Category : Databases and related files
Archive   : FPD227.ZIP
Filename : FPDUPD.DOC

Your Financial Partner Version 2.27 12/1/88


Update Notes for Your Financial Partner


The documentation for Your Financial Partner is correct up to
version 2.12. This file adds documentation for all subsequent
versions.


Version 2.13

Added the following functions to Menu Item 1:

3. Interest rate required for present value to grow to future
value, given a fixed length of time.

4. Number of periods required for present value to grow to
future value, given a fixed interest rate.


Version 2.14

Added the following function to Menu Item 6:

3. Days Between Dates. This function is effective for any date
ranging between 1/1/1900 and 12/31/2200.


Version 2.15

Fixed bug in days between dates function.

Version 2.16 (8/18/86)

Fixed bug in Boosters routine so that Calendar function correctly

identifies all leap years.

Version 2.17 (9/29/86)

Modified accelerated amortization routine. Now allows amortization
schedule to be printed out to Screen or to Printer showing effect of
acceleration over the duration of the loan. The program will print
the amortization schedule using the computed monthly payments up to
the point where acceleration begins. It will then pick up printing
the schedule with the adjusted monthly payments or lump sum payments








Version 2.18 (10/29/86)

Program finally reached the point where it was too large to fit into a
single .COM file. Now includes two overlay files, .000 and .001.
Overlays necessitated by addition of a new loan function. Added loan
refinancing option.

Loan Refinancing: Loan Menu, Option 7.
Required input:

1. Original Loan Amount, Interest Rate, and Duration.
2. New Loan Amount (Have option here to simply capture existing balance

and carry it forward as new loan amount), new interest rate, and
new loan duration.
3. Points required for refinancing (0 if none), and total of other
loan costs.

Options include:

1. Carry forward existing balance or refinance any amount.
2. Include or exclude loan refinancing fees as part of the new
principal.

Output includes:

1. Projected costs of original loan
2. New payment computation on refinanced loan
3. Total costs on refinanced loan (includes costs of old loan
up to point of refinancing, plus costs to fully amortize new loan)
4. Length of time to payback loan front-end fees (only computed if
these fees not included in amount financed.


Version 2.19 (10/30/86)

Modified Screens for Loan Refinancing; Allows ReCap Screen to
be printed. Fixed Bug in Loan_Balance routine. This bug did not
affect computations; it merely fixed in the re-display bug of a
previous balance. All calculations from previous versions have
been correct.

Fixed obscure bug in second Intro screen. This quirk only af-
fected the Hercules graphics adapter and its clones.

Version 2.20 (11/03/86)

Cosmetic changes in the screens associated with loan amortization
and accelerated amortization.

Version 2.21 (12/16/86)

Fixed a bug in the FV computation. Prior to Version 2.21 the pro-
gram incorrectly computed the Future Value of Periodic Deposits in
circumstances such as follows: $2000 deposit each year for 20 years





at 10% annual interest, compounded more than once per year. Due to
an absolutely stupid programming error, the program gave a plausible
but utterly erroneous answer. No other changes made.

Version 2.22 (3/21/87)

Fixed a minor bug in the days between dates routine that prevented
dates in the month of February from being entered as the first date.

Changed the loan payment computation routine to permit loans of less
than one year's length. WARNING: in order to get correct calculations,

you must use your head for this one. A 6 month loan with monthly pay-
ments still is based on 12 payments per year. Since 6 months is equal
to 0.5 years, 12 payments per year times 0.5 years yields the correct
number of payments. If you indicate that you are only making 6 payments

per year, the program will figure that your payments are scheduled 2
months apart and will give incorrect results.


Version 2.23 (3/22/87)

Made all routines accept a duration as short as one month. This pro-
duces a rare anomaly in the routine to determine the amount you can
withdraw from an investment. If you enter an absurdly short period
to accumulate cash (say 0.08 representing one month) and an absurdly
short period over which to withdraw it (say 0.08 representing one
month), the program will not complain but will give you an answer that
you won't like. Basically, the program will actually yield a negative
return on investment because of the inability to represent one month
as an exact fraction. I wouldn't worry about it - it isn't a program-
ming error - but it might be disconcerting. Since I can't imagine
many circumstances where anyone really would do this, I decided not
to try to resolve it.

Version 2.24 (4/22/87)

Thanks to John Starbuck for pointing out that the amortization schedules
periodically truncate interest so that the total of principal and inter-
comes up a penny short of equalling the total payment. Not a major con-
cern (unless you're the bank that makes lots of money by rounding
interest payments in its favor and truncating principal in its favor),
but one that needed repair. Fixed in this version.
Version 2.25 (5/3/87)
John Starbuck strikes again. John presented me with a problem that ap-
pears to highlight a non-trivial bug in non-8087 versions of Turbo. Nor-
mally calculations are unaffected, but infrequently wrong answers do
result. Turbo does not always round off numbers properly, even if I
manually program a routine to force the rounding. This appears in the
following problem. Suppose I borrow $50,000 for 5 years at 12.5% int-
erest with monthly payments. The monthly payments are $1124.90. After
the 22nd payment the loan balance is $35,150.88. If we figure the int-
erest portion of 23rd payment, it works out to be $366.155000000. If
we round this, as the program does, the correct interest is $366.16.
This means that the principal applied to the outstanding balance is
$758.74. If you examine the output from Financial Partner, the result
given for payment 23 is $366.15 (interest) and $758.75. There are
several other places subsequent to this where similar rounding errors
occur. I've examined my algorithms closely, run the program under the
watchful eye of a real time debugger, and had intermediate results
printed out. There is no apparent explanation for why Turbo does not
handle this properly. I can only conclude that Turbo is in error on
this computation, or that the internal representation of the number
differs from what is printed. When I compiled it under Turbo-87,
which requires the math coprocessor to be installed, and Turbo-BCD,
which is capable of representing decimal numbers more accurately than
Turbo itself, the rounding is done properly. Thus, Version 2.25 has
been compiled under Turbo-BCD. Thanks to some transcendental functions
uploaded to Compuserve, I was able to recompile the program without any
changes to the source code. The finished product is more accurate,
albeit slightly slower, than earlier versions.

I made one other change in 2.25. Henceforth, the final payment on
a loan will be the actual amount due, rather than the scheduled pay-
ment with the balance forced to zero.

Version 2.26 (release 9/1987) - fixes display bugs

Version 2.27 (release 12/1/88) - adds Bond Yield to Maturity

Except for cosmetic changes (changes to displays) and bug fixes Version
2.19 represents the last major shareware release of Your Financial
Partner. This summer (1989) I plan to port the program over to
"C" adding windows, pop-up calculator and a number of other
goodies. The "C" version will not be released as shareware. It
will be released commercially and will probably sell for
$49.95. To show my appreciation for all of you who have
generously supported Financial Partner, we will send all
contributing users a copy of the commercial version free with
on-disk documentation. So, if you're using the program, think
it's valuable, and want to get the commercial version free,
consider sending a voluntary contribution of $20. If nothing
else, drop me a note via Fido Mail, GEnie Mail, Compuserve, or
US Mail telling me what you think about the program, or suggest
features to add.

Please send any comments, criticisms, suggestions, checks and/or
bug reports to:
Marc R. Feldesman
12655 SW 111th Place
Tigard, Oregon 97223

GEnie Mail Address "mfeldesman"
BITNET h1mf@psuorvm
Compuserve 72560,24