Mortgage/Loan druid comments

[Tim Wunder]

On Saturday 13 July 2002 03:00 pm, Josh Sled wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 13, 2002 at 12:08:26PM -0400, Tim Wunder wrote:
<snip>
> |  - It seems that the druid should calculate the payment amount based on
> | the input of the loan amount, the interest rate, and the term. Will it?
>
> Yes; see src/scm/fin.scm. :)  The facility to hook these up to the template
> transaction credit/debit cells is there ... but a few more things need
> to be hooked up before it will work.  But that's the idea.  As for it
> displaying them in the druid... well, I think the formulae would be put
> into any "Amount:" entries, but perhaps there's room for an Amortization
> Table page... would this be useful?
>

Probably

<snip>
> | prompted for amounts for each individual field. A final calulated field
> | would then be the Total Payment amount, which can only be changed by
> | changing the Esrow amount, or the other editable fields in the Repayment
> | dialog (based on select options).
>
> There was talk about this earlier.  While it will be true for a lot of
> people that the Repayment is just the sum of the other splits, a lot
> of people just pay something "Fixed" per month [perhaps something that's
> calculated and the fudged by their bank, but otherwise a set dollar
> amount]. So it will need to be edited in some cases by the user.
>

Hmmm, that brings to mind my current Home Equity line of credit...
It consists of 2 10-year phases, a borrowing phase and a payoff phase. During 
the borrowing phase, the minimum monthly payment is calculated based on a 20 
year term and is an interest-only payment. It is only during this phase that 
I'm allowed to borrow against the loan. I can pay against principal, if I 
want, but it's not part of the minimum payment as delineated by the bank on 
my statements. Once the 10 year anniversary comes, the Payoff phase kicks in 
and I can no longer borrow against that line of credit. The minimum payment 
becomes a P&I calculation based on a 10 year term (still with a variable 
rate). 

I'm not sure how this can fit in with the Druid, but I figgerd I'd throw it at 
you to see what you thought. I also don't know how many banks out there have 
loans that are stuctured like that. So I can't comment on whether the ability 
of gnucash to handle it would be important.

Regards,
 Tim

<snip>