Financial Calculations – You Don’t Have to Be Afraid of Them

A lot of times, anything involving “finance” and “money management” fills the average person with a level of fear that is seldom experienced outside the screaming confines of a dentist’s office. And trying to perform calculations like compound interest (either for your debts or for your portfolio) used to require a pen, paper, calculator and serious guts. And there used to be a nigh Herculean effort required, if you wanted to calculate things such as the amortization schedules used on cash loans, car notes and even the mortgage on your home. But fortunately, all of life’s major financial calculations can now be done online, using website based applications that make it easy enough that… well, not to be insulting, but easy enough that even you can do them. You finger counting fool, you.

For one thing, you no longer have to consult a massive text book filled with obscure formulas. And you also will not have to try to transcribe that “nerd language” onto a pad of paper, which would soon resemble the rocket fuel formula that would be inscribed onto the super secret microfilm, and entrusted to James Bond. In this day and age, technology has taken over just about every facet of our lives, for better or worse.

For instance, many kinds of calculations have been performed for you. Do a web search on your favorite search engine for “amortization schedule,” you will find some pre made forms in which the principal and interest amounts of a given loan will have been done for you. For example, if you wanted to see how large your monthly payment would be on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, you might find a chart where the entire 360 month note was broken down into individual months. And if all else fails, just go to dinkytown.net, and they will most likely have a free, easy calculator for whatever your needs happen to be.