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From: mykes@3comvax.UUCP (Mike Schwartz)
Newsgroups: net.invest
Subject: Re: Looking for info on "financial planning"
Message-ID: <359@3comvax.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 18-Jan-86 00:48:22 EST
Article-I.D.: 3comvax.359
Posted: Sat Jan 18 00:48:22 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 20-Jan-86 05:01:18 EST
References: <1080@druxo.UUCP>
Reply-To: mykes@3comvax.UUCP (Mike Schwartz)
Organization: 3Com Corp; Mountain View, CA
Lines: 68
Summary: 


I recommend Andrew Tobias' Managing Your Money program.  I have it for the
IBM PC, and if financial planning is what you want, you will get more from
this program than you would from a financial advisor.  It is organized in
book format, with chapters on everything from your daily budget and 
checkbook, insurance requirements, income tax planning and form preparation,
net wealth, investment portfolio, investor's calculator, real estate
investment analysis.  

I always felt that a checkbook management program was the biggest waste of
time (I do it by hand much faster than I could by computer).  Managing
Your Money has a chapter that is a checkbook management deal, but in this
case, you are really creating a database that Managing your money uses to
help you control your cashflow down to the penny.  It even prints out checks
for your monthly bills and other normal expenses.  As you enter each 
transaction, you assign it to different budget categories that you want to
track.  It handles multiple checking, savings, credit card, and loan 
accounts.  Transactions that happen frequently can be automated nicely.
From the budget categories, Managing Your Money (MYM) fills out all the 
IRS tax fors, and predicts future cash flows.

MYM is presented very nicely, using windows and user interaction in a very
constructive and instructive way.  It contains enough plain-english to
easily fill a book, but it is interactive and can beoperated without
all the explanations for effective daily use.  I should mention that it
requires that you use it regularly for most effective results (I use it
twice a month).  If you use it regularly for a whole year, you should
be able to file the most beneficial tax return possible.  And if you ever
were auditted, your computer would make an excellent means for presenting
your case.  I went through the whole program last year, learning alot each
time I used it.  I printed out the help screens (shift print-screen on my
AT&T 6300) as I read them, and collected a reference book.

Some of the help screens deal with the operation of the program, while others
contain text book educational type materials.  The program was written in
a custom language called c-saw, which of course was written in 'C', and
made the program run pretty slow.  However, c-saw appears to be powerful
enough to have done a very nice program.  I am not sure what I paid for it
over a year ago, but if it were $400 or more it would be worth the price!
The expense is a writeoff, and it should save you $400 in income tax (not
to mention wasted expenses) the first year you use it.  It has income tax
tables built in that you can change once a year to keep it up to date.  You
can see your estimated (from the budget) income tax liability by using a
couple of simple menus.  You can do what if's and watch your tax liability
change.

MYM could have been better in a few areas, but I am more than pleased
with it.  It seems to use a lot of memory, and requires that you archive
your checking accounts as you mark them received.  I would prefer to be
able to use the archive as a reference, but it requires an unarchive process
that is not integrated with the program (a nice secondary program, though).
It does not handle credit card payments very well, since it requires you
to do transactions for your checkbook and credit cards separately.

I have only reviewed 3 of the 9 chapters in the program, so you get
an idea of what it's about.  I have seen ads for similar type programs,
like Dollars and Sense, maybe someone else will review another.
xx~

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