Money

Every time you enter an expense, Money records detailed information on the transaction to be used for reporting. As time goes on, you might wish to compare your current expenses to a time period in the past. Comparison reports can display your spending by the payee, expense group, or by overall financial situation for two different time periods.

Previous chapters have focused on the set up and daily use of Money to manage your checkbook and other accounts. Now, you can apply all of that information to make Money a more effective financial tool based on your personal goals for savings, investments, and budgeting.

As you work on your finances, Money is constantly working to evaluate the health of your overall financial situation. While analyzing every aspect of your Money file, the application will display Advisor FYI messages that provide insight, suggestions, and guidance which you may want to take action on.

In addition to the default notifications, Advisor FYI can alert you to changes in your stocks, remind you of important dates, warn you if you spend too much in a budget category, and notify you when your account balances reach a specific high or low value.

Another way to have Money better mind your finances is by setting up priorities. Priorities can be general subjects, such as to learn more about investing. Or this could be specific topics, like investing for retirement. You may have already established a set of priorities in the Setup process, but you can always go back to review and modify them.

In Money, you can create a budget using income and expense categories to help understand your cash flow and uncover any excess cash that can be used to pay debt, invested toward retirement or stashed away for an expensive purchase. And because the Budget Planner is integrated into Money, the bills and deposits you have already entered are automatically imported using a feature called Autobudget. You can also create multiple budgets and save them under different names.

Now that you have established a budget, you can take advantage of spending thermometers to help you track your spending progress. By default, a thermometer appears in your account register whenever you record an expense for a category included in your budget. The Monthly Spending Progress section of the My Money Home page (as shown in Figure 7-6) displays the Monthly spending progress area, where you can add and customize spending thermometers.

Because the minimum payments on credit cards could take a long time to pay off, Money includes the Debt Reduction Planner, a tool to help eliminate debt in four easy steps using a plan that works for you.

Everyone should have long-term goals as a part of a successful financial plan. And whether it is retirement, sending children to college or making a big purchase, Microsoft Money can help you achieve your long term financial objectives. The Lifetime Planner is designed to help you meet these goals and show you how your lifestyle, changes in spending, and saving can help or hinder your efforts along the way.

As you might expect, Money includes a number of powerful financial management tools powered by the Internet. This means that while connected to your online service, these features allow you to keep your bank statements up-to-date, pay bills and even surf the Internet in Money Browser to visit sites like the Online Investing Research Center.