loan/mortgage repayment via sched xactions: feedback request

[Josh Sled]

On Thu, Jul 04, 2002 at 01:00:28PM -0400, Derek Atkins wrote:

| What purpose does the "Actual Principal" entry serve?  Are you going
| to set an initial balance on the Principal Account?  I'm not sure
| you really need this entry.  

Yeah ... I guess you're right.  This isn't exactly a method of setting
up the loan/mortgage accounts [history] so much as setting up the SXes.

Perhaps in the 'final' screen the user can be reminded to setup the
current start value of the loan appropriately.

| Similarly, what does the 'Variable Type'
| buy you?  Do you plan to pre-configure a bunch of "standard" ARMs?
| Or is it just something for the user to type freeform?

I was thinking it would be a list of the "standard" ARMs, but with an
"other" option ... it doesn't matter too much, as nothing in 1.8 is going to
use it anyways.  However, if placed in KVP data, an improved/2.0 facility
could come along and use it to DTRT [like setup "periodic variables"
appropriately].

| I'm torn over whether the Principal Account (and frequency) should be
| defined here or in the Repayment page...  There are certainly
| arguments for both ways of doing it.  Consider that you need the
| Principal Account in order to compute IPMT every period...

Not really relevant to setting the SXes up, though.  Plus, I think it
makes more sense that the high-level data about the loan is on one page,
but specifics of individual repayments are on another.

The overall progression is:

Inherent Params -> Situation Params -> ("Splits/Payments")+

| Another question: what do you plan to do with Start Date, Length, and
| Remaining, and doesn't this also tie into the Repayment Freqspec?
| Let's assume that I'm 5 years and 4 months into a 30-year fixed loan.
| Would you want to create all those transactions or would you start
| from _now_?  

Start from now.  There's a whole seperate idea about setting up historical
data in GnuCash using SXes, but I'm not really touching it right now.

| PMI and Insurance should be separated into two sets of options, each with
| their own page.

Noted.

| > --------------------------------------------------
| > | Repayment
| > --------------------------------------------------
| > Amount        : [ amount entry ]
| > Assets from   : [ account sel |v] 
| > Princiapl to  : [ account sel |v]
| > Interest to   : [ account sel |v]
| > Remainder to  : [{escrow,principal}|v]
| > Frequency     : +- freqspec ----------------+
| >                 |           ....            |
| >                 +---------------------------+
| > --------------------------------------------------

| What exactly is the "amount" here?  Is this the (computed) amount or a
| value typed in by the user (or a value typed by the user that is
| initialized to the default value?).  Also, the Remainder-to option

I guess it could be the formula ... and it could be setup to the appropriate
default...

"PMT(...) [+ tax_amt] [+ insurance_amt] [+ pmi_amt] [+prepay_amt]"

...based on the options in the previous step.  Or it could be an option
for a "simple" amount, with checkboxes and seperate amount entires for
the sub-parts...  hmm. I don't know, yet.

| I actually think this page should be moved to the end, after you
| configure your various payment (insurance, taxes, PMI) options.

Hmmm.  The only concern I have with that is that people will start into
the thing and get confused that they missed something... like they've
gone through 6 pages of the druid and still haven't seen the main thing
being setup: the repayment of interest and principal.

...jsled

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