Fiscal Fitness

What's your million-dollar dream? Early retirement to a Kauai beach house? An open-ended world tour? College tuition for the triplets?

You could trust your dreams to good fortune, but most of us prefer to take our financial fate into our own hands. That's where PCs come in. Few people realize the potential of the financial software and services available on their desktops. You may use Quicken or Money to balance your checkbook, and you might go online to follow your mutual funds, but many other financial-planning tools lie at your disposal, and some of them are free.

The table "What Financial Software Packages Have to Offer" and the table "Personal Financial Management Web Sites" identify useful packages and sites and list their strengths and weaknesses. When you've gathered the combination of resources you need, the tips that follow will help you use your PC to create a true financial plan.

There's no time like tax time to take a good, hard look at where you are financially, where you would like to be, and how you intend to get there. Microsoft Money 2001 and Intuit's Quicken 2001--and their online counterparts, Money Central and Quicken.com, respectively--offer integrated financial-planning tools that can help you reach your short- and long-term goals.

Of course, many other useful online resources are available to help you make your financial plans, and we profile the best of these. Our tips focus on four areas: retirement, taxes, investments, and debt reduction. (For reviews of this year's top tax-preparation software packages, see "When the Taxman Cometh.")

Boost Your Mutual Fund Returns by $150,000

The most important predictor of mutual fund returns is the expense ratio--the ratio of the fund's expenses to its average net assets. The lower the ratio, the higher your net return, so high expense ratios hurt: A 1 percent increase in expense ratio for a $2000-per-year IRA investment will lose more than $150,000 over 30 years. To find a cheaper fund that's just as good, use Quicken.com's Mutual Fund Finder.

Click the Full Search hyperlink, select a relevant Morningstar fund category, and in the Expenses options, select none in the Front Load, Deferred Sales Charge, and 12b(1) Fees fields. Don't worry about redemption charges--they actually discourage the riffraff of the investment world from joining the fund. Click Show Results. In the Display box, indicate that you want to see expense information. Set the Sort By boxes to show funds sorted in ascending order by expense ratio percentage.

Get a Free Personal Financial Plan

Nothing beats a personal financial plan devised by an expert, but Microsoft Money's Lifetime Planner comes close. The Lifetime Planner's worksheets and questions help you create a suitable customized plan. To use the Lifetime Planner, start Money, choose Lifetime Planner on the Planner menu, and follow the on-screen instructions.

Quicken doesn't have a single, all-purpose financial planner, but its powerful Retirement Planner, College Planner, Home Purchase Planner, and Debt Reduction Planner wizards help you build a personal financial plan. You can select any of these wizards from Quicken's Planning menu.

Pay Off Your Credit Card Debt

Quicken's Investment Savings Calculator can help you eliminate your credit card debt. Start Quicken and choose Planning, Financial Calculators, Savings. Enter your credit card balance in the Opening Savings Balance box of the Investment Savings Calculator, the credit card interest rate in the Annual Yield box, and 0 in the Ending Savings Balance box. Select Months in the 'Number of' box, and enter the number of monthly payments you will make in the box to the right. Choose Regular Contribution in the Calculate For area, and click Calculate. You'll see the monthly payment required to the right of Contribution Each Month.

You can also accomplish this with Microsoft Money's Debt Reduction Planner. Open the program and choose Planning, Debt Reduction Planner. Then follow the instructions for entering the debts you want to pay off. Be sure to repay the credit cards with the highest interest rates first.

Repay Your Mortgage Early

Early mortgage repayment is easy money. With a 30-year, $150,000 mortgage at 8 percent interest, paying an extra $25 a month saves $24,780 in interest over the course of the loan. Quicken makes it easy to figure out how much you can save through early repayment.

Start Quicken and choose Planning, Financial Planners, Savings. Select Ending Savings Balance, and enter your current loan balance as a negative value in Opening Savings Balance. Enter the principal and interest payment (including the extra principal amount you're willing to pay) in Regular Contribution, and enter the mortgage interest rate in Annual Yield.

Now comes the tricky part: Experiment to find the value in the Number of Months box that produces an Ending Savings Balance near or equal to zero--that's your goal.