PsL Monthly 1994 January/PSL Monthly Shareware CD-ROM (Public Software Library) (January 1994).iso/reviews/ah_02

Text File | 1993-11-08 | 26KB | 666 lines

AH-02:  Loan Amortization, Taxes, and Other


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0126 Investments/Retirement Planning          Small Programs Disk
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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
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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.

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END OF SMALL PROGRAMS DISK #0126
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1332 Home, Financial Analysis          Small Programs Disk
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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.

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END OF SMALL PROGRAMS DISK #1332
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2674 Home Loan Amort.& Analysis          Small Programs Disk
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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.

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END OF SMALL PROGRAMS DISK #2674
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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.


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4389 Tax Preparation/Assistance          Small Programs Disk
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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.

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END OF SMALL PROGRAMS DISK #4389
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