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^Cby
^CParesh P. Patel


   If you're paying off a home or auto loan, or are considering obtaining one,
or wish to know how big your savings will grow at compound interest, this is the
program you need.  It will do these sorts of financial calculations.

   FINANCIAL CALCULATOR is menu-driven.  In general, you use the arrow keys to
pick between options and move between input fields.  In many cases, on-screen
help messages show the meaning of the menu choice on which you are sitting.

   There are four different financial calculations on the main menu.  Move the
cursor to the one you want, then press ENTER.  A screen will pop up that has the
appropriate data fields for the item you want.  There will be a brief menu
somewhere on the screen, consisting of the letters "M" and "C".  One of these
will be highlighted to show the cursor position, and an adjacent help line will
show its meaning, "Return to main menu" or "Change values."  Use the left and
right arrows to pick the letter you want: M to get back to the main menu, or C
to enter values for a financial problem.

   After choosing the C item, you'll get a cursor in the top data field.  Type
in numeric entries for each followed by ENTER; the arrows will get you around
the fields if you wish to enter them out of order.  ESC concludes your entries
and calculates the values you need based on the data you entered, and returns
you to the "M C" menu.

   The first choice from the main menu deals with loans and mortgages.  It
allows you to enter the principal, interest rate, and number of years of a loan,
and the monthly payment and amortization schedule will be calculated.  In
addition to the M and C items on the mini-menu here are a Y entry and left and
right arrows.  These let you move around through the full amortization schedule
generated once you've entered data, since this generally takes more than one
screen.  Each year of loan payments, broken down into principal and interest,
takes up one screenful.  You select the right and left arrow icons to advance
and retreat in one-year increments, and the Y item lets you jump straight to a
year by number.

   The second main menu item, compound interest, requests amounts for the
principal, interest rate, and compounding period of a savings account or other
fixed-interest investment, and the period of time (in compounding periods: days
if compounded daily, years if compounded annually, etc.) that this money has
been or is to be in the account.  The total interest earned and closing balance
will then be calculated.

   The third main menu item, annuities, will compute the amount that needs to be
invested in order to provide a specified payment of a particular amount and
frequency for a given length of time.  You specify the amount, the period
(annual, quarterly, etc.) at which the amount is paid, the interest rate and
compounding frequency, and the period (in terms of interest compounding periods)
over which the annuity must last.  You'll get as output the amount that must be
placed into this annuity to provide the given payments.

   Finally, the Present Value item computes the current value of an investment
that will yield a fixed lump sum at a particular time.  You input the sum, the
interest rate, the compounding period, and the number of compounding periods in
the future the payment will be made.  The output is the present value of this
investment.

   To run this program outside the BIG BLUE DISK menu, type: ^1FC^0.

   NOTE:  Some DOS versions have a command "FC" (File Compare) that may 
interfere with the execution of this program.  If you get a cryptic error 
message about command syntax when you try to run Financial Calculator, you 
probably have this problem.  This will only happen when you're trying to run 
Financial Calculator when your default drive and path is not the one in which 
BIG BLUE DISK (or your copy of Financial Calculator) is located, and the DOS FC 
command is somewhere on the path set with the PATH command.  Fix this by going 
into the drive or path where BIG BLUE DISK is (type "A:" if it's in drive A, or 
"CD \BBD\26\" if it's on your hard disk, for instance), or else rename either 
Financial Calculator or the DOS FC command to something else.  (If you rename 
Financial Calculator, though, it won't run from the BIG BLUE DISK menu.) 

DISK FILES THIS PROGRAM USES:
^FFC.EXE
^FBRUN30.EXE
^FRETURN30.EXE