There are plenty of people in the world – smart people – who can debug a Java applet, rebuild a server, or write a computer program that will land a spaceship on the moon, but who have little or no idea how to balance a checkbook. Luckily, for folks who are comfortable with computers, they no longer have to rely on a pencil, paper, and a scratch pad. There are dozens of software manufacturers marketing tools that will do the job.

Or, should that be – jobs. The number of tasks that can be accomplished with commercially available financial planning software runs from something as simple as maintaining a checking account balance to as complicated as tracking stock and bond portfolios.

Features

Financial planning software comes in all shapes and sizes. At its most basic, money management software can help someone keep up with their checking account balance and pay the monthly bills. Just like the woman in the bank commercial who finds that 48 percent of her monthly income goes for pizza, the software can track spending and produce reports, complete with "pie" diagrams, showing where the money goes each month.

The programs cannot do that alone, however, the person writing the checks still needs to keep track of when and where the checks are written, then sit down and enter that information into the program. That is unless the software is compatible with a person's online banking network and they always use a debit card. Most of the popular money management software can and does use online financial information and is generally capable of uploading and downloading that information to produce a more complete financial picture.

Investments and Retirement

Many of the financial planning suites, such as Intuit Inc.'s Quicken or Microsoft Money (the two best known and most used packages), go far beyond being an electronic check ledger. The software also can be used to track stock investments (particularly useful these days since many 401k and retirement plans include stocks and mutual funds) or to ensure money is being set aside for the kids' college funds or for retirement.

Not the least of these "extras" is tax preparation. In fact, the plethora of financial planning software, to a large extent, grew out of tax preparation software. Once people became comfortable using the computer to compute their taxes, the idea of keeping track of finance was less intimidating.

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