Using Personal Finance Software Demos.

Only four demonstration programs have limited functionality to show off how much better they are than other free online calculators. These are the bond yield to maturity calculator, financial calculators, the retirement calculator, and the personal budget software.

Most of the financial planning software "demos" are the actual programs, with formulas deleted using Paste Special, Values. This makes spreadsheets ten times smaller (for much faster downloading) and non-functional. Then everything is locked up and password protected, so you won't be able to do anything but look at them.

The reason is, because they're modular and we sell to investing consumers, they could get the information they need in an hour, then not need to buy anything. This is in contrast with other financial planning software vendors that only sell to financial planners. If we only sold to financial planners, we'd send them fully-functional programs that would expire in a week or so.

You'll receive a working program without protection on the input cells and presentation sheets after you pay for it. The input and calculation sheets will still have protection on everything except input cells.

Most vendors don't even have free demos, or you have to qualify to get them, or they damage your computer during installation, or they have to be e-mailed to you, or they only work for a few days (then salespeople will call to "follow up"), We decided to take the middle ground of letting people see them as long as they want, anomalously, so you can see everything including the flow of calculations, but they don't function.

Between the product pages, the demos, the directions, and the sample financial plans, one can get most all of their questions answered before purchasing (without having to call or e-mail). This is as transparent as it can get without giving everything away for free. Compare our transparency to other vendors.

If you regular left-clicked and the spreadsheet opened in your browser, then you can ignore the next paragraph. If it didn't, then to get it to download please read the red text above the demo links on the list of all of the free financial plan software demos here.

After right clicking and downloading the spreadsheet onto your hard drive, find it, then open it with MS Excel like you would any other workbook. You can do this with Lotus/Quattro Pro too, but not with MS works.

If you can open demos with your Mac, then the actual program will work too. To be sure, try one of the four functional demos listed in the first paragraph.

If you're getting password errors when trying to open a spreadsheet, then you probably just have MS Works (this also happens on some PDAs and cell phones). It's normal to get a password dialog box once programs are open and you try to edit the contents of a cell. If you have a regular computer (not a cell phone), and you're asked for a password to open a spreadsheet, then your computer has a firewall or other internet networking issue (none of the demos require a password to open, but will ask for it if you try to change the contents of a cell).

Most of the financial plan modules are part of a fictional comprehensive and integrated financial plan prepared by Smart T. Advisor, for his clients, John and Mary Sample.

There is more than one "page" in each spreadsheet, called sheets. The labels at the bottom left are called sheet tabs. You switch between the sheets by either clicking on these tabs or pressing Control Page Up or Down (hold down the control key and then press either Page Up or Page Down).

The demos open up to the main results sheet. We call them presentation pages, because they are the pages financial advisors would print and present to clients.

Most programs use "drill down," so you see more and more detail as you move rightward through the sheet tabs.

All you do is look things over and read the information text boxes (if there are any. They are not on the actual programs). Use the up / down / left / right scroll bars to view all of the text boxes and results.

Use the same process to review all of the sheets. Input sheets are generally grouped in the middle, calculation sheets (where all of the work is done) are to the right of input sheets, and presentation sheets are to the left.

That's all you can do. You basically look at the results sheets to see what the software does, look at the input sheets to see what you have to input, and then look at the calculation sheets to see how the work flows.

While you're doing this, it helps to have a hard copy print out of the directions on hand. This way you can follow along and see exactly what you'd need to do.

Basic input concept for most everything: Input your data, which financial planners would gather from clients using Fact Finders, into the green-shaded cells of the input sheets. They turn gray when input is entered, so most will already be gray on the demos. If a cell is colored white, blue, or yellow then it's not an input cell, so you won't be able to do anything with it (you can do anything you want on all of the presentation sheets after you buy it).

This will make data flow through the calculation sheets, which will then populate the presentation sheets that display results.

After inputting, you fix mistakes, repeat, format, and print.

If you're seeing this: ####, then increase your zoom magnification number (View, Zoom, or use the slider in Excel 2007). Changing the row height or column width fixes it too, but you can't do that on demos because of the protection.

If you're an investing consumer (not a professional financial planner working with clients), when you read "client, prospect, or they" just think "you and your spouse." You would be both the advisor and the client.

If you print directly from your browser, or you just click Print in Excel, it won't work well because of the protection. How to control printing on protected workbooks is explained in the second section of this page.

A lot of the presentation pages are also in the free sample comprehensive financial plan in PDF format, so they print better than the demos.

Even though these financial planning programs are all separate modules (spreadsheets), they integrate (share data) just like other investment software. R ead about financial plan software integration. Then there is the fully-integrated financial planner, where everything is hard-wired to share data.

Tips for working with Excel are here and here.

Financial Software Information

Dual RWR Retirement Software

Asset Allocation Overview with Our Historical Returns

Asset Allocation Calculator

Asset Allocation Models with Our Historical Returns

Monthly Updated Mutual Fund Picks

Financial Tools

Free Personal Budget Software

Financial Planning Fact Finders

Investment Policy Statement Software

Bond Calculators