The idea of the program is to input your current heating facts and figures and see how much you are paying and then to let you change some of the variables - use a different fuel, get double glazing, insulation in the loft, lower the average temperature in the house - and so on.

The final printout you get is very good and useful but there is a lot of information that you have to find out and put in to get realistic answers. So the booklet you get with your packs tells you all the things you will be asked and leaves spaces for you to fill in your particulars for use when you run the program.

The visual side of asking the question is a little start - white writing on a black background, scrolled. A little graphics would not waste memory but would liven up the program a little. But this program does what it sets out to do clearly and concisely.

A very good program that has the advantages of clarity of the previous program but uses graphics to better effect. The program was both useful and interesting - a rare quality in programs that I have ever seen. You input some information about the article, and the computer shows, using a series of clear tables, the best way of owning the article, by renting or buying.

The initial price, the rental instalments, costs and maintenance contracts are taken into account, even the money you are losing by not putting money into a building society is shown on the tables. These tables show money facts for each of the five years that you are renting or buying, so the facts can be gleaned from columns on the table. A very good program.

This is a more basic program which calculates the costs of borrowing either for a mortgage, hire purchase or just a lump sum. The program asks you your tax rate and then, when more information is added, displays a table showing details of how much interest there is, how much cash extra do you pay, what the real percentage is after tax relief and so on.

The main fault with this program is that it assumes that all the interest rates are the same as they were at the beginning of this tax year, so you input your highest rate of income tax at the beginning and it displays the rates that it will use in the rest of the program.

You can change these rates by getting into the program but that is a bother and the changes could be made by the program.

This is a good program to run and it does give the facts when all you have got as a vague percentage and a timespan from a dealer.

This program is similar to the "Borrowing" program in that it has assumed rates of interest, but in this case, you can change them in the program. This means that the program is quite simple in that it has a few tables giving information on percentage rates and using a tax percentage, and an inflation rate that you put in to adjust the rates to your situation. Since there are a large amount of things to be changed, you can save the program onto another tape. More of a database than a program, but useful nonetheless.

Family Finance is a good value pack which does exactly what it sets out to do in a clear fashion. These programs are a boon to family finance and would do well to be at most Citizen's Advice Bureaux if not on each BBC Micro.

A. Gollner