PFP is the latest incarnation of the personal finance program used by Aere since 1983.
Unlike other personal finance software, there is no need to create accounts for various categories of expenses, and allocate appropriate amounts of money among them.
PFP works on the principle of maintaining a reserve-account for every known expense (including future savings goals), transferring a fraction of the total amount to its reserve-account each week. When the due-date of the expense comes-around, the necessary money to cover the expense (pay the bill) is already in the reserve-account.
You can 'borrow' from the reserve-accounts if necessary, and if you do, the amount taken out each week for the reserve-account will be adjusted accordingly.
You save your receipts (or check copies) during the day (or week), and record them when you next run the program.
In recording a charge or check, in typing the name of the business (or person) the transaction is for, the program does auto-completion of the typing (based in the persons or businesses already specified so-far in the session).
It has an easy and effective method of reconciling your records with your monthly bank statement.
By doing this, and using this program, you always know how much you can safely spend, or how much of a payment for something new you can afford.
It also provides an easy way of entering long-term reminders, which appear when they come due. This is very useful for remembering things far (even years) in the future (such as your next tetanus shot).
As with expenses, it handles known sources of income (such as paychecks), allowing you to confirm (or change) the amount deposited when it comes due. The money deposited can go to more than one account, if desired.
It has extensive help-information integrated into the application, and that help can be accessed even in the sand-box version (because it doesn't require starting your Internet browser).
At the end of the year, it produces a sorted (and totaled) transaction summary, which is very helpful in preparing your tax return. And you can run the year-end (year-to-date) analysis at any time to see where your money is going.
It was first written in Microsoft Basic, on a Radio Shack “Color Computer”. Later it was converted to a C-program, and used on various machines. It was later converted to a C++/MFC application, running on Windows.
It was finally converted to a Java/Swing application (which runs on any OS with Java), and has been in use by Aere's family members for many years.
The application runs with all permissions, as a normal application. As is required by Java security requirements, it uses a trusted, revocable, code-signing certificate (of Laeramin LLC, by DigiCert, on AeresRealm.com).
To download it, right-click on the link below, and choose “Save Link As” (or whatever similar choice is offered in the popup-menu by your browser).
With Java installed, you can verify the authenticy of the software (on MacOS and Linux, where the JDK is installed), by entering the following statement in a terminal session, having first changed directories to the directory (such as Downloads) where the jar-file is stored:
jarsigner -verify Pfp61-ap.jar
On Windows, where just the Java JRE is installed, without the JDK, the ‘jarsigner’ program is not available, so you can’t check it.
On Windows, you can run it as an application, by opening it (double-clicking on it). If you plan to use it a lot, you can put it in your desktop folder.
On MacOS, you need to option-click (2-finger, or right-click) on the downloaded jar-file, and specify it is opened by the Java launcher. The first time you try to open it, it will complain it can’t identify the developer, asking if you want to open it anyway. After choosing to open it, you won’t have to answer that again.
On Linux, you probably have to right-click on the jar-file, select “Properties” from the popup-menu, and specify it is to be opened by “OpenJDK Java 11 Runtime”, or alternatively, “java -jar”. You will also have to change its permissions to make it executable.
The application allows you to save the application's data at the end of a session, and reload it in a new session later. All of the functionality is enabled.