Nerd

I'm a big nerd. I really am. I'm the type of mathematically minded nerd that will figure out something new on a program like Microsoft Excel and then will feel forced to test it out by putting together a large scale working model of an elaborate mathematical equation complete with multiple variables that is relative to life enough to be beneficial to myself and designed with ease of use in mind to be beneficial to others.

Did that last sentence make sense to you? Don't worry. It doesn't to me either.

I built an Excel driven mortgage calculator. I did this a couple months ago, but only this past week did I get enough education to complete my masterpiece. With my fresh knowledge of Excel I managed to finish the thing off during my lunch break today.

If you are a homeowner or if you are in the market to buy a home, this calculator may be the very thing that will quickly answer some of your questions about paying off your mortgage loan. This Excel document can be downloaded for free, my gift to you, by clicking here. You should definitely download and view this if for no other reason than to see how big of a nerd I am. Who knows, it may turn out to interest you, too.

To use the form: Enter your specific information into the blue boxes. Tip: Escrow is the amount that your mortgage lender will add to your monthly payment and save for you. They'll use this money to pay your property taxes on your home every year as well as your homeowner's insurance. Whatever doesn't get used remains "In escrow" the following year. Homeowners: This amount that you pay can easily be found on your mortgage statement or mortgage bill. Future Homeowners: you can estimate your escrow payment by doing this (Property taxes for year + insurance for year / 12). If you don't know what these numbers are for the house that you are looking at you can either call a real estate agent and ask them or if you are not looking at any house in particular you can estimate by throwing in $90 to $100. That's probably correct for most places in Missouri around $80,000. The "Total Payment" column will show you what the required mortgage payment will be. Now you can add the amount that you want to pay in the "Paid" column and see how it affects the "Actual Payoff Date" found just below the graph.

Have fun! And don't hesitate to ask me questions.

P.S. You'll notice that you're not allowed to venture outside the blue. I've set that up for your protection, however if you know your way around Excel and you would like to do more with this, then the password to unprotect the sheet is "password". If you don't know where to go to unprotect the sheet then you don't know your way around Excel and should probably not attempt this.

P.P.S. If you don't have Microsoft Excel, and you would like to check this out or would just like to have an Office Suite but don't want to buy anything then you're in luck! I've added a link to OpenOffice.org to the right side of this blog page. Open Office is a great open source program that is free to have and to use with no strings attached. It is arguably just as good as Microsoft Office and will work for all Microsoft Office file formats. Check it out!

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