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Version History:
1.2:
• Corrects a discrepancy in monthly-payment calculations.
• Documents can "clip" text in excess of 32K "off the top" to clear room for new schedules.
• Monthly schedules can display all months or just first of each year to save space.
1.1:
• Calculations can be made on a monthly basis
• Parameters window no longer "floats"
October 21, 1992
•• INSTRUCTIONS ••
MacAmortize is an amortization program for the Macintosh computer. It creates payment schedules accoring to data you enter. Schedules can be printed from MacAmortize and can also be saved to disk as normal text files which can be opened and edited with any word processor.
WINDOWS
Parameters: This is a dialog window that allows you to enter input. MacAmortize needs to know three of the following four values to create a payment schedule: Number of payments, Amount of each payment, Amount of loan, and Yearly interest rate. One of these values can be left empty (called the "free variable"). Click in one of the four buttons to select the free variable. Then fill in the other three fields. When you click on the "OK" button, MacAmortize will automatically calculate the free variable for you and display the payment schedule in the Schedule window. You may change the free variable and the inputs as often as you like. Clicking on OK again will display another payment schedule. Previous schedules are not erased so that you may compare them to one another. You can also select monthly or yearly periods. Note, however, that the value you enter (or calculate) for interest is always *yearly*.
Schedule: The schedule window is where payment schedules are displayed. Information like interest rate and the amount of the loan are displayed at the top of each schedule. Below that are five columns. The first shows the year and/or month. The second displays the payment to be made that period. The next two columns show the breakdown of that payment: how much will go toward interest, and how much will go toward paying off the principal. The last column displays the remaining balance at the end of that year. Keep in mind that the schedule window is limited to 32,000 characters of text, but MacAmortize is smart enough to reject schedules of excessive length (e.g. 500 years) and it can "clip" excess text off the top to make room for new schedules (this will happen automatically, after alerting the user and receiving confirmation). NOTE: If you select monthly payments and the "Show One Payment Per Year" option has been selected from the Options menu, MacAmortize will show only the payments for the first month of each year and the very last payment. Hopefully this will save screen space and printout paper.
OPTIONS MENU
Tax Credits: Select this menu item to have tax-deductible interest taken into account. A small dialog will appear, allowing you to enter your tax rate. When you enter any value other than zero, MacAmortize will display payment schedules a little differently. The Payment column will now be called "Pmt (w/deduct)", meaning that the values shown reflect your tax deductions. Keep in mind that your *real* payments are not changed, but the values shown in the "Pmt (w/deduct)" column will now show the real payments *minus* the money that you will save on your taxes that same year. The amount of your real payment is displayed in the last line of text just above the schedule. Example: let's say your loan is for $100,000 at 10% interest. Your yearly payments are $15,000 and your tax rate is 25%. In the first year, you would be paying $10,000 in interest and $5,000 toward principal. The $10,000 interest payment is tax-deductible, so, at your rate of 25%, you save $2,500 on your taxes. MacAmortize shows this by displaying $12,500 (= $15,000 - $2,500) in the payment column. The other columns are left unchanged. Your real payment is still $15,000 (as you can see by looking in the last line of text above the schedule or by adding up the principal and interest columns) but it will *seem* like $12,500 due to the tax break.
Inflation: Enter the yearly inflation rate. This causes all values in the payment schedule to be displayed in CURRENT YEAR dollars. Thus, your payments will (effectively) decrease as time goes on and as inflation causes each dollar to be worth less.
Show One Payment Per Year: In monthly schedules, this causes only the first month's payment of each year to be displayed, as well as the very last payment of the schedule. This is intended to save screen and paper space.
Simple Monthly Interest: You'll probably want to leave this item checked, as it will instruct MacAmortize to calculate monthly interest the same way that banks do, which is to divide the annual interest rate by twelve (NOTE: mathematically this is not correct, due to the effects of compounding interest, but it's the way the banks do it so MacAmortize now does it too). By default, this option is selected (you'll see a check mark next to it) which means that all your calculations should match the bank's unless you turn it off. Turning it off will give you MATHEMATICALLY correct calculations, but they won't match your bank's figures (in this case, monthly interest is calculated by taking the twelfth root of the yearly interest rate).
Please send any comments or bug reports to the above address(es). Great thanks to all the users who have contacted me with comments and suggestions so far. I hope you like MacAmortize!
