Get Organized!

Even if you pay your bills online at merchants or through your bank’s Web site, it's worth downloading the new version and integrating all your bank accounts, credit cards and investment accounts in one place.

Quicken 2007 is available in office supply stores and online at Quicken.com, at prices ranging from $29.99 for the basic version (which is all you need if you just want to organize your checking and savings accounts) to $69.99 for the Premier version, which adds planning and investment-tracking services.

Know Your Stuff

While I’m on the subject of Quicken products, the company just introduced something new and very useful. It's a program called Quicken Home Inventory Manager, and it allows you to create, yes, a home inventory for insurance purposes -- the kind of information you’d be grateful that you had stored offsite at your office or in a safe-deposit box if your home was destroyed by a hurricane, tornado or fire.

The program's interactive guide assists you in assembling a catalog of everything in your home -- from furniture and appliances to artwork and collectibles. You can easily link as many as five digital photos to each item, as well as a written description.

You can also attach purchase receipts, insurance appraisals, warranties or even an item's price tag. Store the inventory on a backup disc or easily print out a report, and your insurance claims will be concise and exact. The program costs $29.95, and is available at the Quicken Web site or from your favorite retailer.

As you can see, I'm a fan of organization -- if it's easy to do. That’s why I'm spending lots of weekend time scanning business cards and taking new digital pictures for insurance purposes. Because no matter how easy these new products are to use, they still require that you do some work to make them useful. And that’s The Savage Truth.