PsL Monthly 1993 December

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AH-02: Loan Amortization, Taxes, and Other ------------------------------------ 0126 Investments/Retirement Planning Small Programs Disk ------------------------------------ Duration (DURATIO) is a bond analysis program. BASIC is required. Ginnie Selden, Murrell $? performs calculations related to the value of "Ginnie Mae's". In-Fidelity 5.2 (INFIDEL) Penner, Les $15 uses your IBM PC or IBM compatible to automate the process of calling into "FAST", the Fidelity Automated Services Telephone. This service of Fidelity Investments allows the user of a touch-tone telephone to obtain prices and balances of his Fidelity mutual fund accounts or USA Brokerage account. FAST also allows transfer of funds from one account to another or from a prearranged bank account to a fund. 0126 Retirement Planning ------------------------ Finance Ford, Nelson ASP $0 calculates present value, future value, return on investment, loan comparisons and amortizations and more. IRA-Calc (IRA-CAL) calculates the future value of IRA payments. RetPlan Bartow, Lee $? lets you plan for your retirement. You enter the number of years until retirement, amount of annual savings, interest rate, amount you wish to withdraw each year, expected inflation and tax rates, and it prints tables to the screen showing how many years your savings will last. TMoney 2.01 Horst, Gale R. $? will calculate the costs involved in finding the present or future value of a single payment, help meet your savings or retirement goals, and the amount of money needed to support future withdrawals over a specified period of time. We have some similar programs already, but we liked the approach used by this one. -------------------------------- END OF SMALL PROGRAMS DISK #0126 -------------------------------- ----------------------------- 1332 Home, Financial Analysis Small Programs Disk ----------------------------- Call analyzes puts and calls. CredCard 4.0 (CREDCRD) Kupfer, Robert E. $15 keeps track of your credit cards and will print a form letter to each credit card company if your cards are lost or stolen. It can even dial the company's phone number over your modem. The program is not very slick, but it is functional, and a lot cheaper than paying a credit card service to do the same thing. Home Basis Record Manager 1.4 (HOMEBAS) Gellman, Robert $25 will help you keep track of the basis (or cost) of your home, condos, etc. Most people do not give this much thought, but sooner or later, you have to pay the tax man, and if you have kept records of your cost, you can substantially reduce the tax bill. Home Inspector rev.B (HOMINSP) North Shore Home Inspections, Inc. $25-$100 aids a prospective home buyer in objectively evaluating a house's condition. All of the major sections of the home are covered including electrical, plumbing, heating/AC, basement, roof/attic, garage, general interior, and much more. MYM Volume Analyzer 1.0 (MYMVOL) Schwartz, Samuel $0 is a utility for Managing Your Money that will compute the dollar volume charged on each charge card since the beginning of the year. This information would be useful to compare how much you charge on each of your cards. Rental Tracker 1.0 (RENTRAK) Data Answers $15 allows you to keep records by tax category for a single rental property. -------------------------------- END OF SMALL PROGRAMS DISK #1332 -------------------------------- ------------------------------- 2674 Home Loan Amort.& Analysis Small Programs Disk ------------------------------- Home Loan Qualifier (HLQ) Schmidli, Ron $5-$20 will help individuals and realtors determine realistically how much house one can afford. The only input required is Gross Annual Income, Monthly Debt Obligations, the current Annual Interest Rate on Mortgages, and the term or length of the loan in years. The author of this program is a licensed realtor. Loan_db_Manager 2.3 (LOANDBM) Soft Solutions $25 is a loan analysis program. It has a pop-up calculator, equity calculation, and two-loan comparison. It has a very slick, smooth integrated interface and is easy to use. Mortcalc (MORTCAL) Telemacus $? You are presented with four windows that let you perform different types of mortgage calculations: mortgage payments, mortgage amount, present value and future value. Mortcost 4.0 (MOCOST) Quinn, Terry and Joann $7-$25 is a mortgage analysis program that also analyzes the effect of interest points and income taxes. Requires BASIC or GWBASIC. Mortgage Mgr. 1.1 (MORTMGR) Baum, William $35 is a financial program for personal recordkeeping of mortgage and escrow accounts. It will track up to 99 mortgage accounts per year, and will print reports on payments, interest/principal, principal balance, current escrow amount, yearly interest paid (for tax purposes), total amount of interest paid to date, and various lender information. Personal Financial Planner (PFP) World's Finest Software $0 is a financial planner for loans, mortgages, investments, and budgets. Financial analysis programs are one of the types of software that we see tons of every month and rarely add new ones unless they are particularly good. This one is. For example, the home loan analysis section takes into account the sale of your old house, closing points, insurance and taxes on the new house, and even the agent's commission on your old house. Data can be saved and recalled and easily changed. -------------------------------- END OF SMALL PROGRAMS DISK #2674 -------------------------------- Amortize Rowe, J. Gordon $20 #7108/1798 is a loan calculation and amortization program. Yes, we already have a lot of amortization programs, and almost blew this one off without looking at it because of the rather moribund description of the program in the accompanying letter. However, the program has some very nice touches, not the least of which is the ability to save and recall different amortization schedules. Plus, we just like the "feel" of how this program works. Amortization Table Pfannenschmid, Harold F. ASP $15-$20 #7108/1546 is a good dedicated amortization program. It features bi-weekly (26 payments per year) schedules, interest-only loan schedule, principal-only payments, up-front interest points, additional loan charges and optional APR calculations. You even have the option of printing a schedule with only year end interest and principal totals. The disk also contains a calendar program that will print month/year calendars. The author tells us that he has purchased a retail loan amortization program with which to compare this program and has also had banks run test schedules for comparison. As a result, he feels that this program is at least as good as programs costing many times more than this one. Homebuying and Refinancing Byers Software ASP $30 #7108/2512 (formerly BuyAHome) is an outstanding home purchase planning program. It determines total yearly costs (PITI, points, insurance, expenses, and more), after-tax costs and present value costs for fixed rate, ARM, PLAM, and Two-Step mortgages. It also handles prepayments, and rates a home buyer's chances of loan approval. Other features include an analysis of refinancing, analysis of buying versus renting, escalation of income, file saving and recalling of data and results, pop-up pick lists, customized report cover page, and user definable loan qualification criteria. This is the best home loan analysis program we have seen. We suspect that it would be good enough for loan institutions and other such professionals, yet it is easy enough for anyone to use, walking you through each step of the program. The output is clear and contains very useful information. Financial Calculation Khobey Software $20 #7109/1396 is a menu driven program that can calculate the following: interest on a declining balance, simple, compound and comparable interest. Using the amortization option you may solve for term, payment or principal. Depreciation can be entered using straight line, declining balance and sum of the years digit methods. There is a section on discounts showing payments from cash and acquired loans (up to 90 day accounts). Finance Plus Guillory, Matt $25 #7109/2123 is an attractive and flexible financial analysis program. It is subdivided into sections: Investments, Loans, Deposits, Withdrawals, Planning and Bond calculations. Each section lets you choose from a list of four to six different calculations, such as future value and present value. In addition, the program generates Earned Interest Tables, Loan Amortization Schedules, and Bond Schedules for display and printer output. Requires 384k of RAM. Kupfer Programs Kupfer, Robert E. $6 each #7109/2412 [2 disks] is a set of various financial analysis programs: a cash flow program, net worth analyzer for individuals, a rental property analyzer, stock analyzer, auto loan analyzer, a database program for keeping track of your stock transactions, a discounted cash flow or net-present value analyzer, a loan analyzer, and a retirement fund analysis program. Also included are an auto maintenance planner/reminder/log, a writing analyzer, and a file encryption utility. Taken individually, the programs are not very sophisticated, but as a set, they represent quite a bit of functionality. FPlan Capital Needs Planner First Financial Software ASP $30 #7339/2783 aids in planning for your family's financial needs in case of death. This program is similar to the Income Protection Planner. Fplan Education Planner First Financial Software, ASP $30 #7339/2859 is a college funding analysis program. The program takes you through an extensive questionnaire and gives you an analysis of your situation. FPlan Income Protection Planner First Financial Software, ASP $30 #7339/2782 aids in planning for income protection in case of disability. An extensive questionnaire is used to determine your needs in case of disability or retirement. This can help you determine the amount of disability insurance necessary based on exposed risk versus savings rather than some arbitrary multiple of earnings. The program also takes the latest tax laws into account. Fplan Retirement Planner Kline, Bob $30 #7339/2685 is designed to help you to reach your retirement goal. It shows retirement income required, adjusted for inflation, growth of retirement items and future income, net amount based on rate of return assumptions and, if short, the amount of funding required both as a lump sum and yearly deposit amount. An annuity option is offered in the proposed mode. This program is very comprehensive, but the on-line help is equally comprehensive. Fplan Personal Financial Planner First Financial Software ASP $30 #7433/3000 [2 disks] is designed to assist individuals in their own total financial situation analysis. Subject areas include Income and Expenses (computing Social Security and Medicare expansion tax), Assets and Liabilities, Net Worth, Economic Assumptions and new 1991 Tax Rates, Income Protection (Disability), Life Insurance, and the Impact of Taxes and Inflation on Rates of Return. Mortplan Mustang Software $56 #7110/1563 is a comprehensive mortgage amortization and analysis program. In addition to displaying normal amortization schedules to the screen or printer, it will perform comparisons of rates vs amounts and years vs rates. It will also allow you to adjust your loan amortization schedule for additional payments of either a regular extra amount or for one-shot extra payments. MYMWorth Fuld, Robert $0 #7110/1652 lets you compare changes in net worth when used with the retail program, Managing Your Money. The program is coded in CLIPPER and the prg files are included for those curious. PC-Loans 5.09 [PCLOAN5] (11-93 CD) Bottom Line Software $79 #7110/143 is a loan calculation and amortization schedule program for those with advanced needs. The program has pull-down menus and context-sensitive pop-up help screens. It includes special calculations for Canadians. Schedules can be customized to pay any amount of interest or principal on any date, interest only, principal only or balloon payments. You can generate schedules with 1,2,3,4,6,12,13,24,26, or 52 payments per year and add an extra ("bonus") payment schedule to a primary mortgage. A loan calculator will let you play "what-if", calculate the results of unscheduled prepayments and balloon payments, and will perform REG Z compliance tested APR calculations, including points. Printed reports can be completely customized. Requires 512k; we first started it with less (because of TSR's) and it aborted back to DOS in the middle of data entry when we tried to bring up a help screen. The files on this disk are archived and require 550k of free disk space to dearchive. Solve-It 4.2s Pine Grove Software ASP $50 #7110/2039 [2 disks] is an excellent financial analysis program. It features loan amortization with regular, biweekly or adjustable rate payments. It will let you save and recall data. One drawback is that when entering accelerated payments, the program assumes that payments are accelerated for the rest of the loan; you cannot enter whatever extra amount you happen to add to the payment each month. SolveIt also calculates the remaining balance at any point of a loan. When displaying an amortization table, you can select any year and have it quickly displayed. Help screens are available at every step. Other financial analysis functions include Finance, such as Future/Present Value and Purchasing Power; Depreciation, including straight-line, declining balance and sum-of-years-digits; General Business; Real Estate; Net Worth balance sheet; Budget and more. The program is very fast and easy to use. Multi Assistant Jones Consulting $39-$49 #7398/2690 combines checkbook, loan analysis, investment tracking, telephone book, home inventory, appointment calendar, and more into one program. When programs combine a wide variety of applications, the individual applications tend not to be as good as the very best stand-alone programs. This is true here, but the modules are still better than average. On the plus side, you get a lot of functionality for one low registration fee, you get a common user interface to learn, and you only have to deal with one author for support, updates, etc. A very useful function common to several of the modules is that you can pull up data from the DOS command line without having to struggle through a lot of menus. For example, you can say MAST TELE PSL to pull up PsL's phone number, or MAST CALW [and your name] to see appointments for the week. Retirement Quick-Monitor Hoisington, Rod $35 #7398/2918 calculates and displays on one screen the savings necessary to retire at any age between 30 and 90 for any interest and inflation rate combination. The program is fast and easy to use, prompting you for your current income and expenses and estimated percentage of expenses expected to be incurred after retirement. $Defender Button, Conrad $25 #7398/2667 is a financial analysis and loan amortization program. It offers analyses of annuities, fixed investment growth, and periodic investment growth. Features record-keeping for U.S. Savings Bonds, and Mutual Funds. You can update your old mutual fund files when new data becomes available in future years, and compare the effect of income taxes on their returns from three fixed investment alternatives: fully taxed, taxed-deferred, and tax-free. You can calculate the true rate of interest charged when a lender requires you to prepay a finance fee or points. A section on retirement planning is also included. Car Deal Southwest Research Group $23 #4402 helps you prepare for buying a car. It tells you what kind of information to compile (eg: blue-book value of your trade-in), prints reports of the information, performs comparative loan rate analysis, computes dealer cost, predicts life-cycle costs of car ownership, calculates monthly payments and more. Having this information compiled and printed out can save you money when it is time to haggle over costs and financing. COLA Mendosa, Rick $10 #3069 is a cost of living adjustment analysis program. For example, a nickel cigar in 1900 would cost $.77 today. An $18,000 income in 1963 would be $75,000 in 1990. The program contains cost of living statistics for virtually all years from 1749 to the present. This program is fun and entertaining, besides being a useful financial analysis tool. QuickBASIC source code is included, allowing QB programmers in the crowd to keep the stats up to date. Debt Analyzer 1.21 [DBT121] (11-93 CD) Insight Software Solutions ASP $20 #12212 helps to reduce debt through loan payment matrix or loan consolidation. The matrix method offers minimum payments, current payments or accelerated payments, and debts can be paid off in any order. The term or payment can be specified with a consolidated loan, or the sum of debt payments can be used. The program can process up to 17 debts at once. Reports can be viewed on screen or sent to printer. It is appropriate for personal use, but for professional use, multiple clients can be entered and included in the reports. Requires 512K RAM. Determine Net Worth Computer Specialties $25 #7778/4403 [2 disks] calculates personal net worth of you or your client. It gives an itemized accounting of all personal property, investments, and debts. You get a printed financial statement that can help you in extending your credit. EEBond 1.0 [EEBOND] (11-93 CD) Leibsly, Franklin $20 #4881 maintains a database of variable rate Series E and Series EE Savings Bonds. It will calculate interest and print reports for one or all of them. Mortgage Accelerator JSoft ASP $15 #7645/3892 makes it easy to analyze different ways of accelerating mortgage payments. Mortgage Comparison Strategies Bottom Line Software $80 #7645/3203 compares up to five mortgages or one mortgage with four reduction strategies on one page. It handles all the popular prepayment plans, and reports the total cost and relative savings. Homes: Buy or Rent Real Estate Consultants $19 #4539 analyzes buying versus renting by evaluating 15 variables and a variety of loan types. It calculates and graphs the break-even points for each variable. Requires 512K RAM and 1+MB of disk space. Homes: Refinance Real Estate Consultants $19 #4540 determines how much money will be saved by refinancing. It works with two-step and fixed interest loans. The average interest rate is estimated for variable interest loans. 512K RAM & 1 MB of disk space. Financial Analysis Package Fishback, Peter L. $? #2324 is an aid in analyzing certain financial transactions (futures, options, interest rate swaps, and forwards), as well as an aid in general asset/liability management evaluation. The package is designed for analysis of banks and thrifts, though some of the sub-programs may be applicable to the analysis of other types of firms. The package is menu driven and contains a sub-menu for each type of analysis. Waddell Finance Waddell, James P. $25 each #3053 is a set of financial analysis programs. The user interface is fairly primitive, but the functions performed are worthwhile. Fin499 calculates the value of stocks and bonds. It also calculates interest saved by early payoff of a loan. Biz 1.1 calculates the value of a business via ratios such as liquidity, asset management, debt management, profitability and market value. Finance 1.1 is a financial retirement planner for professionals. It provides ascending and level investment schedules. Life insurance needs are also estimated. AM-Tax 1992 (preliminary) AM Software $20-$125 #27596/0493 is a personal income tax program. The program will completely prepare and print a tax return consisting of the Form 1040 and any of the Schedules A through SE. Numbers are entered into a form on screen as if filling out the form on paper. All the schedules are printed in a format that can be filed directly with the IRS. We have used Am-Tax for years. We compared Am-Tax to the top-selling retail-only tax preparation program and found Am-Tax significantly easier to use. For example, a supporting schedule can always be popped up via F6 while the retail-only programs requires going through a series of confusing menus. We normally get a preliminary version for each new year by January. Share-TAX/1040 1992 2.5 Bammel Software $10-$21 #27596/1153 computes and prints out a complete tax return from the information you input. It can print an IRS approved tax return on either a laser or dot matrix printer. Share-TAX/1040 displays the forms on the screen and all you have to do is enter the raw numbers. The program calculates totals and carries them forward to the appropriate forms. Forms supported include 1040, A, B, C, D, E, EIC, F, R, SE, 2106, 2210, 2441, 3903, 4137, 4562, 6251, 8606, 8615, and worksheets. TAX-C 1992 2.0 Bockmon, Gary L. $19-$69 #27596/4820 is a preliminary Federal income tax program for 1992. Included are schedules A,B,C,D,E,EIC and forms 1040, 2106,2441,3903, and 4684. Tax92 1.0 Bjorklund, F. Roland $32 #27596/2919 aids in preparing Form 1040 and any of 26 supporting schedules. It will print an IRS approved Form 1040 on an Epson or HP compatible printer. Data is easy to enter on scrollable on-screen forms with full mouse support, pull-down menus, pop-up dialog boxes and context-sensitive help. (One word of advice: "protected fields" are NOT some form of crippling. When you press F9, these fields are filled in automatically from data ente]red elsewhere.) 512K required. NOTE: Be sure to get two or more programs and compare the output of each with the same data being fed in, in case of possible programming errors NewTax 1991 Freeman, Ralph L. CPA $15 #1287 is a tax program prepared by a CPA for use in a CPA practice, although individuals could easily use it for their own returns. A hypertext type of help system and a full-screen, fill-in-the-form approach make the program easy to use. NewTax supports Form 1040, Schedules A, B, C, D, E, F, R, SE, and Forms 2106, 2119, 2441, 2688, 3903, 4136, 4255, 4562, 4684, 4797, 4868, 6781, 8582, and 8615 for the 1991 tax year. qTAX 1991 Self-Help Software, Inc. $35 #3891 [2 disks] is a pre-release version of a tax return preparation program for 1991. It provides supports for form 1040, Schedules A-F, R, and SE. This would not run on our test machine. We found the opening screens to be a little confusing, but when we finally got to the screens where data is to be entered, it locked up our 386. The author is aware of the problem with 386's, but the updates he sent us had the same effect. TaxForms 1.0 Anthistle Systems $50 #4878 prepares W-2 and 1099-Misc forms. You can edit, sort, total, and print these forms. It also prints mailing labels. Social security and Medicare is verified on W-2s. Requires a hard drive, printer. Tax Tools 92.02 Fray, John $15 #20089 [2 disks] contains all the text from the IRS's publication 17, Your Federal Income Tax. You can view and search it on screen with a file viewer or text editor, making it much easier to locate information than searching through the printed booklet. Uncompressed, this file is over 1.6 megabytes with over 33,000 lines of text. Terf92 1.3 MARK-X Development Corporation $25 #20125 is an electronic tax filing program. It uses an on-screen fillin-the form approach and supports most schedules and forms, including 1040A and 1040EZ. Because the program is designed for electronic transmittal, it does not print the forms and schedules. Hard disk and modem required. Because of the large size of the program, it is available only on a high-density 3.5" disk at our Mega Disk fee of $6.99. The $25 shareware fee shown above is actually MARK-X's charge for providing the electronic transmittal service. ------------------------------- 4389 Tax Preparation/Assistance Small Programs Disk ------------------------------- Tax-C (TAXC-X) Bockmon, Gary L. $25 helps you prepare IRS Form 1040X and print an IRS approved version on most dot-matrix printers. TAXC-EST 2.0 (TAXCEST) Bockmon, Gary L. $22 calculates your estimated tax liability for 1993. Form 1040 with schedules A and B are included. -------------------------------- END OF SMALL PROGRAMS DISK #4389 -------------------------------- ]]]]]