Canter Bridge

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at www.amazon.com.

Any reader of this product’s reviews on amazon.com will quickly pick up that Intuit makes hay on expensive, incremental upgrades to its product. That’s the bad news. If that really, really bothers you, don’t buy Quicken.

The good news is that you don’t need to upgrade with every annual tweak. You can sit one out from time to time.

The even better knews is that Quicken for Mac was a revolutionary product when it came out and continues to be a direction-setter in personal finance software. What it accomplishes is something I couldn’t image in my mind’s eye during the months and years that a computer-savvy friend of mine begged me to leave my paper ledger behind and catch up with the world.

He was right, of course. I’ve been hooked on Quicken (yes, with it’s ridiculously frequent upgrades) ever since.

If you can’t imagine this either, let me have a go at explaining.

Quicken assigns a ledger to each account, pile of cash, piece of property, and any other asset that you own, owe, or would like nobody to know about. It then creates an infinite number of ways to report on what you have, allowing you to plot trends, plan, keep track as specifically or generally of where your net worth is headed, and just about anything else you’d want to do with your personal financial picture.

You can also train Quicken to keep up with your accounts electronically. For example, it’ll track the value of the stocks you own on line and keep your whole financial picture up to speed with the market’s movements and their effect on your wealth or poverty.

I am purposely explaining Quicken in the most basic terms possible, because the accumulation of views that lurch negative based on smallish flaws or limitations might well lead you as a potential buyer to overlook just how revolutionary Quicken and products like it are when it comes to keeping track.

In sum, it’s a superb product with a lousy upgrade plan. But then that keeps Intuit in business. I can hardly resent that.