There’s been a lot of discussion lately about web-based personal finance tracking tools, especially since Intuit launched Quicken Online and Mint won the TechCrunch 40 award. These conversations have led in many directions - clearly these tools are useful, but are they worth the security concerns? Let’s take a look at what these tools have to offer and what the security implications are, and I’ll offer up my own take at the end.

What Do These Tools Do?

In a nutshell, Quicken Online, Mint, and Wesabe seek to provide centralized perspectives on your personal financial situation. They do things like categorize your credit card and checking spending into groups like “hobbies” and “food,” keep track of your net worth over a long period, and can even help you define and work towards goals. They aggregate your information automatically, helping you to see your spending and saving across all accounts at once. In other words, they’re all pretty nifty and offer some serious benefits.

Quicken Online
Having tried all three, I found Quicken Online to be the most usable and useful - but that may be because I am familiar with the desktop version of Quicken. Basically, Quicken Online is a web-based version of the classic Quicken software package. It collects information from all of your accounts and lets you review it in countless ways. You can set up goals, view the changes in your spending and saving over time (as you build up the data), and even helps you manage the lag between issuing a check and having it received by the people you’re sending it to. It’s easily the most feature-rich of the three and it’s ad-free, but it’s also the only one with a fee - $2.99 a month. Out of the three packages, I’m partial to this one - if I were to commit to using one of the three wholeheartedly, it’d be this one.

Mint
Mint is probably the most visually stunning and intuitive to use, but it’s also the one that makes me the most nervous about security. Mint offers many of the same services as Quicken Online, but without a fee - instead, they target you with very specific ad offers based on analysis of how you actually spend your money. If I was having trouble getting my finances in order, this would make me somewhat nervous, as it seems to be tempting fate. Still, their interface is stunning and, minus the offers, is probably the most useable of the three.

Wesabe
Wesabe is the most established of the three, is also free, and is likely the most secure. They never take any of your account information - instead, you use a tool on your own computer to build a report without account data in it, and this report is shipped off to Wesabe. They never see your specific account data. Also, they don’t mine their data to place targeted ads - instead, their business model revolves around selling “Pro” accounts with more features. It also has a lot of social networking aspects - you can quickly find people with similar financial goals and find out, in a broad sense, how your spending compares to the Wesabe community. It’s actually quite fun.

The Big Drawback

First of all, I don’t question that each of these sites have integrity when it comes to security. In fact, Wesabe was the first of these three tools to launch and I strongly criticized their security initially - and was pleasantly surprised by the openness of the company to discuss and resolve these issues. I believe that Mint, Wesabe, and Quicken Online all intend to keep your data safe.

But that doesn’t solve the problem.

The problem is something I like to call “information creep.” When you use these tools, you expose your personal information to them. With Mint, for example, you transmit your account information through mint.com and then through Yodlee to aggregate your info. Intuit (the Quicken Online folks) communicates directly with your account providers to scoop in information. Wesabe is perhaps the least onerous - you don’t directly submit account information to them, ever - but their tool isn’t as robust because of this limitation and they still do create a history of your spending.

In all three cases, you’re building up a substantial data set about yourself. With Quicken Online, they don’t milk the data (at least not on the surface) but you are charged a fee for their service. With Mint, it’s free - but they make their cash by showing you targeted ads based on that data. Again, Wesabe has the best method at the moment - they’re currently handling everything via venture capital money and plan a “Wesabe Pro” to generate revenue.

If that doesn’t concern you, consider this: the more information you have out there about yourself, the more likely it is that some sort of identity theft will happen no matter how secure individual sites are. It only takes one little accident for your data to get into the wrong hands - and even the most secure of places can have a little flaw. The more places you put your data, the more “little flaws” you’re exposed to.

What Do I Do?

I think tools like Quicken Online are great if you have a plethora of accounts to manage and have a hard time seeing the big picture. In that case, the benefits exceed the drawbacks - tools like these can really help you get a grip on things.

In my opinion, though, it’s not the best solution. The best solution is minimizing your accounts so that you’re not bogged down in account management. Do you need eight credit card accounts? Kill the ones you don’t use, save for perhaps your oldest one, and try to get down to two or (at most) three. How about five different retirement plans? Roll them together if you can - spend the time to see what your best option is and you’ll find yourself with a lot less effort to manage accounts.

Right now, I have one checking account, one savings account, two credit card accounts, one investment account, and one retirement account. It’s simple enough that I don’t need to use a tool like Quicken Online to see all of this information, and I don’t spend much time with account management either. I keep my net worth calculations in a spreadsheet - and it’s pretty clear from that data whether I’m doing well or doing poorly.

If you keep things simple to begin with, you don’t need complex tools to manage it. Quicken Online, Mint, and Wesabe are nifty tools, but you can often get just as much benefit by just simplifying your money - and then not expose yourself to even a tiny security risk, monthly fees, or highly targeted ads.

Other Perspectives

I felt it appropriate to include some additional viewpoints on these products from other blogs that I trust.

J.D. at Get Rich Slowly thinks Quicken Online looks promising, likes Mint with some caveats, and thinks Wesabe is a stellar Quicken supplement.

Lifehacker offers screenshot tours of Quicken Online, Wesabe, and Mint.

After my recent discussion about why I’d rather use a spreadsheet rather than Quicken or Microsoft Money, several readers challenged me to actually fire up both packages and see if they’re really as cumbersome as I thought.

So I installed and fired up Quicken Premier 2008 and started making a list of my thoughts as I used it. I thought that this would provide a more interesting review than many of the standard software reviews of Quicken 2008 that you can easily find via Google.

So, without further ado, here are ten things I think I think about Quicken Premier 2008.

1. The install puts a lot of icons on my desktop. Generally, the only things I have on my computer desktop are documents I’m currently working on. The install dumped four icons on my desk (Quicken itself, a Quicken-branded credit card offer, a credit report offer, and a one month trial of Quicken Bill Pay). It’s easy enough to dump these in the trash, though - just kind of surprising.

2. Setting up a single account is easy. I started off setting up my primary checking account, and it was done very quickly, automatically downloading all of my transactions from it.

3. Setting up a lot of accounts took some time. I set up an investment account, two retirement accounts, several savings accounts, two credit cards, and so on… that took some time. I ended up clicking around for a good hour just setting up accounts. Once they were set up, though, things were largely smooth…

4. A few accounts had some very odd issues during setup. I regularly saw things like double balances (Quicken reported my balance as being double what was in the account) and other little issues. I got all of them straightened out, but it was rather confusing, and at least once I had to turn to some message boards for help.

5. It does not handle multiple ING Direct savings accounts very well. I use the multiple savings account feature at ING Direct to “compartmentalize” my savings accounts. While Quicken 2008 handles these, it’s not particularly smooth. You have to actually log on via the web interface to ING and click on the Download link each time you want to get the information for all of your accounts.

6. The net worth displays are incredible. Once you get all of your data in the program, however, the data displays really begin to shine. One view that I particularly enjoy is the net worth display, which shows your current net worth as a bar graph and allows you to mess with the time range over which this is shown. It’s very similar to what I have set up for myself in Excel, which means that I quite like it.

7. The long term trend data displays are also amazing. In fact, I spent a whole ton of time playing with the features under the “Financial Overview” tab once I got my data in there. I can see how incredible this would be if you had many years worth of financial data in it.

8. One tool that really intrigued me was the “debt reduction planner.” I played around with it using my current debts and it basically spelled out the appropriate order for repaying them and correctly forecasted when I would pay it off. I had built a similar calculator in Excel, but this one was far easier to set up and also to alter and play around with.

9. Many of the other tools available can be quite useful, but many of them do not apply to everyone. For example, I found that the “My Savings Plan” tool was a very nice budgeting tool, but I personally don’t find a traditional budget to be useful.

10. Here’s the bottom line. If you’re willing to jump through all of the hoops to get all of your accounts in place, know the variations on how to get data in there, and know how Quicken wants you to do things, the reporting functions of Quicken are very useful. In other words, if you don’t know how to create the data views you want elsewhere - or don’t really know what you want - and just want a system that you can learn that tells you where to put your data, Quicken is a great choice.

I actually spent about five hours just playing around with my data inside of the program. I did discover a few useful bits about my spending and other things, but I’m not entirely convinced it was worth the time that I invested in it. I can easily see how, if someone was trying hard to budget and plan for a specific goal, that Quicken could be a home run, but I don’t use a budget as formalized as the one that Quicken sets up for you.

For me, I’ll stick with Excel - I have everything set up exactly like I want there. I knew what data views I wanted and I created worksheets in Excel to allow me to easily create those data views. If you’re able to clearly specify exactly the data views you want, then a spreadsheet is the way to go. However, there are a lot of people out there that could get a lot out of a program like Quicken - if you have a hard time seeing the big picture of your finances, Quicken can really open your eyes.

Perhaps the most common question I get from readers is what about Microsoft Money and/or Quicken? Do I recommend them to people, and if so, which one of the two do I really recommend?

First of all, Money and Quicken are both excellent packages for what they do. If you want to track your personal finances in great detail, both packages will certainly do the job, providing countless reports and views of the data.

When I first went through my financial meltdown, I tried both packages for a short time, first trying out Money via Microsoft’s free trial of the product, then trying out Quicken using a free copy that came with my computer. I did not feel that one package had a huge advantage over the other - in fact, they felt pretty similar to me. I liked Microsoft’s data views somewhat better, but I had more difficulty connecting to my accounts with Money - but, honestly, they both did the job just fine.

So why did I stop using them? They were overkill. I sat down and thought about the time I was spending entering information into the program, appropriately categorizing all of my spending, and looking at reports, and I realized two things.

First, it wasn’t a good use of the time. Sure, I could see areas where I was spending a lot, but almost always my own mental accounting told me where I was spending too much. I also had a great picture of my month-in month-out money flow, but it was a lot of work to get this picture.

Second, I could be doing a lot of other things with that time. Like, for example, working on The Simple Dollar or working on my computer consulting business or spending time with my family.

Another nit that bothered me was the regular bombardment with what amounted to ads. I was constantly being introduced to mutual funds and other financial products that “matched my financial picture.” I’m really not interested in being served up ads by a program that I paid for (or, in Money’s case, was using on a trial basis to decide if I wanted to pay for it).

There’s another problem: both of these programs are on a constant upgrade cycle, which means roughly every three years, it ceases to function and you have to upgrade. Why? It ensures consistent product purchases from people who are actually using the program.

Eventually, I figured out that the one feature I really liked and that kept me on track was the constant updating of my net worth - I felt motivated to keep it moving in the right direction. So I just built my own in a spreadsheet exactly how I wanted it and moved on to just using that. I couldn’t be happier - it’s very easy for me to update and I don’t have to worry about upgrades or any other issues that Quicken and Money introduce into the equation.

Here’s my serious recommendation if you’ve never used either package and are interested in trying one out. Try out Microsoft’s free trial of Money for 90 days and see whether or not you’re still using the program after that period - this will let you know whether such software is actually useful to you. If you are still using it, then spend a bit of time and research both Money and Quicken to find out which one works for you (Quicken will import all of the stuff you set up in Money quite easily).

It wasn’t quite my cup of tea (though I am considering giving Quicken ‘08 and Money ‘08 detailed run-throughs for future posts on The Simple Dollar), but it might be yours. Give it a shot and find out.

In the past, I gave a brief discussion about the difference between APR and APY when talking about simple and compound interest. What I didn’t explain, however, is why the difference is important and how you can use Microsoft Excel to calculate one from the other.

First, let’s define the two:

APR (annual percentage rate) is the return your money would earn in an investment over a year without any compounding. Let’s say you put $10,000 in a bank account with a 5% APR, but instead of putting the interest straight into the account, they paid the interest directly to you instead. Over the course of a year, the account would pay you exactly $500.

On the other hand, APY (annual percentage yield) is the return your money would earn in an investment over a year with compounding. Let’s say that same account with the 5% APR actually compounded monthly and left that money in your savings account to earn interest the following month. At the end of the year, your account would have $10,511.62 in it, meaning you actually earned $511.62 over the year. Thus, your APY would actually be 5.1162%.

Why doesn’t everyone just use either APR or APY to represent the earnings on an investment, instead of some situations using one and other situations using the other? To put it simply, companies will use whichever one makes their product look better in print. When you’re the one paying the interest, like on a credit card, they’ll quote APR; when they’re paying you interest, they’ll quote APY.

Let’s look at HSBC Direct, for example. Their savings account interest rate is quoted as being 5.05% APY. Their actual APR, though, is roughly 4.93% - the monthly compounding is what lifts the interest rate to 5.05% APY. On the other hand, let’s look at a credit card with an 18.99% APR, but it’s compounded daily … what’s the APY? 20.91%. For every dollar you have on an 18.99% APR credit card and don’t pay interest on all year, you’ll owe almost 21 cents at the end of the year.

So how can I convert back and forth between the two? It’s very simple to do with the aid of Microsoft Excel or Open Office Calc. If you know how to use the two programs, the instructions below should be very simple; if not, it’s well worth educating yourself on how to use a spreadsheet as they can be invaluable tools for personal finance (here’s a nice primer to get you started).

Converting APY To APR

These instructions will set up Excel to convert APY to APR, useful for figuring out how much a savings account is really paying you.

In cell A1, type APY
In cell A2, type # times a year
In cell A3, type APR
In cell B3, type =((1+B1)^(1/B2)-1)*B2

Now, type your desired APY value into cell B1 and the number of times a year the interest is compounded into B2 (most of the time it’s monthly, so you’d type in 12). The APR will appear in B3. You may need to set B3 to have the “percentage” data format; just right click on B3, choose “Format Cell…” and then choose “Percentage” in that box.

Converting APR To APY

These instructions will set up Excel to convert an APR value into an APY value, useful for evaluating how much you’re really paying on a credit card.

In cell A1, type APR
In cell A2, type # times a year
In cell A3, type APY
In cell B3, type =(1+B1/B2)^B2-1

Now, type your desired APR value into cell B1 and the number of times a year the interest is compounded into B2 (most of the time for a credit card it’s daily, so you’d type in 365). The APY will appear in B3. You may need to set B3 to have the “percentage” data format; just right click on B3, choose “Format Cell…” and then choose “Percentage” in that box.

These instructions should help you really understand what bank account offers and credit card offers really mean and how you can get them on the same terms.

I recently had a lengthy IM conversation with a reader who asked me what financial software I use to keep my finances in order. I responded with the truth: I use Microsoft Excel (I received Office as a gift - otherwise, I would use OpenOffice Calc). This launched a lengthy discussion about various software packages and why I don’t use them.

The two “big” commercial personal finance packages (Microsoft Money and Quicken) are pretty similar - don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Their interfaces are a bit different, but most of the primary functionality can easily be found in both packages: tracking expenditures, keeping track of your investments, and so forth.

However, there’s one big problem I have with both of them: they’re both the equivalent of attacking a peanut with a jackhammer. Both packages have reached a point where they’re so laden with features that they’re not intuitive to use or figure out, and the time investment required to learn the package and figure out the flow of work that works best for you is rather large.

I know very well that if I were to sit down and really invest the time to get one of these packages customized to how I want to do things that it could be very useful, but the truth is that I mostly am seeking a small number of data views to understand where I’m at: the balances of all of my debts and their interest rates, my monthly net worth calculation over time, and my active account balances. Guess what? With the exception of the account balances, these were all easy to set up in just a few minutes in Excel and I have them exactly like I want them.

I’m sure that Quicken and Money fans will respond to this post by listing a ton of features of their favorite software package that I’m missing out on, but that in itself is another problem: it takes significant time to really take advantage of those features. I’m not really interested in downloading and labeling transactions every single day (or facing a huge backlog of them after a week or so) just so I can see my current account balances - I can already see these things through online banking. I also don’t want to spend time correcting debits and credits between various accounts so that the reports on each account aren’t completely nonsensical - sure, I could “learn” the ins and outs of each system, but why not just do them in Excel?

Even worse, both mainstream packages force you to upgrade to a newer version within three years because they shut off many of the online features.

In the last month, I thought that it might be interesting to write detailed reviews of both packages and perhaps a “getting started” guide for each, so I downloaded them both and gave them a long time to prove themselves to me. I spent hours trying to use each program and figure out what’s good and bad about each of them, and all I kept facing was interfaces that took a lot of work to figure out and maintain and regular program crashes. For me, this is just not something I’m interested in dealing with just to track expenses, and I can’t honestly recommend either to my readers.

I’ve given both packages an extensive chance to prove themselves to me, and all I’ve faced are unintuitive interfaces, time investment without fruition, program crashes, and confusion. The time would have been better spent for me just to set things up how I like in Excel and move on with life - so that’s what I’ve done. I’d love to hear a truly compelling reason why I should abandon my Excel spreadsheets and move to one of these software packages - after trying each for several weeks, I certainly don’t see it.

You can try a sixty day trial of Quicken Deluxe for free if you want to give it a whirl. Similarly, Microsoft Money Deluxe has a ninety day free trial.

As I’ve become more and more interested in the open source movement, I’ve gradually replaced almost all of my closed source software with open source applications.

At first, I bought in because of the “free your money” aspect. Open source software doesn’t cost a penny - just go download it. It’s also reasonably safe, given that the source is open to the world and there are a lot of very intelligent people out there constantly improving it, particularly the more popular packages. As a personal finance blogger, this aspect is a very powerful one, but it was only the first step.

Soon, I began to really appreciate the “free your freedom” concept. I began to see the political and social ramifications of open source software: how it affects the marketplace and how the open source concept affects everything.

But after a while, the sheer creativity of some of these packages came through, packages I would have never found without the open source concept, and I began to understand the “free yourself” perspective. You see, the power of it isn’t the fact that it doesn’t cost me anything, or even the potential for social change that it has. It’s the fact that the really profound packages can transform your life. There are a lot of bright people out there producing open source software, and they often hit upon niches that commercial packages wouldn’t hit upon - but they can sure fill a niche in your life!

Here are seven open source packages that have become a part of my daily life - and enabled me to find, record, store, and analyze my own thoughts and information about the world around me in ways I would have never dreamed possible even a few years ago. These software pieces have literally transformed my life.

KeyNote
note taking / information organization
http://www.tranglos.com/free/keynote_main.html

Of all of the software I have ever tried in my life, this has been the most transformative. In terms of enabling, extending, recording, and organizing my thoughts, I have never found anything as amazing as KeyNote. Quite simply, KeyNote has made it possible for me to maintain this blog and to keep track of literally thousands of freeform ideas.

So what exactly is KeyNote? It’s not one of the “big” open source packages, so an overview is in order. KeyNote is a tool that lets you record a hierarchical series of notes in a single file. The interface for doing this takes about two minutes to learn and about two hours to really understand; once you “get” it, though, it can have a massive transformative effect on how you record your thoughts and information.

Here’s an example: I have a “default” KeyNote file. Within that file are a series of about twenty notes: To-Do, Finances, Readings, Writing Ideas, Diary, and so on. Under each one of these is a series of sub-notes, much like an outline: details on specific tasks to be done, notes on the bills to be paid and investments to review, and so on. It’s all free-form text pieces, which enables me to write three words or a thousand words, whatever I want. I also keep reviews of CDs, books, and films I enjoy, recipes I might try someday, and some general scratchpad sections for writing down things to think about later - and when I return to them, I update the note. My wife is starting to use it for student assessment notes and class attendance records. This stuff just scratches the surface of what’s possible, but they’re the tasks that I use KeyNote for on a daily basis.

Wordpress
blog management software
http://www.wordpress.org/

Obviously, WordPress has made The Simple Dollar possible. It provides the backbone for writing this site, managing all of the posts, and the public display that you see. Writing this blog has had a transformative effect on my personal finances (and on other aspects of my life), and for that I have WordPress to thank.

But if it were only that simple, I wouldn’t be mentioning WordPress here. The extensibility and customizability of WordPress has enabled me to start several personally important projects with it that may or may not ever see the light of day to the public, but have enabled me to figure out and understand aspects of my own life that I didn’t understand before. I use WordPress for a highly personal blog that resides (effectively) offline, a place where I can record my innermost thoughts and tag and categorize them. For me, it’s not so much a desire to journal but a desire to figure out who I am. I used to use various diaries for this, but they never led me to greater understanding of myself; however, Wordpress (and the capabilities you can add to it, such as customized fields) has made it possible for me to start tying a lot of different threads of my psyche together.

Generally, I use Keynote to keep my interactions with the world straight, but I use Wordpress to understand myself better, and I feel more happy, alive, and free than I have ever felt in my life.

FreeMind
mind mapping software
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/

Whenever I am in a meeting, you’ll likely catch me doing one of two things: making a list (i.e., what KeyNote does well) or writing a word and surrounding it with lots of other related words, then branching out from there. This second activity is exactly what FreeMind does: it lets you map connections between concepts in a very simple fashion.

I’ll use an example: let’s say I’m thinking about Milton Friedman. Around him, I might write words like “free market” and “economics.” I might then think a bit and connect “eBay” to “free market,” then start connecting stuff to eBay. Where do I go from there? Who knows, but when I look at the diagram at the end, I’ll see some interesting pairings at opposite ends, and by following the path connecting them, I’ll make some very interesting connections that, if nothing else, cause my thoughts to flow in a different fashion.

FreeMind makes this mind mapping process incredibly easy. Because of it, I’ve grown the ability to do effective mind mapping in my head on the fly and thus I now rely on FreeMind mostly just for very complex maps. In other words, regular use of FreeMind has literally changed the way I think and understand things - for the better, I believe. I now am able to make connections between disparate things that before seemed to be completely unrelated; in short, I understand the world better.

Mozilla Firefox
extensible web browsing
http://www.mozilla.com

There’s not much about Firefox as a web browser that hasn’t already been said; it’s pretty much the best one you’ll find in wide release for one big reason: it’s insanely extensible. How so? Here are ten extensions to Firefox that I use on a daily basis to keep my crazy life straight (including keeping up on the news, keeping track of my cell phone minutes, making phone calls, managing my grocery list, and so on):

• Sage is an RSS feed reader that integrates into Firefox. With one click, I get a listing of about 200 of my favorite blogs, along with the new postings for all of them. It’s completely changed the way I keep up with the blogosphere.
• Cell Minute Trackers I used to have to jump through a bunch of hoops to keep track of my wireless minutes. Now there are extensions for Firefox that let me know immediately upon firing up my browser how much talk time I have left - keeping me from overextending myself in a very expensive way. They’re available for T-Mobile, Verizon, and Cingular, with rumors of more providers on the way.
• GMail Space Firefox also acts as a backup tool for a lot of my creative writings by letting me use my GMail account as a file archiver. I just click a few times and data is archived at GMail, which I can retrieve anytime. I very rarely use a memory stick thanks to this.
• Skype Sidebar If you have broadband, this plugin will pretty much transform the way you think about telephones. Just using headphones and a little mic, I can call pretty much anyone I wish and talk as long as I want for peanuts while doing other productive stuff.
• ForecastFox I used to turn on The Weather Channel to catch the local weather on the 8s so that I could decide if planning an outdoor activity was worthwhile. Now I just fire up Firefox and look in the lower right corner and it’s done.
• del.icio.us Bookmarks One thing that used to frustrate me is that when I would change computers, all of my bookmarks would vanish, so if I wanted to find my useful resources, I had to remember them. Now Firefox integrates with del.icio.us, which allows you to have all of your bookmarks on any computer you want, even if it’s not your own, and it’s just as easy as adding bookmarks was before. This is invaluable if you travel very much.
• Answers I’m fairly literate, but sometimes when I’m reading a document, I hit a word or phrase that I don’t understand. If it’s in Firefox, I just hit “Alt” and click on the word to get a complete definition and explanation, allowing me immediately to comprehend what’s going on.
• Scrapbook When I’m reading a magazine and find an interesting article, I often load it up with scribbled notes, tear it out, and save it for later. This is exactly what Scrapbook lets me do with web pages, so I have a rather fat folder full of stuff saved for the future.
• Grocery List Generator I’m a foodie, so when I find a great recipe or concept on the internet, I tend to want to pick up the ingredients and try it. A click or two and I add it to my grocery list. I also keep my laptop open when building my grocery list on Friday evenings.
• All-In-One Gestures The final piece is a tool that lets you use quick finger gestures to do common things like switch tabs and scroll down the page and such. I have about four gestures I use over and over and over again that speeds up the surfing process greatly.

Mozilla Thunderbird
extensible email client
http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/

I used to be a Microsoft Outlook junkie for my personal needs, using it as an email client as well as a calendar for managing important events in my life. When Thunderbird was released, I basically yawned - it didn’t do half of the stuff that Outlook did, even though I was a bit jealous of the great spam filtering that was integrated into Thunderbird. I didn’t get on board, in fact, until I heard about a wonderful extension for Thunderbird called Lightning that turns a cool application into something completely amazing.

Lightning takes a strong email client and adds in a lightweight calendaring and to-do system that creates a suite on par with Outlook, except with strong spam filtering and fantastic email-to-task linkage. Great, you think, he’s all enthralled by an Outlook clone. Where this gets transcendent is the integration with Google Calendar, allowing me to be sitting at a conference, fire up a web browser, add an event to my Google Calendar, and then have it automatically add itself to Thunderbird when I get home. I can print off gorgeous calendars to post on the wall for my wife to let her know when I’m on the road, and perhaps best of all, I use it as a GTD manager for many aspects of my life.

Thunderbird alone has saved me hours of hassle in dealing with an address book, a datebook, a to-do list, a personal planner, a task documentation manager, and a method of keeping my wife informed of what I’m up to.

OpenOffice
word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software
http://www.openoffice.org/

I used to get by with just the basic utilities that came with Windows for my long-form writing and calculations (namely WordPad and Calculator). I envied Microsoft Office users, but not only did the price tag keep me away, I didn’t really understand how great the productivity could be if you really understood the tools; I used them in college in computer labs, but only to do immediate tasks. Now I understand their power.

First of all, OpenOffice Writer has simply made it possible for me to write and manage lengthy documents. I’ve been working on a novel for a year now, and the internal controls offered by Writer have enabled me to keep track of the characters and the narrative flow with just a few clicks. Even better, I can export the whole thing to PDF and ship it to others to read without breaking a sweat. This program has enabled me to fit my dream of writing The Great American Novel into my busy life - and has made me a more content person.

OpenOffice Calc (i.e., an Excel replacement) has singlehandedly made the personal financial transformations I’ve described on this site possible. I use it to handle my monthly budget, do investment calculations, model what my mortgage might look like, analyze what I might do for retirement, and so on. Every time I model anything to understand how money works - usually to finish a post here at The Simple Dollar - I use Calc. Software is no longer a limitation on people understanding their finances, and this is especially true for me. Calc is literally making me money on a daily basis because it has enabled me to finally understand my own finances.

Although I don’t use the other pieces of OpenOffice, these two elements alone have had a major effect on how I live my life.

Gaim
instant messaging software
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/

This is perhaps the most “expected” item that I would list here, as most people are familiar with the power of instant messaging software. Gaim has literally made it possible for me to maintain old friendships, build new friendships, and provide the launching pad for some great life experiences. It’s basically platform agnostic, which means that I can simultaneously converse with my friend on Linux using Yahoo, another friend on a Mac using iChat, three other people in an IRC chat room, and yet another friend on Windows Messenger.

It seems so simple and commonplace, yet the human relationships I’ve maintained or built because of Gaim (as well as social networking sites) are numerous, and that alone makes this software an essential part of my life.

On the morning of October 23, 2006, Dave DeSmidt had $179,000.23 in his 401(k). He was on a business trip to China when the unthinkable happened: someone logged onto his brokerage account, registered a new checking account, and then requested a distribution into that account. By the time Dave checked his brokerage account a few days later, it was empty. Read the full story; it’s quite disheartening.

Even more worrisome is how J.P. Morgan handled the situation:

“J.P. Morgan concludes there was no external or internal breach of controls with the J.P. Morgan environment,” the report said. “Access and authentication controls established within J.P. Morgan worked appropriately.”

The report dismissed the possibility that the crime was an inside job, as the request came from outside computers and the criminal knew DeSmidt’s user name and password.

The report’s conclusion: “Investigation Status: Closed.”

An online username and password are not good substitutes for more detailed levels of authentication. J.P. Morgan’s response to this might be arguably appropriate in protecting themselves from fraud, but their behavior shows no interest in truly protecting the customer - just protecting J.P. Morgan.

As online hacking becomes more prevalent, brokerages need to become more careful in their protections. Here is a three-step protocal that J.P. Morgan should have followed that would have protected Dave DeSmidt from this nightmare.

First, the distribution should not happen unless the name on the receiving account matched the name on the brokerage account. Whenever someone performs a withdrawal from a brokerage account, it needs to be verified that the names on both accounts match. If they do not, then no transfer should happen without a number of layers of additional confirmation.

Second, before any distribution occurs, the owner of the account should be notified. This notification should occur both in writing and over the phone for the initial distribution, and any changes to the distribution plan should involve similar confirmations.

Third, brokerages should maintain an intranet contact database and should carefully confirm any contact information changes. The online information should not be used as the sole mechanism for approval; brokerages should maintain an intranet database of client contact information that is not web-accessible and is only updated directly by employees. Whenever a change to this occurs, employees should require extensive verification from clients.

These protections would not completely eliminate fraud potential, but it would set the bar very high for any type of fraud to be successful. Dave DeSmidt would still have his money, and lots of responsible people could rest easier knowing that their brokerages were protecting them.

Here’s what you can do to help your brokerage get better fraud protection: call their customer service number and ask them what their protections are. If they don’t describe a protection like the one described above and they won’t guarantee your account in the event of such a fraud, then write to the company’s management and inform them that their security policy is inadequate.

Recently, I received a fresh new laptop from Dell. Upon receiving it, I did the traditional “installation of Windows from scratch” on it to remove a lot of the garbage that is preinstalled on Dells. Then I got really busy installing tons of great software that takes care of pretty much every software need I have. Not only was all of the software free, every piece of it was open source, which means that the code is peer-reviewed; no spyware here!

What follows is a list of thirty pieces of software that are the cream of the crop of open source software for Windows. Not only is every piece of it free, almost all of them directly replace expensive software packages.

Now, if only there were an open version of The Sims 2, I might go the whole way and switch to Linux…

1. Firefox
http://www.getfirefox.com/
Replaces Internet Explorer
If you haven’t switched to Firefox for your web browsing needs, do it now. It stops annoying popups and it has tons of amazing plugins that can make surfing the web even better. I could evangelize all day about Firefox, but one thing’s for sure: the first thing I do on any new Windows machine is run Internet Explorer just long enough to download Firefox.

2. Thunderbird
http://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird/
Replaces Microsoft Outlook or Eudora
Thunderbird is an email client that has five big things going for it: it’s free, it’s full featured, it’s lightweight and runs quick, it has an unparalleled spam filter, and it protects you from those ridiculous phishing attacks by clearly indicating which emails send you to a bogus website. If you’re not already using a web-based email solution, Thunderbird should be your client.

3. Sunbird
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/
Replaces Microsoft Outlook’s calendaring functions
Might as well get the Mozilla trifecta out of the way by mentioning Sunbird, which is the Mozilla Foundation’s calendaring program. It’s extremely easy to use (I figured out everything I needed in a minute or two) and easy to share your calendar with others. I consider a calendaring tool to be essential if you’re using a laptop, and this is no different.

4. Abiword
http://www.abisource.com/
Replaces Microsoft Word
Want a good word processor but find Microsoft Word too expensive? AbiWord is my favorite replacement for Word. It’s lightweight (meaning it runs quickly) and includes pretty much every feature that I use regularly in a word processor, plus it can save files in formats that you can exchange with Word and WordPerfect users, plus open any of their files, too.

5. OpenOffice
http://www.openoffice.org/
Replaces Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint
If you want to replace the rest of the Office suite, your best bet is OpenOffice. It includes very nice replacements for Excel and PowerPoint (and workable replacements for Access and other Office elements). In fact, I actually prefer their Excel and PowerPoint replacements to the real thing.

6. ClamWin
http://www.clamwin.com/
Replaces Norton AntiVirus or McAfee
ClamWin is a slick anti-virus software that’s quite easy to manage and is unobtrusive while keep your system free of viruses. That’s pretty much all I want from a package, so why pay money for McAfee to keep bugging me all the time?

7. Gaim
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
Replaces AIM, Windows Messenger, etc.
This is a very clean instant messaging program that allows you to be on AOL Instant Messenger, Windows (MSN) Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger simultaneously with one program. There are other free packages that do this, but Gaim is stable and clean and simple.

8. BitTorrent
http://www.bittorrent.com/
Original but essential
From their website, “BitTorrent is a peer-assisted, digital content delivery platform that provides the fastest, most efficient means of distributing, discovering, and consuming large, high-quality files on the Web. Our mission is simple: to deliver the content that entertains and informs the digital world.” In other words, BitTorrent allows you to download large media files and also use your bandwidth to help others download these files. Search for media files you want and download ‘em.

9. GIMPShop
http://www.gimpshop.net/
Replaces Adobe Photoshop
This is a version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program that does a pretty solid job of imitating Adobe Photoshop - a regular user of Photoshop (like me) can adapt to it quite quickly. It’s very richly featured and runs quite well - in fact, I see no reason to ever go back, even if Photoshop were free.

10. Gnucleus
http://www.gnucleus.com/Gnucleus/
Replaces LimeWire, BearShare, etc.
Sure, LimeWire and BearShare are free, but why not just get the same basic software without all of the spyware? Gnucleus is pretty much identical to those software packages - but without all that extra junk that slows down your computer.

11. VLC Media Player
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Replaces Windows Media Player, Quicktime, RealPlayer, etc.
If you get tired of having tons of media players on your computer, get this package that runs pretty much every media type you’ll run across without breaking a sweat.

12. Juice
http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/
Unique but essential
Juice lets you effortlessly subscribe to podcasts, organize them, and listen to them at your convenience. In conjunction with PodNova, I find it easier to use Juice to organize podcasts than using iTunes itself.

13. Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Unique but essential (for some)
If you’re interested in recording your own podcast (or just want to make your own voice recordings for whatever reason), Audacity and a microphone are pretty much all you need to get the job done. I’m not much for podcasting (let’s just say I don’t have a radio voice), but I use Audacity for other voice recording purposes.

14. RSSOwl
http://www.rssowl.org/
Unique but essential
RSSOwl is one of many open source RSS readers. In other words, it enables you to use one program to keep track of the content of a lot of different blogs; if you read a lot of blogs, it’s the only way to keep tabs on all of them without devoting hours jumping from site to site. If you have a laptop, it’s preferable to using sites like Bloglines, but if you’re on a desktop, a web-based feed manager might be better.

15. Filezilla
http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/
Replaces WinFTP
Many people occasionally have a need to FTP files to other computers; if you ever have the need to transfer files in such a fashion, FileZilla will do the job slickly and quickly.

16. Keynote
http://www.tranglos.com/free/keynote.html
Unique but essential
Keynote is basically designed specifically for the task of taking notes on a laptop. If you ever find yourself in a meeting or a presentation with your laptop open and want to jot down notes and organize them just a bit, Keynote is unquestionably the program for you. It’s not good at quality word processing, but that’s not the point. In my professional work, I find myself using Keynote almost as often as any other utility.

17. MusikCube
http://www.musikcube.com/
Replaces iTunes
If you’re not already committed to downloaded music from the iTunes Music Store, then MusikCube is the best choice available for a music organizer and player. It organizes your mp3s, makes it really easy and really fast to find them, and allows you to make some incredibly clever smart playlists.

18. Handbrake
http://handbrake.m0k.org/
Unique but essential
Handbrake enables you to stick a DVD in your DVD drive and have the contents of that film stored to your hard drive in a form that can be read by pretty much any media player. I often use it to put a few movies on my laptop for travel purposes, so I don’t have to worry about keeping track of DVDs while on the road.

19. X-Chat 2
http://www.silverex.org/
Replaces mIRC
X-Chat is a free IRC client. For those unfamiliar with IRC, it’s a place for technical people (and, as my wife loves to point out, nerds) to meet and discuss topics in an open environment. I often find it very useful when piecing through difficult technical issues.

20. KeePass
http://keepass.sourceforge.net/
Unique but essential
KeePass is a program that securely stores and manages the abundance of passwords we all use on a daily basis. I have literally hundreds of usernames and passwords spread out all over the place; KeePass keeps them all for me and keeps them safe.

21. TrueCrypt
http://www.truecrypt.org/
Unique but essential
TrueCrypt enables you to convert a memory stick into a strongly encrypted data storage device, meaning that you can store personal data on it without worrying about losing it and having personal information get out and about. I use it to keep some of my most personal data off of my laptop and strongly secured, just in case.

22. PDFCreator
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Replaces Adobe Acrobat
PDFCreator creates a virtual printer on your computer that, if you print a document to it from any program, creates a PDF of that document that can be read on any computer with Acrobat Reader on it. After installing PDFCreator, all you have to do is print like normal and out comes a PDF!

23. Freemind
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/
Unique but Essential
Freemind is a “mind mapping” software program. In essence, it enables you to brainstorm and link together ideas quickly, creating “maps” of concepts similar to what you might do on a whiteboard. I find it incredibly useful when putting together ideas for new posts or planning small projects or assembling the backbone of a writing project.

24. NASA Worldwind
http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/
Replaces Google Earth
WorldWind is very similar to Google Earth in that it allows you to browse the globe. While it isn’t strong for creating maps (but why not just use Google Maps for that?), it is utterly incredible for viewing three-dimensional landscapes of any place on earth.

25. Notepad2
http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html
Replaces Notepad
Notepad2 is a replacement for the traditional Windows Notepad that just adds a few sweet little features: multiple documents; line, word, and character counts; and some highlighting of tags. In fact, I’m using Notepad2 as I draft this post (after using Freemind to organize it).

26. HealthMonitor
http://healthmonitor.zucchetti.com/
Unique but useful
HealthMonitor enables you to keep an eye on the health of your computer. It identifies slowdowns and other system issues quickly and lets you know (for example, it gives a popup if your system memory gets to a certain percentage of fullness, or if your hard drive has only 10 GB free). This can keep you out of trouble and also give you clues to problems your machine might be having.

27. Workrave
http://www.workrave.org/
Unique but useful
Sometimes late into a writing session, my wrists get sore from too much repetitive movement. Workrave basically jumps in before this happens and locks down the computer for a while, preventing me from working too much and causing repetitive stress injury. Since I’ve started using it, it hasn’t significantly hurt my productivity at all and my wrists are thanking me!

28. GanttPV
http://www.pureviolet.net/ganttpv/
Replaces Microsoft Project
If you do any project management (or have a need to dip your toes in the water), GanttPV does a brilliant job of managing the task quickly, easily, and freely. If you need to move to MS Project later, you can export from GanttPV to Project, but once you start digging into GanttPV, you’ll likely have no reason to use Project.

29. GnuCash
http://www.gnucash.org/
Replaces Microsoft Money or Quicken
GnuCash is a slimmed-down version of the bloated Microsoft Money and Quicken packages, but it contains all of the features I want for managing my money. The interfaces are incredibly simple - it functions much like a checkbook ledger on your computer - but there’s a lot of meat hidden throughout the software.

30. True Combat: Elite
http://www.truecombatelite.net/
Replaces Quake IV, Halo, etc.
After all this downloading, you’re going to need to blow off a little steam, and I’ve yet to find a more enjoyable free game than this one. It’s basically a third person combat game, but the graphics are spectacular and the game is quite engrossing.

If you’ve downloaded and installed all of these, you’ve got access to all the productivity software you’ll likely need, clean and open and best of all free.