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(C) Copyright 1991-1995 MaeDae Enterprises
M O R T G A G E D E S I G N E R
Version 3.x
Reference Manual
Mortgage calculations complete with amortization schedules!
Supports easy to use "What if?" calculations.
Context sensitive help and on-line manual make it easy! Mortgage
Designer for Windows is user supported software (Shareware). If you
use it past the initial 15 day evaluation period, you are
required to register it. No exceptions!
Mortgage Designer for Windows
"Mortgage Calculations -- Fast, Accurate, and Easy"
is published by
MaeDae Enterprises
5430 Murr Road
Peyton, CO 80831-7402 U.S.A.
(719) 683-3860 CompuServe at 72571,3245
Published and printed in the United States of America.
Copyright 1991-1995 MaeDae Enterprises as a licensed, unpublished,
proprietary work. All international rights reserved.
Page 1
(C) Copyright 1991-1995 MaeDae Enterprises
The printed Reference Manual and associated registered software
may not be copied, resold, reproduced, disclosed, archived,
transmitted, or transferred in any form, electronic or otherwise,
without the express written permission of MaeDae Enterprises.
You may freely distribute the Shareware version.
REGISTERED USERS: (those who paid us for this product)
MaeDae Enterprises hereby grants a "book" license to the original
individual (even if purchased by a company) user of this copy of
Mortgage Designer. You may use the program on your computer and
make one backup for storage as long as there is no possibility of
use or residence on more than one machine at any time.
Pricing, specifications, and conditions are subject to change
without notice.
Send all registrations and inquiries for site (multiple CPU or
network) licensing to MaeDae Enterprises at the address on the
previous page.
DISCLAIMER:
MaeDae Enterprises makes NO claims AND offers NO warranties of
any sort with Mortgage Designer. MaeDae Enterprises assumes NO
responsibility for any damage resulting from the apparent or
actual use of Mortgage Designer (mental or physical). The program
provided is not guaranteed as to merchantability or fitness for
its ultimate use. The user accepts all responsibility for use
and may not resell the program.
IBM PC/AT is a registered trademarks of the International
Business Machines Corporation.
Mortgage Designer is a trademark of MaeDae Enterprises. Other
trademarks belong to their respective owners.
Page 2
(C) Copyright 1991-1995 MaeDae Enterprises
PREFACE
ABOUT THIS MANUAL
You will notice that this manual is concise. This is intentional
as we strived to make Mortgage Designer the easiest program of its
type to use. We opted to provide an extensive built-in user help
system. Feel free to use this reference manual to install and
get acquainted with the program.
For many of you, this may be your first exposure to Shareware.
To help eliminate possible confusion, we included a short
description of the Shareware marketing concept, explaining what
it is and why it relies on YOU for its survival.
WHAT IS SHAREWARE?
Shareware is not a kind of software. It is a revolutionary
method of marketing Commercial software. Our software is
Commercial software that we are allowing you to examine for 15
days before you make the purchase decision. With traditional
marketing methods, you have to purchase Commercial software from
a computer store or through mail order businesses, then try it
out, and hope it does what you want. Shareware allows you to
"try before you buy!"
We rely upon you, the customer, to examine our software. If you
find it useful, please register. Your support is needed for us
to continue to improve our products.
With warmest regards,
David Black
President, MaeDae Enterprises
Page 3
(C) Copyright 1991-1995 MaeDae Enterprises
Table of Contents
=================
Page Description
==== ===========
5. What is Mortgage Designer? An overview of its features.
6. Hardware Requirements
7. Installation - the "README.DOC" file.
7. Installation Notes
8. Getting Started
9. Tutorial
10. Using "What If?" Calculations
11. Troubleshooting
12. Basic Definitions
13. Mortgage Designer Limits
14. Additional Information
Page 4
(C) Copyright 1991-1995 MaeDae Enterprises
WHAT IS MORTGAGE DESIGNER?
==========================
Mortgage Designer is a powerful and easy to use mortgage package
for Windows 3.1 that allows you to:
1. Quickly calculate mortgage repayment information,
2. Generate amortization schedules for output to the screen,
printer, or file, with the flexibility of choosing which payments
are shown,
3. Perform complex "What if?" calculations where the principal,
interest rate, term, or payment can be adjusted,
4. And do it all without cryptic commands! Windows even makes it
fun!
Page 5
(C) Copyright 1991-1995 MaeDae Enterprises
HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS
=====================
1. IBM PC or fully compatible computer capable of running
Windows 3.1 in the enhanced mode.
2. At least one floppy disk drive and a hard disk drive (2500K
free space minimum for the full system) are strongly recommended.
INSTALLATION - README.DOC
=========================
For all installation information see the README.DOC on the main
distribution diskette. You can view the information on-line or
print it out on your printer. README.DOC is frequently updated
to contain the latest information. Most copies of Mortgage
Designer will come with an INSTALL.EXE file that you can run from
the file manager for an automated installation.
P.S. The Shareware version of Mortgage Designer is complete.
However, it is a 15 day trial version. Also, additional product
information screens have been added.
Feel free to share ONLY the Shareware version with friends and
potential users of Mortgage Designer for 15 day trial/evaluation
purposes only. You may not use the Shareware version on other
machines in order to avoid purchasing additional copies of the
full program. You may not give away any copies or make more than
one copy of the fully operational program for other than archival
purposes.
Page 6
(C) Copyright 1991-1995 MaeDae Enterprises
IMPORTANT INSTALLATION NOTES:
1. Diskette #1 contains many files in addition to MD.EXE.
Please make sure these files are all installed in the same
directory when running Mortgage Designer. One exception is
CTL3DV2.DLL which must ONLY be in your Windows system directory.
It can't be in two places or in a location other than your
Windows system directory.
2. If Mortgage Designer does not run properly:
A. Your machine may not be 100% IBM PC operating system
compatible or Windows may be installed incorrectly. This
is not always disastrous and a quick call to our phone
support staff may solve your problem.
B. You may have a slightly incompatible Windows video
driver. Usually, updating your driver or re-installing
Windows solves the problem.
C. If you have any memory resident programs or system
drivers, try running without them loaded on your computer.
3. This manual is designed to give you a general overview and
familiarity with the program. More complete, up-to-date
information is available to you through the extensive built-in
user help (F1) system or the help button when available on dialog
boxes. When using the more advanced features of the program, the
help screens will guide you through the toughest questions with
ease. As Mortgage Designer continues to add more features, you can
be sure that the built in help will give you the guidance needed.
This way everybody wins. We don't spend money continually
revising manuals and charging you higher prices. You get what
you want and deserve: accurate, up-to-date information. So fire
up the computer, dig in, and welcome to Mortgage Designer!
Page 7
(C) Copyright 1991-1995 MaeDae Enterprises
GETTING STARTED
===============
After you run MD.EXE using the file manager, the MAIN MENU will
appear on your screen.
The Main Menu options with descriptions are below.
*File: This menu option provides the preferences area that
allows the basic data editing option for selecting the mortgage
info you want to work with. This option also provides access to
the file functions for saving the mortgage information.
Note: You must first tell Mortgage Designer the specifics of the
mortgage before you can use the other sections of Mortgage Designer.
*Calculate: Allows you to calculate the remaining balance, cost
of mortgage, and pay "What If?" to solve for missing information.
*Reports: Generate amortization schedules and compare mortgage
options.
*Tax Time: Calculates the distribution of your payments divided
into yearly principal and interest totals. This should be very
useful at tax time. It will also estimate your yearly tax
savings due to interest paid on the mortgage. Use these figures
as rough estimates only since each person's tax situation is
normally very different.
*Help: Provides the help index/commands, invoice printing, and
information about the version of Mortgage Designer.
Page 8
(C) Copyright 1991-1995 MaeDae Enterprises
TUTORIAL (CALCULATING A MORTGAGE)
=================================
Now let's do something simple to demonstrate how Mortgage Designer
works.
Choose the File menu option. Then pick the Modify option from the
menu. A dialog box will appear allowing you to edit the
information concerning the mortgage. Use your mouse and click on
the edit field containing the principal amount. You may also
select the amount borrowed/principal edit field by pressing Alt+A
(the A is underlined, so Alt plus the underlined key will select it).
For our sample mortgage edit each field to contain the following:
Principal: $100,000.00
Interest rate: 10.000%
Payment frequency: Monthly
Number of payments: 360
After you alter the edit fields to contain the above information,
select the payment button. A dialog box will pop up showing that
the payment is $877.57 per month. Thats all there is to it.
Select OK then select the done button and we're finished.
Note: If you normally work with a certain principal, interest
rate, or term, use the save mortgage option to save the
information. You will then need to set the preferences to
automatically use this mortgage as the defaults for Mortgage
Designer.
Page 9
(C) Copyright 1991-1995 MaeDae Enterprises
USING "WHAT IF?" CALCULATIONS
=============================
Mortgage Designer supports calculating the missing item from
principal, interest rate, term, and payment. Any missing item
can be calculated given the other three.
When using the missing variable area under the calculate
pulldown, you enter the information you know. Mortgage Designer
will calculate the missing item. Tell Mortgage Designer which item
is missing by checking the radio button for the missing data
item. Then select the calculate button to calculate the missing
item.
You will notice that as you solve for different items, the basic
mortgage information will change slightly. Example: Use the
data from our tutorial on the previous page and solve for the
principal. The principal will be changed from $100,000.00 to
$99,999.82. The difference of 18 cents is caused by the rounding
of the math.
The term in years has the most granularity. Since we can only
have whole years, it is extremely hard to accurately handle this
area. Mortgage Designer rounds to the nearest whole payment.
After you solve for the number of payments, we recommend you
perform a second calculation solving for a second area. We might
first solve for the term, then solve for the payment to allow
Mortgage Designer to compensate for the granularity of the
payment frequency.
As you run through the mortgage what if calculations, consider a
15 year mortgage verses a 30 year mortgage. The payments are not
twice as high! They are only a little higher and you reap huge
savings over the life of a mortgage. (You can use the calculate
cost of mortgage section of Mortgage Designer to obtain the total
cost of a mortgage over its lifetime.)
Page 10
(C) Copyright 1991-1995 MaeDae Enterprises
TROUBLESHOOTING
===============
If Mortgage Designer will not run, you may have insufficient memory
or too many memory resident programs. Try running Mortgage
Designer with no memory resident programs or allocate a larger
swapfile under Windows. See your Windows User's Guide for help
with the Swapfile program.
If Mortgage Designer just stops running and you get an
"Unrecoverable Application Error," you may have incompatible
hardware/software. Check to make sure you are running Windows in
the 386 Enhanced mode.
Occasionally, certain memory resident TSR or "pop-up" programs
conflict with Mortgage Designer. In general, there is no problem,
but there are many new programs being written without regard to
the system requirements of other programs that may be running at
the same time. Remove them from memory, and try again. If that
fails, try getting rid of device drivers in your CONFIG.SYS file.
Invalid values for the principal, interest rate, or term can
create math problems. Invalid values used in the math
calculations can result in Mortgage Designer failing to run
correctly. If this occurs AND you have saved the values as
the default, delete MD.INI and then rerun Mortgage Designer.
Page 11
(C) Copyright 1991-1995 MaeDae Enterprises
BASIC DEFINITIONS:
==================
The terms used in Mortgage Designer may be a little confusing.
They are terms frequently used when discussing mortgages. We
have defined the most important ones for you in the definitions
listed below. They are:
Amortization schedule - A report showing each period during a
mortgage with information on how much went to principal/interest
and the mortgage balance.
Interest Rate - The cost of the mortgage expressed as the percent
per year. The rate of repayment for money being borrowed.
Payment - The amount of money to be repaid per repayment period.
Payment Frequency - This is how often are payments made.
Number of Payments - This is the total number of times you make
the scheduled payment before the mortgage is paid off.
Principal - The amount of money being borrowed or loaned out.
Term - How long is the money being borrowed or loaned out.
Page 12
(C) Copyright 1991-1995 MaeDae Enterprises
MORTGAGE DESIGNER LIMITS
========================
The limitations on accuracy for built-in math causes Mortgage
Designer to place limits on the range of data you can enter.
Listed below are the most important areas:
Principal - $100.00 to $999,999,999.99
Interest rate - 0.100% to 50.000%
Term - 1 to 50 years
Payments - $1.00 to $999,999,999.99 per period
Mortgage start date - MM/DD/YYYY where month is 1-12, day is
normal day of month, and year ranges from 1900 to 2100
Notes:
1. Mortgage Designer uses double length floating point numbers for
its calculations. This means Mortgage Designer will be more
accurate than many of the figures from banks and financial
institutions. However, even double length floating point numbers
have a limit on their accuracy. Because of these limits, the
values for principal, interest, term, and payment used by
Mortgage Designer have built-in checks to ensure they are limited
so the calculations are accurate.
2. The above limits are imposed to ensure the accuracy of
answers and should not limit users in solving mortgage
calculations. However, we do want to be receptive to your needs.
If any of the limits need to be adjusted, please let us know.
3. Number of Mortgage Files - No limits except for minor performance
slowdown that is encountered with an exceptionally large number
of mortgage files.
Page 13
(C) Copyright 1991-1995 MaeDae Enterprises
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
======================
The information listed below is provided in an effort to aid you
in working with Mortgage Designer and understanding the mortgage
calculation process.
Before you can use Mortgage Designer you have to define the problem
to be solved. Get all the facts you need to solve the problem.
If you do not have the principal, interest rate, or term then
use the calculate missing variable area of Mortgage Designer to
obtain this information.
After you have defined the problem and start using Mortgage
Designer you may notice that numbers you enter are changed
slightly. This is because pure numbers used by computers do not
contain commas, dollar signs, etc. Because of the limitations of
number conversions, Mortgage Designer works in the background to
constantly strip out invalid characters. This is transparent to
you unless the "cleaned up" number is invalid. Then you will be
notified of the problem.
Page 14