Copyright: The Loan Calculator® 1993 Stanford Smith


Introduction
The Loan Calculator v 1.2

The Loan Calculator is a shareware program that computes a variety of loan information in an intuitive and user-friendly fashion.  User input data consists of the initial loan or mortgage principal, annual interest rate, weekly or monthly payments, or loan payment period.  The program will compute the resulting required loan payment, loan period, total amount of interest paid over the life of the loan, and the total amount paid to pay off the loan.  In addition, the Loan Calculator allows the user to print out (either to a printer or the screen) a loan payment schedule, which gives a history of the total amount paid to date, the interest paid to date, and the principal remaining over the life of the loan.

File Menu Option

Help Menu Option

Principal

Interest Rate

Loan Period

Payment Interval Settings

Loan Calculation Settings

Calculate Button

Print Button

How to Register

Product Support for Registered Users


FileMenu
Register

About

Exit


Registration

Selecting the registration option from the File Menu presents you with the registration window shown above.  A valid NAME and REG. NO. can be obtained by sending $25.00 plus shipping and tax (in applicable) to Stanford S. Smith at the address above.  Once you have registered the software, the registration option will no longer be available.  You have 30 days to evaluate the Loan Calculator before you must register it. To facilitate your registration, please use the registration form provided with the Loan Calculator archive.  The file is entitled REGISTER.WRI and is in MS Write format.  Thank you for your support.


AboutBox

The About Box informs you of the version of the Loan Calculator you are using and the creation date of that version.


Exit

This option exits the Loan Calculator.


Help

The Help option off the main menu places you in the standard Windows Help system that you are currently using.


Principal

The Principal is the dollar amount of the value of the original loan. For example, if you took out a mortgage on your house for 30 years at an interest rate of  7.5% with a value of $200,000, the principal of the loan would be $200,000 and the value you would input in the Loan Calculator would be 200000.


Interest Rate

The interest rate of the loan is the annualized interest rate expressed as a percentage.  For example, if you took out a mortgage on your house for 30 years at an interest rate of 7.5% with a value of $200,000, the interest rate input into the Loan Calculator would be 7.5, not 0.075.


Loan Period

The loan period of the loan is the number of years in which the loan is scheduled to be paid off.  For example, if you took out a mortgage on your house for 30 years at an interest rate of 7.5% with a value of $200,000, the loan period is 30 years and the value you would input into the Loan Calculator would be 30.


Payment Interval Settings

The payment interval is the frequency with which loan payments are made. The Loan Calculator can use one of two payment intervals - weekly or monthly.  The payment interval is set using the pair of radio buttons shown above.  Since simple interest is used when computing the interest portion of loan payments, you'll find that the interest payment is slightly less with weekly loan payments instead of monthly payments.


Loan Calculation Settings

The Loan Calculator can run in one of two modes.  The default mode will compute the required loan payment from the specified input data, which consists of the loan principal, the annual interest rate, and the loan period. An alternative mode available in the Loan Calculator is to compute the period of a loan, given the initial principal, annual interest rate and the input loan payment.  This allows you to investigate, for example, how increasing or decreasing loan payments on a existing loan will effect the payment period.

Selection of the calculation mode is accomplished using the set of radio buttons show above.  When the Loan Calculator is started, it will always have Calculate Loan Pay't set as the default.


Calculate Button

The Calculate button, shown above, is used to calculate the loan output information based on the input information you have provided.  The output information includes the required loan payment (either weekly or monthly), the total interest paid over the life of the loan, the total amount paid over the life of the loan (principal and interest), and the loan period.  The output information will be displayed in the output fields shown below.

Pressing the Calculate button with the mouse has the same effect as pressing the <Enter> key when the focus is on any of the input fields (Principal, Interest Rate, etc.).  If all three of the input fields have not been filled in with values, an error message will occur and will remind you that all input information must be specified before a loan calculation can occur.


Print Button

The Print Button allows you to print loan calculation information in several formats.  For the Print Button to have any effect, one or both of the check boxes shown below must be checked.  If the Window check box is selected, the Loan Calculator will print out a copy of its main window to the default Windows printer.  This will allow you to get hard copy of multiple loan scenarios.  If the Pay't Schedule check box is selected, a payment schedule can be printed to the default printer and/or to a window on your display screen.

Payment Schedule Printout


Payment Schedule Printout

Once you have selected the Pay't Schedule check box and pressed the Print Button, the window shown above will be displayed.  To print out a Payment Schedule, first input the interval to be used during the printout.  This is amount of time (the time step) between successive lines of the payment schedule.  The units will be in either months or weeks, depending on what Payment Interval you have selected. In the above example, the Payment Schedule will be output using one month time steps.

The check boxes below the Payment Interval field select the destination of the Payment Schedule.  It may be sent to either a new window on your display screen, the default printer, or both.  Pressing the Ok button with neither check box selected will result in an error.


Product Support

Product Support will only be given to registered users.

How to Register

You can receive product support for the Loan Calculator by e-mailing your questions directly to the author at one of several convienent addresses:

•	On Compuserve e-mail:
     Mail your questions to Stanford S. Smith at 73257,363

•	On America Online e-mail:
     Mail your questions to SSSMITH

•	On Internet:
     Mail your questions to sssmith@aol.com

Normally, you will receive a response within one day.