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PERSONAL BUDGET TOOLS USER MANUAL Rickenbacker Software _________________________________________________________________ CUSTOMER SERVICE If you encounter any problems with this program, please write me. I'll respond as quickly as possible. (In fairness both to my family and to my pretensions at having a life independent of the computer, I cannot offer telephone support. Rickenbacker Software remains a part-time, one-man operation with a tad more success than I bargained for. So, time is too tight for a phone operation.) Although the lack of telephone support is a bit bush (How did our ancestors come along with this term before George?), I do respond promptly and thoroughly to questions. I shall get back to you, usually within two weeks, with an answer, a circumvention, or a fix. Do remember to provide your address. Optionally, provide your phone number and those times that you prefer to receive calls. On rare occasion, it is necessary to make a call. It goes without saying, so I'll say it, that it's to your advantage to make your question clear and to provide me with as much background information as you can. For example, I recently received a letter from someone who claimed that the F1 key didn't work for him in Check King. I took my best shots at guessing what he meant, but I must confess that I still don't have a clue to what problem he may have experienced. Is his copy of the program defective? Is his F1 key defective? Did he try to get help from one of the few places where it isn't available -- such as from the Main Menu. I don't know. So, I addressed each possibility I could think of and probably failed to address the real problem anyway. If you are not registered, your request for help will still be handled but on a catch-as-catch-can basis. Queries from non- registered users must be accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope. First Edition, September 1989 (c) 1989 Rickenbacker Software All Rights Reserved Rickenbacker Software Box 11662 Newington, CT 06111 Program and Manual Written by Tom Rickenbacker TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE 1 HOW TO USE THE PBT 2 WHAT THE PBT IS 4 WHAT THE PBT IS NOT 5 GETTING STARTED 7 TERMINOLOGY 8 THE MAIN MENU 9 THE FILES SUBMENU 10 Overview 10 New 10 Load 10 Rename 10 Save 10 Exit 11 Quit 11 PBT'S FILE HANDLING 12 THE EXPENSE SUBMENU 13 Overview 13 Weekly Expenses 13 Monthly Expenses 13 Annual Expenses 13 THE CALCULATORS SUBMENU 15 THE PBT ANALYSIS 17 Printing the analysis on non-EPSON compatible printers 17 APPENDIX A - Types of Savings 19 APPENDIX B - NAVIGATION 20 APPENDIX C - QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 21 How did you arrive at the minimum short term savings figure? 21 Why did you subtract out the lowest month? 21 Is it safe to borrow from Peter to pay Paul? 21 What formula did you use for the mortgage calculator? 22 What formula did you use for the installment loan calculator? 22 Where is the documentation on your error messages? 22 Why don't get the HELP INDEX when I press F1 from within help? 22 Who would benefit most from the PBT? 23 What happened to the display of my expenses? 23 APPENDIX D - VERSION HISTORY 24 APPENDIX E - ABOUT SHAREWARE 25 APPENDIX F - REASONS TO REGISTER 27 Registration Form 28 PREFACE Welcome to Personal Budget Tools (i.e., PBT). The PBT provides: an analysis of your expenses featuring: - a one-page overview of your financial situation. - a month-by-month analysis showing: - the minimum amount which you must have in short-term savings to meet your annual obligations. - the bills coming due in a given month and how to allocate your PHD (explained later) and short-term savings to meet them. and specialized one-purpose calculators to do what-if comparisons for mortgage and installment loans. The PBT answers such questions as: How much must I put aside to meet my short-term obligations? How much of my savings is already spent?! How much more would I have to pay each month if I take out a 25-year mortgage instead of a 30-year mortgage? How much less will my total payments be? If I manage to scrape up an additional $1,000 for a down payment, how much will I save on my monthly payment? How much will I save on interest charges over the length of the loan? Do I have enough in short-term savings to cover those bills which roll around in August? How short am I? Or, how much of a buffer is in my short-term savings? These are questions you could answer without the PBT. But, not so easily! And, if it isn't easy, do you bother? 1 HOW TO USE THE PBT The PBT breaks away from what many of us have considered budgeting. If you want to find out whether the PBT "got it right," then you can't just tinker with it. That would be to measure it against your preconceptions. You'll have to give it a real go. USE IT. Then, judge it on the basis of whether or not it provides useful, accurate information in a form which is meaningful to you. (Let's get this right. I said, "useful, accurate information" in a meaningful form. I did NOT say "information in the form you were expecting.") I'll bet that you expected to set up accounts, to fuss around with Actuals vs. Budgeted (i.e., "Who do I yell at for this mess?), and to hobby around with lots of numbers in columns. Heck, that's not budgeting. That's playing a two-part game: PRETEND (or "Setting Up Budget") and AGONIZE (or "Why can't we get this right, Alice?") Forget PRETEND AND AGONIZE. It's a loser. It hasn't worked in the past. There is no reason to expect it to work in the future. Do this instead. Take advantage of the Help Screens (F1) to jog your memory about your various expenses. 1. Fire up the PBT. 2. Enter all the weekly bills (i.e. expenses) that you can think of under the Weekly Expenses. 3. Enter all the monthly bills that you can think of under the Monthly Expenses. 4. Enter all the annual, quarterly, semi-annual bills that you can think of under Annual Expenses. Also, enter their Due Months. Yes, accuracy counts. 5. Print off the analysis. You now have a useful, but probably inaccurate, report. It's useful because it shows you the way off the financial roller coaster. It's inaccurate because you didn't get it all right the first time. You left some items out. You put down some incorrect amounts. You put in some incorrect Due Months. That's OK. It's an ITERATIVE PROCESS. (Thank you, Storm Connors, for pointing this out.) You don't gotta do it perfect to have a useful report. 2 Let's say that two months from now you get hit on by your Public TV Station. You've been supporting it, but you forgot to include your $25 annual gift under May's annual expenses. Fine. Add it. Rerun the analysis. Four months from now you take your mother and father out for their anniversary, as you've been doing for the last three years. The tab for you, your spouse, and them comes to $80. Add "Anniversary" to Annual Expenses under July. Put down $92 (you tipped, didn't you!!). Rerun the analysis. By this time next year, the PBT's analysis will as "on the money" as you might wish. Better still, the initial analysis (which will already be for many people the best analysis they've yet made of their finances) was immediately useful; and, it got better each month! Give the PBT an evening to gather and enter the initial information when you first get it. Be as thorough and as accurate as you can, but relax. You need not be perfect the first time. Then, each month thereafter, give the PBT just ten minutes. "LOAD" in your data, update it, print out your updated analysis. Your total investment in time: a. up to four hours for your first PBT session plus b. two hours more spread over the following eleven months. Not bad! 3 What the PBT Is The PBT is a razor -- a tool to cut away clutter and to reveal the essence of a budget: control of expenses. Since conventional wisdom would have you setting up accounts and jumping through hoops, let me repeat it. Your major budgeting goal is to control your expenses. Period. Controlling expenses is a two part process. Part I - Identify the expenses. Part II - Identify how you will meet the expenses. The PBT will help with these two essentials and make it look easy. It is. The tough part is never answering questions. The tough part is asking the RIGHT questions. The analysis provided by the PBT is so logical and so clear that it may tempt you to undervalue it. Groucho Marx quipped that he wouldn't join any club which lacked the good taste to reject him. Similarly, some reject a tool which is as accessible as the PBT's analysis. Shouldn't there be more to it? No, the trick isn't making up a To Do List. Such lists are the intellectual equivalent of Fool's Gold. The pay off is in asking the RIGHT questions and in digging in the right spots. Or, to keep the mining metaphor going, the amount of gold you get is determined by where you dig not by how much you dig. (Some people NEVER figure this out!) 4 What the PBT Is Not 1. It is not hobbyware. You'll enter your expenses into the PBT one time, save those expenses, and occasionally modify your file as you identify changes or inaccuracies in the data you first entered. The most useful part of the PBT is its report: a one page overview, six pages showing your month-by-month activity, and listings of your weekly and monthly expenses. Most people will be managing their budgets better than ever by simply using the report to manage their PHD. In addition to its major function of helping you to take control of your expenses, the PBT offers two calculators which you'll probably want to fire up the next time that you're about to charge a major purchase or take out a mortgage. 2. It's not an accounting package. For most individuals, it is unnecessary torment to get enmeshed in the caring and feeding of an accounting system. Your goal is to get on top of things, not to get into the thick of them. 3. It's not a system for tracking "actual" vs. "planned". If you've run the PBT analysis, you know what you "planned." Without finagling with a computer, you can quickly see whether you spent more than you planned. Besides, Check King provides several reports on what you spent. If you spent more than you planned, the interesting question is, "Why did you spend more?" That is a question which no program will answer for you. If you spent more on a whim, do you want to add a whim factor to your stated expenses? Do you want to add Whim as an expense category? Or, do you simply want to know that you spent something for which you didn't plan? On the other hand, when you find that you simply forgot to enter an expense into the PBT, then add the expense and rerun PBT analysis. After you make all your significant expenses known to the PBT, you'll find that you'll no longer be getting blindsided by your bills. (Isn't it a bit crazy to be surprised each year by your car tax or your life insurance bill?) 5 4. It's not an investment vehicle and it doesn't track income. If you're having trouble in keeping track of the money which is rolling in, you need an accountant, an investment banker, or investment software -- not a personal budget tool. Whether your income comes from a paycheck or from dividends, the PBT tells you what you need to know -- when your expenses come due and, month by month, the minimum amount you need to have in savings. So, when you clip your coupons or get your dividend checks, you need only compare what you have already put aside to what you need to put aside. Then, draw the obvious conclusions. (QUIZ: You need to have $750 in short-term savings and have only $500. Where should you place $250 immediately?) If money isn't available for deposit, will it become available before it is needed for an annual expense? If so, O.K. If not, it's time to look at loans, at expense reduction, at increasing income. A program would be presumptuous in the extreme were it to attempt to solve such dilemmas for you. I suppose I'll be hearing some counter arguments, but I believe that there is little to be gained by having you enter your income into the computer. 6 Getting Started The Personal Budget Tools (PBT) distribution disk consists of: 1. A "GO.EXE" file which provides a quick overview of the PBT along with the installation instructions. 2. PBT.EXE - The Personal Budget Tools program itself. 3. PBTHELP.HLP - The text for the PBT help system (in binary format to save space). 4. DDS.INP - The text file which is read by the GO.EXE program. 5. PBTMAN.DOC - This file. 6. PRINTMAN.BAT - A file which may be used to print this manual. 7. ELITE.EXE - A program to set your EPSON or EPSON compatible printer to Elite (12 cpi) type before you print the manual. On dot matrix printers, this type tends to look more attractive than PICA. Install the PBT by copying PBT.EXE and PBT.HLP to the floppy diskette or to the hard disk directory from which you wish to run the PBT. The distribution disk itself will become your backup copy. After installing the PBT, give it a spin. Enter "PBT" from the working copy which you just installed. Try it out using the One Page Manual (PBT1PG.DOC). Then, after gaining some familiarity with it, read through this manual for fine points, tips, and for an example of highly formal technical writing. (Writing teachers assure me that with my manuals alone they can provide a class with a full semester's worth of DON'Ts.) 7 TERMINOLOGY Bill - Used somewhat interchangeably (and carelessly) with "expense" in this manual. Expense - Uses somewhat interchangeably (and carelessly) with "bill" in this manual. Main Menu - The PBT Main Menu is the horizontal bar menu with choices of "FILES," "EXPENSES," "CALCULATORS," "ANALYSIS," and "HELP." SubMenu - The SubMenus are the vertical menus which appear when you select a choice from the Main Menu. Hobbyware - Software designed to satisfy its owner's desire to futz around vs. software designed to provide solutions which are as simple to learn and to use as possible. Hobbyware does well in the hands of reviewers who evaluate via checklists or in the hands of users who consider the subject of the software good hobby material. KISSware does well in the hands of reviewers who don't confuse simplicity with simplistic and with users who consider the subject more a task than an amusement. (I never use this term anywhere else in the manual, but it was fun to coin and define it.) KISSware - Software which subscribes to the KEEP IT SWEET and SIMPLE solution. The PBT and Check King are, I dare hope, KISSware. Prudently Held Dollars (PHDs) - The dollars from which one pays quarterly, semi-annual, and annual bills. Also, the dollars from which one deposits into Short Term Savings. (As the analysis will point out, not all PHDs make it into short term savings. Some go immediately to cover expenses.) Short Term Savings - For the purposes of this program, short term savings are monies put aside to cover quarterly, semi-annual, and annual expenses. One expects such savings to be spent within a calendar year of the time they are deposited. Intermediate Savings - Earmarked savings for purchases which one expects to make within 13 months to 3 years. Long Term Savings - Savings which one does not expect to tap for at least 3 years. 8 The Main Menu The PBT Main Menu is the horizontal bar menu with options of "FILES," "EXPENSES," "CALCULATORS," "ANALYSIS," and "HELP." When you enter the PBT, the "Expenses" and "Analysis" options are not available. They are dimmed and the cursor will not move to them. This is because a work file must be available in which to record the expenses. To activate all the menu options, you must first go to the FILES SubMenu and either create a new file or load an existing one. (See THE FILES SUBMENU.) If you wish to use only the calculators of the Calculators option, you need not open a file. The calculators are always available. (See THE CALCULATORS SUBMENU.) You may activate an option's SubMenu either by moving the cursor to the desired option and pressing "Enter" or by typing in the highlighted letter of the option. The second method saves one or more keystrokes, so I'll refer to it as the QuickKey method. The highlighted letter is usually the first letter but not necessarily. You may return to the Main Menu from anywhere within the PBT by pressing <ESC> one or more times. After you request an analysis, however, the <ESC> key is inactive until the analysis is completed. 9 The Files SubMenu Overview -------- The Files SubMenu is not only the place from which you manipulate the files used by the program but also the place from which you may leave the program. The options available from this SubMenu are: <N>ew, <L>oad, <R>ename, <S>ave, e<X>it, and <Q>uit. Until you open a file with "New" or "Load" the "Rename," "Save," and "eXit" options are unavailable. Thereafter, the "New" and "Load" options are unavailable. Originally, I had the "E" rather than the "X" of "e<X>it" as its quick key. After the fourth or fifth time that I exited the program when I wished to go to the Expense SubMenu, I finally took the hint. The PBT files must be in the same directory as the PBT program itself. <N>ew Pick this option when you are creating a new file in which to save your expense information. The file's extension is automatically provided and is always "PBT". So, if you create a file called, say, "George," the file's actual name will be "GEORGE.PBT." If a file called "GEORGE.PBT" already exists, you would be given a chance to reconsider before the program overlays the file. <L>oad Pick this option to load in the data from an expense file which you already created. When you select this option, the program divides into two windows. The first window displays all files within the directory which have an extension of "PBT". Should you enter the name of a file which does NOT already exist, the PBT creates a new file for you using the name you provided. <R>ename RENAME renames the file in memory. Any pre-existing file with the original name is unaffected. The new name will be used when you issue your next Save or when you Exit the program. The RENAME does NOT create a file under the new name until you issue a subsequent Save or eXit. (See PBT's File Handling.) 10 <S>ave The SAVE causes the contents of memory to be written out to disk. Changes which you make to your weekly, monthly, and annual expenses aren't recorded to disk until you either save them with this option or until you eXit the program. When you save a file, you remain within the PBT after the save. e<X>it Exit combines the SAVE function with the Quit function. It causes the contents of memory to be written out to disk and leaves the PBT. <Q>uit Use this option to leave the program without saving any changes which were made after your last Save. If no SAVES were issued prior to a Quit, no file activity takes place. 11 PBT's File Handling To keep data safe as possible, the PBT keeps its files closed except when it is reading from them or writing to them. When you issue a New command, the PBT checks to see whether a file already exists under the name you provide. If not, the PBT makes a note to itself to use the filename you provided when you request a SAVE or an EXIT. If a file does already exist under the name you provided, the PBT asks you whether you wish to overwrite the file. If you reply that you don't wish to overwrite it, you are returned to the Main Menu. If you reply that you do wish to overwrite it, the PBT makes a note to itself to reuse the filename you provided when you request a SAVE or an EXIT. If, instead, you Quit the program without first entering a SAVE, the original file will remain intact. Just before writing a file in response to a SAVE or an EXIT, the PBT checks again to see whether a file already exists with the same name as the Work File. If so, it copies the existing file to filename.BAK. Therefore, you can get back to the prior version of a file by renaming, from DOS, the filename.BAK file to a new file called xxxxxxxx.PBT. 12 The Expense SubMenu Overview --------- All expenses fit into one of the three expense choices: weekly, monthly, and annual. The annual category includes expenses which are quarterly (four annual entries), semi-annual (2 annual entries) and annual. Any bi-weekly expenses should be placed into either the weekly category (halve the bi-weekly amount) or into the monthly category (double the bi-weekly amount). It IS important to include any sizable expenses. It IS NOT advisable, however, to budget down to the toothpaste level. Several items fall into, say, groceries. Several others fall into such categories such as "Sundry" and "Entertainment." Each of the three expense categories (i.e., the weekly, the monthly, and the annual) will allow up to 100 entries. If you feel that you need more than 100 entries, the PBT is not now and will not become the kind of program which you'll enjoy. Your idea of budgeting and mine are far too far apart to reconcile. Weekly Expenses You'll have 15 characters in which to describe each expense. I do allow for cents as well as dollars, but I recommend that you enter amounts in whole dollars to break yourself of the habit of "sweating the small stuff." The program is just as happy with cents as with dollars, but showing cents implies a more tightly managed budget than anyone is likely to follow. Monthly Expenses See Weekly Expenses above. Annual Expenses Most of us do a pretty good job of handling our weekly and monthly expenses. They occur frequently enough that they are unable to "surprise" us. But, the annual, quarterly, and semi-annual expenses tend to be a different matter altogether. The PBT's value to you is directly related to how thoroughly you fill out this screen. The format difference between this screen and the weekly and monthly screens is that this screen asks you to enter the due month for the expense. 13 The due month may be any month from 0 to 12. 0 has a special meaning. It makes the entire line into a comment entry. Expenses with a zero due month are not added into the expense total and are not reported on the Analysis report. Why would anyone enter an expense with a "0" in due month? This is an excellent question, if I do say so myself. Let's say that you are entering your annual expenses for the first time. You know that you have big auto insurance premiums, but you are not certain about their due months. Furthermore, you don't feel like looking through your records because you spouse just "organized" them and you no longer can find a #!$*&%! thing! Rather than succumb to frustration, you can enter the bill with a 0 due month for now. Then, later, after you cool down, you can research the mound of paper which your spouse calls organization to find last year's bill. I like searching through shoe boxes crammed with scraps of paper. It's right up there with reading manuals on how to use a financial calculator. 14 The Calculators SubMenu At present, there are calculators only for Mortgage Loans and Installment Loans. Upgrades to the PBT will feature support for additional financial functions. Neither the mortgage nor the installment loan calculators require that you enter an amount for "Down Payment." Before the calculator can show figures, however, you must enter both the amount of the loan and the loan interest rate. As the screens point out, you may also change the loan periods from the defaults. Movement from field to field is accomplished through the TAB key (the key to the left of the "Q") and the arrow keys. If the cursor is not going to the field you wish to get to, use the arrow key which points in the direction of the field which you are trying to reach. NOTE: On 8088 machines, PCs and XTs, the calculation speed may be slow enough to delay cursor movement. If you are using a PC or an XT (i.e., a machine slower than an IBM AT), you can avoid confusion by pausing long enough for the cursor to catch up with you. Otherwise, if you keep on pressing the arrow keys, the cursor will race past several fields after the calculations are finished -- to catch up with you. The pause which I am talking about is less than a second. That is quite a long time, however, for us computer users who are accustomed to instant response. ======================================================= "How much more will it cost me to finance my car over four years instead of three?" "How much will I save if I take the 10.5% loan from the bank which I don't like instead of the 11% loan from the friendly bank?" "What effect will it have if I manage to scrape up another $x toward the downpayment?" "What will the extra $800 in options cost me each month?" "What is the difference in the total cost of my mortgage if I take a 15 instead of a 20 year mortgage? What is the monthly difference in the payment? What is the total difference in the cost?" 15 Calculators is a starter set of the Swiss Army knife collection of tools which I shall be adding to the PBT. (Even as a starter set, it answers the questions listed.) Similar tools to PBT's calculators exist elsewhere -- in the financial functions of a spreadsheet, in the special keys of a financial calculator, in various $150 - $300 packages which ask you to make a hobby of your finances. I don't know you. Speaking for myself, however, I find that I don't necessarily use my most powerful tools at all. For me, it's a trade-off between the benefits and the bother. Financial calculators frustrate the daylights out of me with their arcane keystroke requirements. Spreadsheet documentation doesn't talk to me in my language. I want to figure out what my car payments will be. So, in vain, I look under "payments." Nothing. No fool I, I then look under "functions" and am told to look under "@functions". I love to look through indices. Thanks. So, I look under "@functions" and find the "@PMT" function which tells me that it wants, as arguments, "prin," "int," and "term". Great! So, now all I need to do is to find out the format in which they want me to enter these numbers and I am, I hope, all set. Thirty minutes later, I figure it all out and proudly behold my finished product. It's all there. It works. I did it. The PBT does not now and will not ever quiz you on your grasp of such concepts as "future value," "present value" and the like. Instead, it offers you options couched in familiar language and brings you to a dedicated "calculator" which does only one thing -- for only a totally dedicated calculator can offer the ultimate in simplicity. So, even though the formulas for mortgage loans and installment (i.e. auto and major appliance) loans are the same, I provided two separate screens for them. The former requests that you specify the loan's duration in years (the rather common way to ex-press mortgage loan durations) while the latter requests that you specify the duration in months. 16 THE PBT ANALYSIS The heart of the Personal Budget Tools (PBT) is its analysis. It answers such questions as: "What are my total monthly obligations -- both for this month and for prudent cashflow management?" "How much should I have in Short Term Savings to meet my bills for this year?" "Which bills come due next month?" Although answers to these questions may seem obvious, I believe you'll find some surprises about your finances as you fill in the information needed about your annual, monthly, and weekly bills and as you read through the analysis provided by the PBT. No longer will your bills blindside you. With PBT's analysis, you'll see what each month's requirements are and how to meet each of them while remaining on an even keel. The analysis provides you: - an overall snapshot of your monthly requirement which consists of: - 1/12th of the total of your "annual" bills plus - the total of your monthly bills plus - the total of your weekly bills * 4.33 (Yes, some months have a bit more than 4.33 weeks and some a bit less. This is an analysis to work with, not a scientifically precise document. Most of us will soon abandon a tool which too demanding.) - a month-by-month breakdown of how to allocate your PHD (Prudently Held Dollars) and your short-term savings. The short term savings -- living either in a savings account or in your checking account -- is money which makes it at least temporarily to the bank. Your PHD, however, are dollars which are often required in whole or in part to meet those annual bills which come due during a given month. 17 Printing on Non-EPSON Compatible Printers The PBT allows you to route the analysis to the screen, to the printer, and to disk. The latter option, routing the analysis to disk, is the one to choose if you find that the PBT and your printer don't go well together. The file which the PBT writes to disk, as "filename.RPT," is in ASCII (i.e. text or non-document) mode. As such, it can be imported into most word processors. So, if your printer is not an EPSON compatible printer, read "filename.RPT" into your word processor and print it from there. (PLEASE. Don't write me to ask how to do this with your printer and your word processor. I probably don't know. The place to look is in the documentation which came with your word processor. If you have a word processor which can't accept ASCII files (!!), then consider getting a copy of Bob Wallace's PC-WRITE. It correctly supports more printers than any of the Big Advertisers. And, its handling of ASCII text is exquisite.) 18 Appendix A - Types of Savings The PBT is based on a concept which divides savings into four categories: 1. PHD (Prudently Held Dollars) - The source of Short Term Savings but not the same. Some PHD dollars, as the analysis will point out, never make it to a savings account. 2. Short Term Savings - Savings for expenses which will occur within twelve months. 3. Intermediate Savings - Savings for planned major purchases which will take place within 1 - five years. Such savings will normally be reflected as a monthly or weekly item. 4. Long Term Savings - College, retirement, self-insurance against hard times. Like intermediate savings, such savings will normally be recorded as monthly or weekly items. Some may wish to make an annual entry if, say, one's income tax refund check is to be salted away. The PBT shows what to do for the first two types of savings, the PHD and short term savings. By recognizing them for what they are -- spent money -- you gain a clearer idea about the status of your intermediate and long term savings. TIP: With the PBT, you can now combine all your savings accounts into one account at your bank. Enter the amounts you want for your Vacation and Christmas "clubs" on the Annual Expense screen. Then, by following the advice of the Analysis, you will be saving not only enough to pay your other bills but also enough to cover your Vacation and Christmas "clubs". By combining your accounts, you may be able to avoid service charges and to qualify for higher interest rates. Check it out. Different banks have different requirements. 19 Appendix B - Navigation The keyboard keys will work as you probably expect them to work. Arrow keys move you in the expected direction. The TAB key (i.e., the key to the left of the "Q") will bring you to the next field, the SHIFTED-TAB key will bring you to the prior field. The ESCape key will bring you to the Main Menu. The PageUp and PageDown keys will page up and down if there is more than one screen's worth of information or more than one screen's worth of data entry room. To help you find your way around, PBT features both drop-down menus and comprehensive cross-referenced help. Think of the horizontal menu bar as the Main Menu. To activate the vertical drop-down menus, either press <ENTER> to activate the highlighted option or press the highlighted letter of another menu selection to activate that option. (Pressing the highlighted letter is the equivalent of moving to a selection with the arrow keys and then pressing the <ENTER> key for the selection.) To return to the Main Menu from anywhere within the PBT, including from a drop-down SubMenu), press <ESC>. When the menus are not on the screen, you may activate Help with the <F1> key. When the menus are showing, press <H> to drop-down the Help sub-menu. Once in Help, a second press of the <F1> key will bring up Help's Topic index. Pressing <Alt-F1> from within Help brings you to the last Help topic you viewed. The cross-referenced items in a Help screen appear either in blue uppercase (Highlighted for mono) or in reverse video. Those in blue may be selected via the arrow keys. It is the selected item which appears in reverse video. To jump to a selected cross-referenced item, press <Enter>. To return from a cross-referenced item back to the topic from which you came, press <Alt-F1>. 20 APPENDIX C - Questions and Answers 1. How did you arrive at the minimum short term savings figure? I'm glad you asked that. (I've been watching a lot of politicians on interview shows.) Make a chart with a row (i.e. horizontal) for each annual expense and a column (i.e. vertical) for each month. Then, take each of the annual expenses and figure out its month-by-month accrual. For example, say you want $360 for Christmas in December. In December, you should have $30 for next year. In January, $60. In February, $90; in March, $120; in April, $150; in May, $180; in June, $210; in July, $240; in August, $270; in September, $300; in October, $330; and, in November, $360. Enter each figure for the Christmas row under the column for its month. The $720 bill due in February requires $720 in January, $60 in February, $120 in March . . . In December, it requires $660. (NOTE: The PBT assures that the full amount of the expense is available at the BEGINNING of the due month. So, Christmas' funds are available in November and the February bill's funds are available in January.) Enter each figure for February's bill (Auto Ins?) in the appropriate row under the column for its month. Do the same for each annual expense (incl. quarterly and semi-annual expenses). Then, total the columns for each month from January to December. The column total is NOT the amount required in savings. Find the month with the lowest amount. Subtract that amount from each of the other months. Now you have it, the minimum amount which must be in savings each month to meet the annual obligations. 2. Why did you subtract out the lowest month? The month with the lowest total reveals the Rob- Peter-Pay-Paul amount. If your vacation is in June, you are borrowing from your Christmas Club. Not to worry, in December you will be borrowing from your Vacation Club. 21 3. Is it safe to borrow from Peter to pay Paul? It depends on how thorough a job you did in identifying your annual bills. Don't forget, this method has NO BUILT IN BUFFER for lack of thoroughness on your part in identifying bills or for unanticipated expenses. How much do you need for a buffer? Take your best guess and add that amount to the minimum savings amounts shown in the month-by-month analysis. Alternatively, add four entries to your Annual Expense list called Surprise 1, Surprise 2, Surprise 3, and Surprise 4. Space them 3 months apart. These are funds for such things as the failure of the timing chain, the water damage from your rusted out water heater, and the despondent crow which hurls itself through your picture window. 4. What formula did you use for the mortgage calculator? int payment = prin * ---------------- -n 1- (int+1) where: prin = principal (present value) int = periodic interest rate n = term 5. What formula did you use for the installment loan calculator? See #4 above. The difference is that I accepted the term in years for the mortgage calculator but in months for the installment loan calculator. 6. Where is the documentation on your error messages? There is none other than this since I tried to make the messages self-explanatory. INSUFFICIENT MEMORY FOR xxxxxxx - Means that your machine does not have enough free memory. If you have TSR (i.e., "pop-up") programs running, remove them and try again. If you do not have TSR programs running, you will have to increase memory to run the PBT. If you are running the PBT from within a shell, try running from the DOS prompt instead. The shell program itself may be eating up the memory which the PBT needs. 22 7. I don't get the HELP INDEX when I press F1 from within Help. Nothing happens. What is wrong? This is caused from insufficient memory. You can still see the Help Index from the Main Menu by pressing <H> for Help and then <I> for Index. Again, remove any TSRs or shells if those are present. Then rerun. 8. Who would benefit most from the PBT? Because my first commercial system was a checking system, and because lottsa young folk have gotten away from balancing their checking accounts(!), a large number of my customers are either retired or close to retirement. They will probably be those who will most appreciate what the PBT does because they will have wrestled with the same problems which the PBT addresses. Nevertheless, I wish I could get the PBT into the hands of young people just starting out on their own. The analysis would be a wonderful gift for those who never thought through the concepts of short-term vs. longer-term savings. Even a college education doesn't prepare its graduates with the knowledge of how to set up budgets. So, try to get your sons and your daughters to sit down at your computer and to run an analysis. Point out to them that the Help Screens will provide ideas on the types of things to enter under each of the categories -- annual, monthly, and weekly. 9. All my annual (or monthly or weekly) expense items got blitzed. What gives? The PBT wil accept up to 100 items in each category, so it has a PageUp and a PageDown feature. The chances are that you inadvertently paged down to the next (and blank) screen of the expense entry. Hit the PageUp key a few times and you will see your expenses again. (I'll do something about this in the next version.) 23 Version History 1.01 - Eliminated spill over of colors onto the Annual Expense screen. 1.02 - Improved centering of the report title. - Added "F10 toggle" option to the expense screens to allow switching among the expense screens without going up through the menus. 1.03 - Added printout of the weekly and monthly expenses to the disk and printer versions of the analysis report. Multiplied the weekly factor by 4.33 for the first page of the analysis to correct the statement of monthly obligations. 1.04 - Removed some of the more outrageous jokes from the manual and fixed a one-cent rounding error which sometimes showed up on the first page of the analysis. 24 About Shareware Shareware is commercial software sold on the Honor System. To some, that means that they'll play the system and leave the Honor to the author. Such folks take pride in being "Street Smart." They're using the wrong "S" words to define themselves. The right ones are "Simply Shabby". To those of character, shareware means that one is obligated to pay for software products which one continues to use after an evaluation period. It's like the newspapers left unattended. It's fair game to take a look to see whether you want to buy it. It's simply shabby to walk off with the paper without paying for it. This is my second Shareware product. The first was CHECK KING. CHECK KING did well as a shareware product. That makes it an exception to the rule. Most Shareware, picked up through distributors, user groups, and bulletin boards, sees very little customer support. And, CHECK KING, too, saw very little business except that generated through its national distribution as a cover program -- and, later, Editor's Choice renewal incentive program -- for Big Blue Disk. BBD claimed a 10,000 strong list of subscribers and an additional 10,000 sales in book stores. It takes a lot of time, A LOT OF TIME, to create programs as polished and powerful as Check King and as the Personal Budget Tools. You would not hesitate to pay the plumber or the electrician large sums for spending a matter of hours at your house. Why hesitate to pay the shareware author for spending MONTHS on a program which saves you hours and which helps you to organize? The advantage of Shareware to me is that I can market my product without the high expense and high risk of the normal marketing path. The advantage to you is that I can sell the software for a heckuva lot less than I could were I locked into packaging, printing, and -- worst of all -- advertising. The disadvantage of Shareware is that only a small subset of the people who have it will pay me for it. Some don't pay because they pride themselves on Street Smarts and would consider themselves fools to pay for something which they can get for free. These folks are morally bankrupt, so they have my blessing to console themselves with money. Others don't pay because they obtained the software for a few bucks from a Shareware Distributor and figure that the distribution fee which they paid the distributor was a purchase. It was not. The author receives NOTHING from such purchases. The ethical distributors point this out and try to encourage registrations in 25 their catalogs. (Money sent to distributors, usually from $2.50 to $6.00, allows them to cover their expenses and to make a small profit. That is alright. They are providing you a means of testing out the software. They are providing me a means of reaching potential customers. So, if everyone plays fair, we have a WIN-WIN-WIN situation with WINs going to the consumer, to the distributor, and to the author.) 26 APPENDIX F - REASONS TO REGISTER 1. It's the right thing to do. 2. It brings you to the latest version of the PBT along with a surprise software bonus. 3. It brings you notice of my other software offerings. 4. It entitles you to support. In fairness to my family, I cannot provide phone support. I shall, however, respond to questions -- normally within two weeks. Send me your address and, if you wish, your home phone number. Depending on the nature of the question, I shall get back to you either in writing or -- less frequently -- by phone. 5. You have nothing to lose. If you are dissatisfied with one of my products within 30 days, simply write asking for a refund. Keep the disk since I do not reuse disks returned to me. I'll somewhat cheerfully send you the refund without question less $3 per product returned to cover my disk, the mailer, the postage, the label, and a pittance for my time. (Check King is one product. The PBT is another. The DDS and TUTOR is the third.) PBT registration, as of June 2, 1990, is $25. I reserve the right to change the registration fee without notice -- since I have no practical way to notify everyone. (But, I have no present plans to increase the fee except for substantial unanticipated increases in my costs.) You don't have CHECK KING?! Ah well, that's easily remedied. CHECK KING is just $20. You're thinking about registering both? Let me provide an incentive. Register both CHECK KING and the PBT at the same time for a combined price of just $40. Tom Rickenbacker P.O. Box 11662 Newington, Conn. 06111 27 REGISTRATION FORM Name: ____________________________________ Address: ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ZIP: ______________ PHONE ( ) ___________ I heard about the PBT through ______________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ My computer is a _________________________________________________ with/without (circle one) a hard disk. My printer is a _________________________________________________ Monitor: ___MonoChrome ___CGA ___EGA ___VGA Memory: ___512K ____640K Other: (Please specify) _______ ======================================================================== Circle one: Personal Budget Tools $25.00 Check King alone $20.00 PBT & Check King $40.00 (Conn. residents, please add 8% sales tax to the total of your order.) I can provide the programs only on 5 1/4" disks. Please send your remittance, in U.S. funds, to: Rickenbacker Software Box 11662 Newington, Conn. 06111