, I’ve learned that the easiest way to stay motivated to get fit is to make it as hassle free as possible. This can be done for as cheap as the annual cost of a pair of running shoes. Running is free and one of the most effective cardio exercises out there. By working your way up to running a half hour, just 3 times a week, you’ll be amazed at how you feel. The best part is that you don’t even have to buy the nice shoes. I’ve got feet as flat as they come and I’ve found that buying a pair of cheap shoes, around $40-$50, then replacing the insoles with a $20 insert from your local sporting goods store is just as effective as spending $100 on ‘nice’ shoes with all the support built in. This along with the fact that you’re not shelling out your monthly gym membership fee and that you can start your workout from the front door of your house at any time you like makes it much more convenient.

In addition to running, there is any number of exercises you can do at home with no equipment and work all the same muscles as you would in the gym. The first that comes to mind is push-ups, working your arms and chest. This is a very versatile exercise, I’ve come to learn. By putting your hands together, you can focus more on your triceps than biceps. By using your knees as the fulcrum of your push-up, you can start off easy and work your way to a full push-up. Once you master that, try putting your feet on a step or higher to increase the difficulty. Crunches are another great exercise that is easy to do, working your abs, and with some modification, you can get your lower back and hamstrings in there too.

There are tons of resources out there to base your workout off of as well. You could do the hundred push ups challenge, the two hundred situps challenge or the two hundred squats training program. They even provide you a training plan to reach those goals. If you want something quick and dirty, try the Deck of Cards workout. You’ll find variations of this all over the place but the result is all the same. This gives you an intense 20 to 30 minute workout that you can do in your own home. Most variations have you doing push-ups and squats but you can always change it up by adding in things like crunches, tricep dips or burpees, all of which you will hate at first but will grow to love as you are able to do them more easily. Another one of my favorites, and I use that term with all the disdain I can muster, is the plank. The simple act of keeping your body totally straight while being propped up on your toes and elbows sounds easy. Try doing this twice for a minute each time.

With a little creativity and a pair of shoes, or not if you prefer barefoot (I personally have gone to a hybrid with the Vibram shoe: worth every penny), you can find any number of exercises that will give you a workout every bit intense as the gym will. Just to be clear, I am in no way a fitness professional. I’m just a poor schlubb that managed to lose a few pounds over the last several years. I tried all sorts of activities from the gym, soccer, rugby, running and cycling. Just remember, the hardest part of all this, gym or no, is the motivation to do it. My brother, and probably one of the fittest people I know, told me that even if all you do is walk for 5 minutes each day, you’re doing something. Maybe tomorrow you’ll walk for ten minutes, maybe not, may you’ll jog. Who cares, just do something. We’d love to hear some of your free or frugal fitness tips.

Photo courtesty crd!

This is a guest post by Karen Orr a stay at home mom to two beautiful daughters with a (currently underutilized) BA in Business Administration – Human Resource Management. She considers herself to be the “geek” in the family and enjoys managing the family business, reading, and volunteering her time to lead a group for other moms.

CPA or Not?

I’ve learned a lot about self-employment tax – the tax we owe that makes up the portion of social security and Medicare that is typically withheld by employers – and estimate taxes – the manner in which we pay our self-employment tax and federal tax because it’s owed in a pay-as-you-go tax. If you do not have anyone withholding the right amount of federal tax, such as an employer, than you are subject to making estimated tax payments. It has also been helpful to discover all the things that count as deductions and how to determine our profit from the company. Now, I’m not discouraging anyone from seeking help from a CPA. In fact, I did sit down with our CPA about a month ago just to make sure I was on the right track. I had such a sense of accomplishment when I was able to follow what she was saying, and it was helpful to be guided towards a few things to look out for that I might not have known otherwise. For us, I was successful in utilizing TurboTax for Home and Business to file our return. I feel like TurboTax also pointed out to me many things I might have overlooked. I kind of view TurboTax as my own personal CPA but without the expense. I guess that’s the point though, right? TurboTax wouldn’t be successful if it didn’t help small business owners like us figure out all the ups and downs of filing our taxes.

Here are a few of our findings:

• Small business owners can deduct the full amount of the insurance premiums paid for health insurance
• We bought a laptop to use for our business and we can utilize a depreciation deduction for the next 5 years.
• Our business is a handyman business and all the tools my husband bought to get started were expenses which reduced our taxable income.

I would not necessarily call this post a review of Turbo Tax for Home and Business but I would definitely recommend it to small business owners. I was pleased with the ease with which it pointed me in the right direction and basically give myself a huge pat on the back for successfully figuring it all out. My husband is super happy too, and since he makes a wonderful CEO/handyman, that leaves the position of CFO open for me!

Howdy just wanted to introduce our first volume of our new Podcast series. I’ve got some exciting topics lined up and hope you subscribe to our RSS feed so you’re sure not to miss an episode. Todays podcast includes an interview with Tim a 9 year old (and my son) who has some surprising insight into the personal finance world. We cover such topics as saving to buy a house, why credit cards are evil, how the debt snowball works and the importance of “emergency money” as Tim calls it. Thanks for listening and be sure and submit some of your own ideas for upcoming podcasts.

UPDATE: Unfortunately the pocketmod site has gone down although there is a new version there no longer is a pdftopocketmod offline program so until I can find an alternate solution this will have be to a nice idea that you wish you could implement

Paper Budget for the Origamically Challenged

The pocketmod is an innovative way to print out 8 pages of anything in PDF format which with a little patience you can fold into a pocketable booklet to carry in your wallet, manpurse or pocketbook.  My first attempt resulted in a beautiful crane, but once I got the hang of it no problems.  As it turns out this system is great for including your monthly budget, a calendar, an advertisement for FiscalGeek.com and some other handy items.  So let’s get started. 

Here are the elements of the FiscalGeek Paper Budget Pocketmod or FPBP as I like to call it:

• Microsoft Publisher
• Paper Budget Pocket Mod (79)
• PDFtoPocketMod PDF Conversion Software available at http://www.pocketmod.com (sorry Windows only)

You could just as easily use any piece of software to print out whatever you want, it just so happens that I can publish direct to PDF from within Publisher and it lets me paste stuff in easily from a variety of sources, Excel, YNAB, what have you and I already have it.  If you want to use something else, go for it, you just need to be able to save it to a PDF.  This isn’t a dealbreaker if your software doesn’t natively support it, you can add a printer driver like doPDF which will show up as a printer you can then “print” to it and save that file and voila it’s a PDF.  The key is you want 8 pages of PDF.

Take a gander at the Publisher file you’ll see there are 8 tabs, we’re looking at the 2nd tab here which happens to be a monthly budget breakdown.  I pasted this in from Excel, this could be your custom budget or something output from the likes of You Need a Budget or other financial software.  I’ve also included some useful items on the other pages but by all means add your own stuff make this baby your own.  Publisher has a handy Calendar setup that I paste in for the month I’m working in for notes and to know what day it is go to Insert –> Design Gallery Object… you’ll find many calendar styles from which to choose.

Once you have your publisher layout setup the way you want (save it!) then do a print preview and make sure that it’s going on all 8 pages.  You’ll also want to make sure that whatever you put in there is scaled out right close to the margins otherwise that stuff is going to be tiny.  PocketMod will shrink those 8 pages down to one sheet so unless you’ve got some powerful trifocals on you need to make that text as large as possible. In publisher go to File –> Publish as PDF or XPS.. and you can now save this in PDF format, if you don’t have that option see above recommendations for other printing options. 

Now all that remains is to fire up PDFtoPocketMod from wherever you put it when you downloaded it.  It’s pretty straightforward click on Open PDF and browse to your PDF you just saved click on Open then finally Save as PocketMod choose a location and save that sucker. 

Fire up the printer and…..fold it.  Get your origami pants on and get to it.  Watch this video for further help, it’s really not scary.  If you’ve got a significant other you’re budgeting with print one out for them and no longer can you hear those words: “You never told me what our budget was!” PS if you create a paper panda or some form of pagoda be sure to send us a picture for all to see. Honestly if you saw how large my hands are you’d be surprised I could actually fold a piece of paper in half, you can do this.

Hope you’re all having a great week and you’ve got to see some of the amazing hockey going on in the Olympics. I’m very much looking forward to the USA vs. Canada game tomorrow. It’s on at noon PST so don’t miss it. Wanted to share some of the stuff going on this week things I’m looking at and some interesting reading around the Personal Finance world.

Stuff I participated In

A light week overall I forgot to submit my stuff to various carnivals so really it was just my submission over at Budgets Are Sexy for the Carnival of Personal Finance Dollar Doodles Edition which featured my post What is a Good Credit Score? Should you Care?

New Stuff I’m Looking At

My blogging friend Pete at Bible Money Matters has just released his first ebook simply titled Make Money With Your Blog. I have read it and implemented several of his ideas myself. It’s the real deal and covers everything from the technical steps to actually get a blog going to much more advanced topics for promotion and writing. He’s been doing this for awhile with a great amount of success so he knows what he’s talking about. I highly recommend this for any potential new blogger and that’s not just because I get a couple of bucks for you buying through my link. I would promote this regardless.

From around the Interwebs

Early Retirement Extreme presents Your budget is like a leaking ship

Patrick presents Beginner Investing Strategies

MD presents The Problem With Real Estate as an Investment

DeliverAwayDebt presents How to Adjust Tax Withholdings

Peter presents What Documentation Do I Need To Claim The First-Time Homebuyer Tax Credit

ABC presents Technical Analysis Stock Trading

Mike presents Financial cell phone apps

Financial Samurai presents The Government Is Sexist And Nobody Seems to Care

Jeff Rose, CFP® presents What To Bring to a Tax Accountant To File Your Taxes

Consumer Boomer presents Should You Invest Into a CD or Fixed Annuity

Joe Plemon presents Basics of Reverse Mortgages

PT from PT Money presents Legally Eliminate Credit Card Debt

Photo Courtesy Seth Greenham featuring the “Red Menace” aka Isaac Greenham. I couldn’t get him to have an American flag on there, what can you do he loves his country.

Well it’s finally here the much awaited release and my review of Quicken Essentials for Mac.  Okay maybe not everyone was waiting for my review but it’s nice that it’s finally out I think you can agree.  There’s a definite drought in the Mac world as far as personal finance software is concerned. The good news is that the field is widening as the You Need a Budget beta is in full swing which will run on PC and Mac.  I was anxious to see how this Mac specific version stacked up to YNAB and also to Quicken 2010 for the PC which I recently reviewed.  So grab a cup of coffee and let’s see what they’ve got.

By the way most screenshots are clickable for a nice wide 1024 x 768ish view of the window.

Where to Buy?

There’s honestly not a reason to buy a physical copy of Quicken Essentials in the store as you’ll see in the unboxing section unless you can get a great deal.  You can purchase direct from Quicken and download it immediately to get going.

Quicken Essentials Unboxing

Large cardboard box with a CD in a paper sleeve and a flipping credit card offer.  Quick installation instructions?  Nope.  Bonuses for those who purchased the actual physical copy?  Nil.

Documentation

Keeping in tradition with the Quicken 2010 version there is nothing in the box but when you install the software there is a getting started PDF that is somewhat helpful.  It pretty much covers the basics of getting going and was enough for me to get cranking.

Getting Help

Like the other Quicken software I’ve used the help is severely lacking. It doesn’t have inline help like you’d expect from most any program. I’m honestly a Mac noobie and the detailed help built into Snow Leopard got me going no problem but once I fired up Quicken Essentials it’s just not there. Instead you are directed to the Live Community where you can look up the information. I would have much preferred that there was a base level of help and then I could go online to get more data if needed.  I really think the Live Community is an easy way to get users to make the documentation for them.

Quicken Essentials Startup Screen

When you fire up Quicken Essentials for the Mac for the first time you get a quick 3 step process overview which gets your pertinent information to start tracking your expenses.  First you’ll setup your banking information, throw in any recurring bills you want to track and then finally setup some spending or savings goals.  It’s budget like.

Quicken Essentials Check Register

Pretty much a mirror of most personal finance software including older versions of Quicken and Microsoft Money. It’s the familiar date, payee, category, tags, account and amount. As you should be able to you can split your transactions among various categories and assign tags to each and every transaction. Each transaction is a single line so it’s much easier to navigate through all of your transactions. No surprises here it works perfectly fine and is probably where you’ll spend most of your time.

Downloading Transactions into Quicken Essentials

Previous versions of Quicken required a two step process to download transactions involving importing them and then accepting each item. Quicken Essentials merely downloads and then categorizes into the appropriate account. I can’t comment on any issues with this as it worked fine for my downloads. To me I did like the old double check of me approving my transactions but I’m a little paranoid. Quicken claims to have connectivity to over 13,000 different financial institutions. Indeed my credit union and bank were represented but I could not automatically download the transactions from my credit union I had to import a downloaded file. That is a function of my credit union’s choice not to participate in the automatic download not the fault of Quicken Essentials. Again if you are paranoid that might be a better option anyways to keep your account information even more private. It’s nice that you have the option either way.  Above notice the manual download portion just drag the file onto the window and you’re good to go. 

Identifying New Transactions

When you import your financial institutions data it will show up with a blue ball in the status column. Once you have review it and mark it as reviewed it changes to a blue circle. There’s at least a highlight so you can make sure that transactions matched appropriately or not. They will eventually age out and change the status to the blue circle after time.

Quicken Essentials Scheduled Transactions

It’s very easy to setup a recurring transaction, go to the Transactions menu a flyaway window shows up where you can pick on a calendar, schedule the recurrence and all the features you’d expect. This does highlight the nice ease of use of this program which was clearly the focus. It’s important to note that this is merely adding the transaction in Quicken Essentials it’s not going to pay that bill.

Quicken Essentials Budgeting

When you fire up Quicken Essentials and walk through the top 3 steps you’ll be prompted to enter the budget information which is where I’m looking for some good tools. Honestly it was pretty slick, based on my transactions it automatically downloaded from my bank it was able to suggest some starting amounts either from the last month or a 3 month average. It’s a good way to get going setting up your budget and something you might have to do manually in other programs.

  It did a decent job in categorizing a lot of my expenses automatically although you’ll want to tweak them yourself to get them in your preferred setup. It’s very basic budgeting and not the zero based budget that I so love. It’s more of a spending goal type scenario providing a shiny face to your check register.  Frankly it was a bit of a letdown. I was planning to review a product that covered the basics and did it well of which I think budgeting belongs but apparently Intuit disagrees with me.

Categories and Tags

Quicken Essentials uses categories which should be familiar with any personal finance software that you may have used but adds the concept of tags that will allow you to report on other forms of information. For instance if you are going on a vacation you can tag transactions from various categories to get a comprehensive view of what you may have spend on food, clothing, and hotel charges. Then it’s easy to call up a report and see what went where.

Overview Window

Some slick graphics give you a breakdown of your financial snapshot including any bills upcoming, where your money is going with sweet clickable pie chart and how you are doing budget wise with your savings goals.

Quicken Essentials Reports

I sure liked the sound of the spending cloud but it’s implementation was not as cool as I hoped. You’re probably used to this concept if you’ve spent anytime on the Internet you’ve probably seen some tags related to the website with words in different sized fonts. In fact if you look the the right sidebar of FiscalGeek towards the bottom you’ll see what I’m talking about. You can click through your tag names and see the transactions related to that tag and if you wish you can have that specific report added to the sidebar. The reporting is pretty rudimentary and if you thought you were going to be managing your business from Quicken Essentials you better look somewhere else.

Quicken Essentials Investment Tracking

Nonexistent.  Okay that’s not entirely true you can track the overall total value of an investment to calculate your net worth but that’s about it.  

Exporting Quicken Essentials Data to TurboTax

Not so much. Strangely there is no option to export your data for use with TurboTax something that pretty mucah all other versions of Quicken support.

Bill Paying Options

Negative. You’ll be using your bank’s website for that one or getting out some stamps.

Other Advanced Features

I just had to include this because it’s almost as if Intuit just wanted to get it out of the way. From the Quick Start Guide:

"Quicken Essentials does not include many of the advanced features in other versions of Quicken, including Business features, Rental Property, lifetime planner, cash flow forecast, spending plan, debt reduction plan, emergency tax records, tax planner, and home inventory manager."

And that’s where it ends. No future promises, no alternatives. You’re out of luck if that was what you are looking for. These are all items that exist in the Windows world but are unavailable natively on the Mac. 

Converting other financial software data to Quicken Essentials

If you have data from older Quicken for Mac, Quicken for Windows or Microsoft Money you can import into Quicken Essentials. You can find out more at http://quicken.com/go/movetomac If you have been operating on Quicken 2010 you’ll need to export the data in a .QXF file that you can then import to Quicken Essentials. The key is you can’t combine multiple files to import. So if you did part in Money and part in Quicken which I don’t think is likely you’ll have to pick only one. Not a big deal.

Quicken Essential for the Mac Review Wrap-Up and Recomendations

Who’s it For?

This is targeted at the Mac user who doesn’t want to have to go to the bother of running windows and installing Quicken 2010 and it’s many variants.  It’s a fine introduction to expense tracking and does a great job downloading data from your bank.  The interface is also very well done and will remind you of all of your other Mac applications.

Who’s It Not For?

Obviously anyone that is not on a Mac running Leopard or Snow Leopard software based on the Intel chipset.  Otherwise don’t even bother.  There is no equivalent version for the PC.

It’s also not for the personal finance software power users out there.  You are not going to build elaborate budgets or keep a day to day watch on your investments with this software.  It’s very scaled down to handle the basic functions well but seriously lacks in the bells and whistles that the PC versions have.

My Recommendation

Since I consider my self a personal finance software power user this is not for me.  It just doesn’t have all of the features I’m looking for.  I primarily want a budgeting focused piece of software that adds investment tracking and automatic data downloading as a nice to have.  It just doesn’t hit this mark.  If you are a relative newcomer to the market or want to just get started then this might be a nice place to start.  Otherwise I’d go with You Need a Budget although version 3 is currently in beta form which supports the Mac so you have to account for that.

This is a guest post from Daniel Packer over at Sweating The Big Stuff. Daniel writes about negotiating, saving, and conscious spending while attempting to maintain a high quality of life. To read more, subscribe to his feed or follow him on twitter.

Some people like a zero-based budget because it forces them to realize what they are spending their money on and what they need to cut back on.

But I don’t use it. Why?

In my traditional budget, I have a place for savings, for paying down my debt, and for most of my other expenses. I even have a miscellaneous spending category because it’s hard to account for every expense. But I don’t account for every dollar. In fact, I account for about 80% of my income. At the end of the month, anything I don’t spend goes into my savings account. So what happens to the other 20%?

Having a zero-based budget stresses me out. It means I have to think about whether I should treat myself to a candy bar. It means I have to question whether or not having a beer with friends is a good idea. I don’t like worrying anymore than necessary and I enjoy the flexibility to go with the flow and relax about my decision making. With a zero based budget, I am tied down to do something specific with my money rather than having plenty of options.

I definitely track my expenses and I have a pretty good idea of how much I spend on each category, but I am not vigilant. Since I am hitting my savings goals and I do not overspend, there is no reason to track every dollar. After making all my required expenditures and tucking away money into my savings accounts, so what if I don’t know what’s happening with that extra money at the end of the month?

Maybe it will go towards a nice meal or a night at the improv club. Maybe I’ll decide to take a trip with friends or maybe it will be swept into my savings account. And if that extra money is different month to month? I’m ok with it. I like to keep my options open.

The stress of zero-based budget can scare people into not budgeting at all because they may find that small purchases cause them to worry more than before their budgeting days. If you are new to budgeting, choose something simple, sign up for your favorite budget program. You’ll learn that budgeting can be fun if it doesn’t control your life!

Everyone has their own way of budgeting. Some choose a simple budget, some choose a zero-based budget, and some don’t budget at all. Of course, it comes down to what works for you.

How do you track your spending?

Photo courtesy Tambako the Jaguar

A Basic Interview

You start off with TurboTax asking you a variety of information about any major events that it should consider as you work through your taxes. It’s a very friendly way to get you thinking about job changes, home purchases, having kids, investing and the like. A simple checkbox and you are on your way.

It will continue to prompt you through all the important events broken down into Personal and Business spanning: Income, Deductions & Credits and Other Tax Situations.

Small Business Information

What I liked was how much information I got as a new small business owner regarding purchases, depreciation, amortization and recommendations on startup costs. Here you’ll see a flyout window giving you some more info on what constitutes startup costs and how to account for them.

As you move through the various screens there is frequently links to “Explain This” which give you some concise information on that particular topic.
You can also get more specific help from the Live the Community that changes context depending on the current page you are working on. So when you’re working away on your business information you’ll see topics such as: didn’t receive a 1099 misc or How do I close a sole proprietor business? All very useful information and right there with you. It really takes the fear of doing your own taxes down to a minimum.

Tax Stimulus Coverage

All of the various forms of credits and deductions from the various stimulus packages are included with the 2009 edition of TurboTax. From TurboTax I learned that about 95% of the taxpaying community is eligible for some part of $13,000 per person. It’s not likely you’ll qualify for all $13,000 unless you bought a house for the first time, improved it with a corn husk stove and so forth. But at least TurboTax will make sure you cover all of the options.

New Features

So based on all manner of feedback from the previous versions of TurboTax Intuit has made some additions to this version.

Flags

On every screen as you move through TurboTax is the capability to put a flag on that page effectively bookmarking that screen so that you can return at any time. This feature is particularly helpful if you’ve started to enter in say Income for something but realize you don’t have all of the data right there in front of you. So you can very easily go back there later to update the data by clicking through on your flag.

Error Checks

TurboTax has always done a full Error Check of your data at the completion of your return but now they’ve added error checks whenever you enter data hopefully catching any mistakes before you move on to another section and forget what you might have been working on. It’s much easier to deal with the problem when you it’s fresh rather than have to flip back at the end.

What I Don’t Like about TurboTax

Honestly there isn’t much to quibble with but I HATE that little running tally in the upper right corner that shows you the amount of your tax refund or how much you owe. I’d rather have it give me the damage at the end otherwise you are sweating stuff back and forth. At one point it showed me owing over $5000 and I had beads of sweat forming on my brow thinking I had miscalculated my tax withholding but I forgot I had not added my mortgage interest and all of my charitable donations so all was right with the world at completion. I could have done without the blood pressure spike though. So perhaps an option to turn off the ticker if you desire?

What I Like about TurboTax

I love first and foremost that I can keep rolling my data over year to year helping me avoid duplicate entry plus it’s smart enough to ask me about events that occured last year that might still be applicable. It took me no more than about 90 minutes to work through everything because I had all my data gathered. And I read everything in detail, if you’ve got a simple return it may be even quicker. Filing is super easy online and you’ll get your refund quickly if you’ve got one coming. It’s one piece of software that I wholeheartedly recommend without so much as a caveat. Get cracking April 15th isn’t that far off.