This study describes the concepts and steps by which a forester may determine when a stand of timber is economically mature. The forester's traditional recommendation dictated a harvest when mean annual growth culminated. Economic performance was given little consideration in the past, partly because the structure of stumpage prices and markets did not require it. More recently, when the market has been dictating a harvest schedule at variance with that indicated by volume growth alone, the forester is likely to have been overwhelmed by the complexity of the required economic analysis. The availability of affordable personal computers and related decision-making software now enables the forester to cope with these complexities in devising a harvest schedule that is economically optimum for each unique stand of timber.