income

The market for personal finance software has exploded in recent years, and the quality of these programs varies widely. We're happy to report that Simple Home Budget is one of the better budgeting programs we've come across; the program didn't blow us away, but it's easy to use, and we couldn't find any major faults with it.

The program's interface is well-organized and intuitive, with a helpful calendar in the upper left corner and its major features--transactions, recurring transactions, categories, and overview--arranged in tabs. Simple Home Budget easily passed our primary financial software litmus … Read more

Quicken Essentials offers numerous useful tools to track your finances on the Mac, but it falls short by leaving out some important features found in Windows versions. The interface has been rebuilt from the ground up to make Mac users feel at home by following the design and navigation schemes of other Mac programs like iTunes. All of your accounts, transactions, credit cards, reports, and program tools are easily accessible from the left sidebar (what they call the Source List), showing all the information for each in the main register window. Like iTunes, you can click and drag to expand … Read more

You cannot always answer your phone every time it rings, right? You might be in a meeting, paying for merchandise, pumping gas, or engaged in a conversation over coffee with a friend. Of course, all of these are just a short list of the many excuses you might have for not answering your phone. This week's tip will teach you two ways to control the way you answer incoming calls on your iPhone.

Send callers directly to voice mail

Press the power button, on the top of your iPhone, twice during an incoming call and the caller is sent … Read more

iCash bills itself as a simple program, a financial management tool for people who don't know anything about accounting. Unfortunately, the program did not seem to bring either intuitiveness or outstanding features to the table, making it a pretty mediocre choice among similar programs.

iCash's interface looks nice enough, with attractive buttons and tabs that organize its main features. However, the way that the program attempts to organize things--both accounts and transactions--doesn't always make sense. The program comes with a 13-page Word document Help file, and it does seem that with careful studying a user could figure … Read more

Money Forecaster makes predictions about your financial future based on your current fiscal condition. Although we like the idea of this program and think it could be quite useful, we found it confusing and frustrating to use.

First impressions count, and Money Forecaster's interface is nice enough to look at and seems fairly intuitive. According to the Quick Start guide, the program is quite simple to use: just configure your accounts, add your income and expenses, and set your money goals. However, it turned out to be more complicated than it sounds. Money Forecaster allows you to set up … Read more

Remember the Death Clock, that oh-so-depressing site that counts down the time you have left to live?

I won't say this is the exact opposite, but it's in the ballpark: Earn-O-Meter for iPhone tallies up your income, in real-time, while you work.

The idea of this tongue-in-cheek app is to help you endure workday drudgery by showing how much money you're earning while "sitting through pointless meetings, dull conference calls, and inane conversations with nitwits in the workplace." (The developer's words, not mine.)

And, let's face it, wouldn't it be nice if … Read more

Home Loan Interest Manager Pro provides a tool for monitoring every aspect of mortgages. While the program can get overwhelming, it ultimately helps users understand home loans.

With the program's many command options, we smartly headed to the topic-oriented Help file. This, along with the program's wizard, showed us how to navigate our loan within minutes. We needed to have a lot of information present to fill out the wizard (Interest rates, loan amounts, duration of the loan, etc.), but it was worth the hassle since it laid the foundation of our mortgage. Some other options were much … Read more

Express Accounts represents free software at its best. This accounting program is well designed, both in form and in function.

In addition to being easy to navigate, the interface for Express Accounts is visually appealing, mimicking the look of Microsoft Windows Vista. The menus are organized in a way that makes sense and makes it easy to find what you need. When we opened the program for the first time, it prompted us to enter in our company information, which is a nice way to make the user's experience personal from the get-go. We also liked that Express Accounts … Read more

While some financial management programs are complex and require some time to learn, Easy Cash Manager strips away all but the most simple money tracking elements. It's easy to learn, but it may not fit the bill for everyone needing to manage their money.

This freeware program has a bold, all-green display that is laid out fairly simply. The green is a bit over the top, but the simplicity of the screen makes it easy to get started. The left screen is merely blank space. The right offers simple buttons to add deposits or subtract expenses. In simple black … Read more