OK, so financial software is not going to be a gift everyone's mom would appreciate. But, if your mom is interested in keeping a closer eye on where her money goes and she likes using a computer, then why not consider a gift of financial software? Even if the financial software is downloadable, you still can find ways to wrap the gift.

If your mom already uses Quicken, you could give her one of my favorite Quicken reference books to help her to use Quicken to the fullest or to understand parts of the software that she is not quite sure how to set up. I also have a list of Microsoft Money reference books, but for some reason I have not found any books for versions past Money 2006.

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