With respect to your second question concerning the
usefulness of the Lifetime Planner in Money 2004, my own
assessment is that the tool is generally excellent.

The success of financial planning is mostly a function of
the thought and effort YOU put into the process, rather
than the capabilities of the software tool per se. Do
not expect any financial planning tool to remove the
responsibility from you of thinking thoroughly about your
situation, about your assumptions, about contingencies,
and about the sources of income and likely expenses. It
is the process of planning -- rather than the plan
itself -- that is key.

I have been using the Lifetime Planner myself to create a
retirement plan. Entering the inputs into the plan is
easy; but the thinking process and gathering inputs
(e.g., what will assisted living care cost 40 years from
now?) has consumed about 20+ hours. It may sound like a
lot of effort, but consider that many people spend more
time planning a single vacation than they do in planning
a retirement that will last decades.

- quote -

My wife and I are new to online banking and are considering
getting Money 2005 when it comes out in a couple weeks. I
have 2 questions:

1) Does the standard version of Money have long-term (i.e.,
lifetime) financial planning capabilities, or do you have
to upgrade to Deluxe or even Premium for that?

2) Can anyone who has used Money's financial planning
functionalities comment on how useful/efficient they found
them to be?

Thanks a lot!

Tim