Hugh's Mortgage and Financial Calculators - Latest Additions


  • Free Unlimited QR Code Generator - There are a bunch of online QR code generators, but mine is super easy with no options, just enter the URL or text to encode and I create a simple black and white QR code for you. Make as many as you want, they cost nothing to me!

  • Wealth Percentile Comparison 2020 - Based on 2020 census numbers this shows your percentile score for both your household income and net worth so you can compare where you stand in both areas. Ideally as you get older your net worth percentile should increase and hopefully get higher than your income percentile.

  • Dead Reckoning: Our Estate Plan Story - My wife's mother passed away in April 2020 during the pandemic, but due to proper planning beforehand we have been able to execute her estate plan in a reasonable fashion. Read more on my WordPress siteexplaining the long process involved.

  • College and University Endowments 2018 - The latest endowment numbers from over 800 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada in an easy to sort and parse format. It also includes a link where you can download the full spreadsheet. See how well the universities have invested in 2016 and 2017, they had pretty good years!

  • Federal FERS Retirement Calculator with Social Security and SRS. An online fan who is a federal employee wanted me to modify my retirement calculator to include the special retirement supplement (SRS), two social security recipients along with a pension amount and a retirement savings plan. It took me a while but I did it! Thanks, Denise, for the idea.

  • Itemized Deduction Calculator 2017/2018. Updated with the December 2017, Tax Cuts and Job Act Bill information to compare itemized deductions between 2017 and 2018 numbers. Even less US households will not itemize in 2018 and this calculator helps quantify the changes. From capped mortgage interest and state tax deductions, to lower rates and larger standard deductions, I try to make sense of this new bill and what it means to our bottom lines.

  • Taxable Social Security Benefits. This calculator turns the convoluted worksheet in IRS Publication 915 into a simple web form where you enter two numbers and your filing status. It leaves out possible adjustments, but gives a quick and easy number for your taxable social security benefits for 98% of filers.

  • Middle Class Income Calculator - Using Pew Research Center data I created a calculator that defines the "middle class" income (as defined as 2/3 to 2x median income) for all metropolitan areas and states in the United States. You can compare your own income to see where you would stand in different locations.
  • JUMBLE Puzzle Word Guesser - UPDATED! I still have my old JUMBLE descrambler that just prints out all 720 possibilities for a combination of any 6 characters. But now I have a version that does search the dictionary and shows matches in RED. I also now have one that only does dictionary matches, both in English and in Spanish too!
  • Income and Wealth Percentile Calculator (2001 to 2010 version) - This takes recent data about the drops in household income and wealth from 2001 to 2010 to see how you have moved percentile wise among US households.
  • Glenn Hubbard Refinancing Proposal Calculator - For some reason this proposal is not very well known but it makes a lot of sense: to allow not just those whose mortgages are under water to refinance easily, but to allow anyone with a higher rate mortgage refinance at current record low rates and with reduced closing costs. It makes a lot of sense to me.
  • Retirement Asset to Salary Ratio Calculator - This is an idea from an e-mail message I received from TIAA-CREF. They figured out how many times your income you should have at different ages to retire with either 70% or 90% of your current income. That sounded like a fun project to develop into a calculator, so here it is. I just love writing these things!
  • Household Income Percentile Calculator - (1979 to 2007) Using Congressional Budget Data from their October 2011 report, this calculator shows the percentile for any income amount from 1979 to 2007 (showing percentiles for 1979, 1986, 1993, 2000 and 2007.) This shows how $170,000 put you in the top 1% in 1979, but put you only in the top 4.4% in 2007. On the flip side $15,000 in 1979 put you in the bottom 23.5%, but if you still are making only $15,000 in 2007 you are then in the bottom 20.2%.
  • Cat (Feline) to Human Age Converter/Calculator - I was reading a book with a big chart of cat to human ages in it and decided it had to become an online calculator. So now I can calculate how old my lazy cat is while he sleeps away his life on my sofa. He is equivalent to a middle-aged human which makes a lot of sense since he is a total spud.
  • Local Retail Versus Online Calculator - Ho, Ho, Ho! It's the Holiday Season and everyone wants you to buy your holidays gifts from them. Should you buy from a local retailer or from an online store on the Internet. Compare the costs to see which one will save you the most money!
  • "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"
  • 2010 Refinance Calculator - My latest refinance calculator figures out when a new refinancing would start saving you money compared to just taking the closing costs money and using that to pay down your mortgage balance. I had been thinking of refinancing down our 4.91% loan (as ridiculous as that sounds) to see what the best option is for us. Try it out an see what you think!
  • Metrolink Restoration Schedule - This lists the stops on the Blue Line only from Shrewsbury to Grand Station during the weekdays. This shows the times after the restoration happens on Monday, June 28, 2010, so we will all be ready for the slightly different schedule. You can also find the full PDF on the MetroStLouis.org site, but mine is easier to read if you are a daily Blue Line commuter like me.
  • MortgageSum Calculator Download - Another satisfied customer has purchased my handy, dandy standalone Windows based mortgage calculator application. Let me know if you want me to write something for your site too!
  • The Money Book Calculator. This is a book for freelancers and part-timers who want to learn to better save and spend their money. My calculator allows you to find out how much discretionary income you will have each month after paying yourself first (emergency, tax and retirement accounts) and then all your mandatory expenses.
  • FICO Credit Score, LTV Interest Rate Adjustment Calculator. I found the numbers for this calculator from a library book I read about mortgages by Dale Robyn Siegel, so I thought I would turn it into an online calculator. You enter your home value, down payment (or home equity), FICO credit score and the current market interest rate, and the calculator will estimate what rate you would really end up paying on a mortgage in your situation.
  • Cholesterol level and ratio calculator. First this takes finds the missing value amongst your total blood cholesterol, LDL, HDL and triglyceride level numbers, and then reports on the desirability of each one as well as three ratios that help identify some possibly problems. I must be getting old to start putting in health related calculators!
  • Propostion A Sales Tax Calculator. St. Louis County has put a 1/2 cent sales tax on the April 2010 ballot again to support public transportation in the city and county. I have written a calculator to show people how much it will cost them compared to how much money they give MODOT each year for the roads and streets via the gasoline tax.

  • 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!)

  • Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan Calculator Many people do not fully understand how Obama's plan to slow down foreclosures works to help people. It is not simply a foreclosure "bailout plan". Here is a calculator to help people make sense of it better.

  • Buy Hugh's House Calculator - Yes, believe it or not we were trying to sell our house in this lousy economy -- and it sold within the first month! Here is a calculator showing how my buyer is going to get a great deal using the federal tax credit and also Missouri's nice program for first-time buyers, to buy a lovely house (at a very nice price) and live the American Dream. Plus I again have the American Dream of owning ONE nice home, not two!!
  • Is Your Retirement on Track?.Yahoo! Finance had an article telling people how to see if they were on track for their retirement. Unfortunately, it requires perusing a large table and performing a few calculations to solve. I am doing the math for people, using a simple PHP program and copying their large table of numbers since that is what I love to do! So here it is and you can see how well your retirement savings look without having to do the math yourself.
  • RetirementCalculators.org downloadable calculator - Here is another customized calculator I wrote for somebody that people can download and run on their Windows PCs. This one is based on a retirement income calculator I had written. I love writing this stuff!
  • MortgageCalculator.org downloadable calculator MortgageCalculator.net downloadable calculator - I customized my downloadable calculator for some websites, and they have them on their sites. I can write one up for anybody for just a small fee! Contact me for details.
  • Fixed versus COLA Pension Comparison - This simplified calculator allows you to compare a fixed pension with a larger initial payment with a COLA pension with a lower startin payment but which increases each year. This can help you decide which one to choose.
  • Generic Loan Schedule PDF Generator - This is the same as my old Generic Loan Calculator, but now it writes the output to a PDF file so that you can save and print the schedule much easier.
  • Aspect Ratio AJAX Calculator - Which has a taller screen, a 17" standard monitor or a 20" widescreen monitor? Here is a calculator to compare screen dimensions. Plus it is written using AJAX so it submits calculations without a click! Cool...
  • Income Numbers Calculator Simple calculator to quickly see how what an income amount is as an hourly, daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly and annual basis. It also allows you to specify a percentage of income to display for each period
  • Gourmet Muffin Calculator - Yet another savings calculator, but this one is a personal one for Sharon Harvey Rosenberg, a columnist who interviewed me and shared her secret passion for gourmet muffins and how much she spends on them.
  • JUMBLE Puzzle Word Guesser - Instead of searching a dictionary list of words, I just print out all 720 possibilities for a combination of any 6 characters. Going to 7 characters was just a little too big, and using 6 should help you guess just about any word.
  • Password Generator - My own password generator! This uses my favorite technique for generating unguessable, secure passwords that are very easy to remember. Just think of an eight word phrase that you can remember that no one else would and you are set!
  • 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!
  • HELOC Cost Calculator Another idea sent to me to calculate how much you "save" in taxes by paying tons of interest to some financial institution while watching the debt dependent on your home equity line grow without end. The e-mailer told me some folks use their HELOC's like credit cards, throwing just about anything on it under the guise of "tax savings". No wonder our country is so debt crazy! Used correctly, HELOC's can be great borrowing products; used poorly they just put you more in debt.
  • 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, I walk and take public transportation most of the time, and otherwise my Hyundai Sonata is pretty economical for the times I make the 4 mile commute!
  • 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.

  • 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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