Search

Retirement-planning software can be very helpful in answering some very important questions regarding a person's retirement and force people to find out information essential for planning the future. All programs evaluated cost between $4 and $99, and only run on IBM-compatible computers. Retire ASAP is very thorough, enabling a user to list specific investments and their expected rates of return. This program is also capable of measuring the risk level in a person's portfolio. On-screen help is abundant and clear. Harvest Time allows three different types of tax deferments to be specified: qualified tax-deferred, non-qualified tax-deferred and tax-free, but it cannot specify different rates of return for different types of investments. Rowe Price's Retirement Planning Kit includes a very thorough manual and is the most user-friendly of all the retirement programs evaluated. Retirement Planner is a very basic shareware program that only allows information to be entered for one retiree. Retirement Surprise! includes a thorough instruction manual, but the program is only capable of calculating savings to date.

Microsoft Corp's spreadsheet software Excel 4.0 is the best in its class because its unique features make it easy to use. Excel's 'autofill' feature repeats a simple mathematical series after it has been entered once, automatically copying formulas and updating the data in the cells as it moves on. Autofill, for example, fills in succeeding cells with 'Feb,' 'Mar' and so on after the user has typed in 'Jan' in the first cell. An 'autoformat' feature allows the user to automatically format a table by clicking on a preconfigured list of options of color, font sizes and styles and borders. A 'scenario manager' gives simple best-case and worst-case forecasts while special menus can be called for a particular figure or chart being used. Excel, however, cannot organize and link multiple spreadsheets as well as Borland International's Quattro Pro for Windows, which also has more customizing tools. Both Quattro and Lotus Development Corp's 1-2-3 may have future releases with features similar to Excel's.

Intuit Inc's $35 Quicken for Windows 1.01 and Microsoft Corp's $45 Microsoft Money accounting software packages are reviewed. Overall, Quicken offers more features than Money and is thus the preferable package. Quicken, sold through mail-order, offers functions for updating prices, generating capital-gains reports and does a better job in creating business-style reports than Money. Money, on the other hand, offers a better on-screen tutorial and scheduling approach for future transactions, and can identify common errors when the user's account does not balance. Both products offer on-screen representations of check registers and forms as the basic entry for transaction. Both packages allow users to print out such data as cash flow and net worth and comparisons of budget estimations.

There are a variety of tax preparation software packages available for IBM-PC users or Apple Macintosh users. Tax preparation software can be organized as either an on-screen representation of tax forms or as an interview process, which automatically finds the proper forms and fills in the appropriate information. Programs costs between $29 and $65; they are not intended to replace an accountant or tax preparation service. The best tax form software products are ChipSoft's TurboTax and MacInTax. The TurboTax product arbitrarily limits the length of some entries. TaxCut is the best tax preparation package that uses the interview process. The least expensive product, Parsons Technology's Personal Tax Edge costs $29 and performs adequately, but not as thoroughly as other products.