Messages: What Members Are Asking On-Line

WealthBuilder Replacement Wanted

Reality WealthBuilder, a software package I have used since 1994, is no longer being supported by the vendor, Reality Online WealthBuilder. It was a very comprehensive product, did a good job with the accounting of investment transactions, and produced some useful reports. Since it was abandoned, there is no research or update capability, so I use Yahoo! Finance for current prices and research and update my portfolio weekly by manually updating security prices. Initially, I searched for a comparable product and found that AAII recommended Captool. But it appeared not to be as comprehensive as WealthBuilder.

With the recent purchase of a new Dell 4550 computer, which operates on Windows XP, the WealthBuilder package still operates, but viewing it is difficult because the fonts are small and pages don’t expand to cover the screen.

I was wondering if you were aware of a currently produced package that would be comparable to WealthBuilder.

—J.D.
via E-mail

CLICK ON IMAGE TO SEE FULL SIZE.

CI Editors respond: WealthBuilder combined portfolio management with financial planning and security research. Depending upon your subscription, you were able to track your portfolio, obtain news on your securities, and screen and research stocks and mutual funds. The program’s strength was in financial planning—setting long-term goals and adjusting your portfolio in an attempt to meet your goals.

Captool is examined in this issue of Computerized Investing (see the Product Comparison article), but its strength lies in the accounting and performance analysis of your holdings and portfolios. Users can specify the financial Web site that Captool links to when desiring additional financial information, but generally research data is not stored within the program.

Quicken and Microsoft Money come closer to matching the feature set of WealthBuilder. Both are financial planning programs that provide planning, budgeting, portfolio management, and research capabilities. Research is provided by close integration to the respective parent company’s financial Web site. Both of the programs are examined in this month’s portfolio management product comparison and they were also reviewed in the January/February 2003 issue of Computerized Investing (available at the Computerized Investing area of AAII.com).

Separately, we examined retirement planning Web sites in the September/October 2002 issue of Computerized Investing. Financial Engines (www.financialengines.com) was the strongest offering and should be examined if you are looking for advice on changes to make in your portfolio to meet your financial goals.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO SEE FULL SIZE.

Unfortunately, no matter what program you decide to use, you will need to re-enter the historical purchases of your portfolio to produce accurate performance and capital gains reports. Over the long run, this should still be easier than manually entering the price data to track the current values of your holdings.

In the short run, if you simply wanted to make your WealthBuilder fonts larger you might be able to make a few adjustments to your computer.

The resolution that you have your display set to will determine how large the fonts are for all your programs in Windows. The greater the resolution, the more you can see on your screen, but also the smaller the lettering. To adjust your resolution, right-click on a blank part of your desktop and select Properties from the menu that pops up. Within the properties box click on the Settings tab to adjust the screen resolution (see Figure 1). The lower the resolution, the larger the size of the letters on the screen for all applications. Older Windows and DOS programs that run in a smaller box while in full-screen mode should now take up a larger portion of the display.

The font of current Windows programs can also be adjusted through the Appearance tab of the Display Properties box. You can keep you display resolution constant and select large or extra-large fonts for Windows menus and programs (see Figure 2). This option is especially helpful for users with laptops or LCD displays, which typically look best in one specific resolution.