Hugh's Mortgage and Financial Calculators - Saving and Investing Tools

  • "Get Back" Calculator - After the unpleasant market drops of the last few years, people want to know what types of returns would be necessary to "get back" to the market peaks of long ago. This calculator lets you enter how much your portfolio has dropped, and then calculates the return you need to "get back to where you once belonged"

  • Stock Dividend Reinvestment Plan (DRIP) Calculator A request from someone at a bank in Canada who wanted a calculator to demonstrate how DRIP plans worked. Low stock prices are actually good for DRIP plans since you are regularly buying shares both when prices are high (like a few years ago) and also where they are quite low (like NOW!)

  • Savings Comparison Calculator 2006 - Many of my "wealth" calculators had old numbers, but I found some new statistics from a 2006 survey on how much people have saved up for their retirement. The numbers do not look promising for many people to say the least, but you can see how you compare. I know many financial planners tell everyone they need $500,000 or $1 million or more to retire, and it looks like if that is true, very few folks will be enjoying their golden years. Be prepared to be a Wal-Mart greeter in your 70's!

  • Booze/Beverage Savings Calculator Here is an idea sent to me by yet another viewer. Calculate how much you can save by skipping overpriced drinks at restaurants and drinking refreshing, cool water. Just think that instead of having two drinks, you may very well be able to order an appetizer instead, which is likely to be much more satisfying. Aren't all Diet Coke's or Bud Lite's basically the same anyway? Water is better for you and doesn't conflict with the tastes of your food too. Drink water and save!

  • Gas Cost vs. Cable Bill Calculator. Here is an idea someone e-mailed to me. Compare how much more you are paying in gasoline compared to your cable bill. In 2004 the average US cable bill was $50.98, and I bet most people are not paying that much more in gas prices (compared to a year or two ago) unless they have a long commute or drive a Hummer.

  • Gas Guzzling Calculator. Hey, I was curious so I had to write it for myself. Luckily, my 9 year old Geo is pretty economical and my commute is not too long at about 17 miles round trip daily. But others may not be so lucky

  • Change Counting Calculator. Here is a simple JavaScript calculator for counting up change like after a big garage sale. You can even download it to your PC so you do not have to be online for it to work.

  • I read a book called Rational Simplicity by Tim Covell which is a great little book and also has some fun things to calculate. One describes his Two-Step Housing approach to build wealth slowly by buying, fixing up and reselling homes. The second is a calculation to determine your Real Wage you earn from your job and how many hours things cost that you buy.

  • Break the Starbucks habit - Save a ton by brewing your own, contributing to the office coffee pool, or just stop drinking the stuff. Is it really worth it? An idea from Erika Lim from the heart of Starbucks-land, Seattle.

  • Two Income vs. One Income Calculator - Hey, I had forgotten I had written this but then someone asked about it. This is based on calculations from the now out of print book Shattering the Two-Income Myth by Andy Dappen. Very thought provoking book on the subject.

  • Average Return Calculator Here you enter up to 20 annual returns and it finds the "average" return three ways: the simple numerical average, the cumulative return divided by the number of the years, and also the single rate that would build to that cumulative amount over that time period.

  • Investment/Savings Comparison This allows you to compare a variety of investment options with two side by side saving/investments cases you can modify.

  • How much house can you afford? Updated! - This has been changed to allow higher debt ratios for expensive housing markets.

  • Save a fortune by not smoking, Similar to my "lunch" calculator this lets you see how you can buy a nice vacation or even a new car if you stop smoking cigarettes every day. A suggestion from RF of Richmond, VA.

  • Lunch Savings Calculator - It's amazing to see people who go out to eat lunch everyday, spending $4 to $10 for five days a week to eat. I wonder what would happen if I calculated the savings over making your own $2 lunch every day...

  • What's a Million? Let's see how long it takes to reach a financial goal, say a million dollars, but then let's see how much that will be worth then!.

  • Compound It! This simple JavaScript does a monthly compounding on a fixed balance as well as contributions.

  • What's Your Yield? Find the long term yield of your investments given start and ending amounts and how much you contribute each month.

  • Simple Savings Calculator - Given a beginning balance and a monthly deposit, watch you money grow!

  • Tuition Savings Calculator - As a full-time university employee, one great benefit is free tuition for my kids! It's frightening to think how much it would cost otherwise.

  • Compounding Yield Calculator - Calculate Annual Yield of an Investment

  • Nominal and Effective Interest Rate calculator

    • PAY HERE Information on my Expensive Licensing Fee Karl's Java version of the Mortgage Calculator
    Mortgage Freeware/Shareware for your Mac or PC Domain Hosted by GoDaddy
    This is a low bandwidth page; Fine for Lynx users too.
    Here's another low bandwidth calculators page at MortgageLoan.com     		Contact me, Hugh Chou, at : huchou@gmail.com
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