AROUND HOME : Your Financial Analyst

WOULD YOU LIKE to make a fortune in real estate, plan for your retirement and set aside money for your kid’s education--except every time you talk to your broker, banker or tax adviser, your eyes glaze over and your brain turns to mush? That’s why programmers wrote programs such as Your Financial Analyst. There’s nothing fancy here--just four useful functions: loan calculator, equity calculator, amortization and financial planning. The loan calculator does exactly what it says. You tell it how much you want to borrow, for how many years at what interest rate, and it tells you what your monthly payments will be. Or if you want to go at it the reverse way, you tell it how much of a monthly payment you can afford, how long a loan you want and the current interest rate, and it will tell you how much money you can borrow.

The amortization tables have a certain mesmerizing appeal. Once you enter the data on the loan, it can tell you how much interest you’ve paid at any point and how much principle still remains to be paid. It also tells you, if you choose to make a slight additional payment each month on the principle (say, $100), how much you can knock off the total cost (an astounding amount on a 30-year loan).

The college planner begins by asking whether you want to send your child to a private or public university or college. Figuring then that the average public college costs $6,165 per year and the average private college costs $12,511, Your Financial Planner then tells you how much you have to set aside each month now to send your child to college at age 18.

Your Financial Planner is a shareware program available from California Freeware, telephone (805) 273-0300.