Loan calculation: what gives?

[Roberto Leibman]

Roberto Leibman wrote:

> Roberto Leibman wrote:
>
>> I'm trying to set up a loan through the loan druid. Here are the details
>> I put in:
>>
>> Amount 11331.00
>> Interest Rate 4.8%
>> Start Date 5/18/2004
>> Length: 36 months
>> Months Remaining: 36
>>
>> The resulting formula seems to be:
>> pmt( 0.04800 / 12 : 36 : 11331.00 : 0 : 0 )
>>
>> The druid is showing me payments of 39729.60!!!! What gives?
>> The same exact formula (ok, changing ; for :) in openoffice gives me the
>> correct number of 338.58 that I see in my loan documents and expect. Is
>> this a bug? Did I enter any of the information wrong?
>>
>> P.S. If I try to enter 3 years instead of 36 months for Length the
>> program just hangs (or at least it seems to, I'll let it run a bit
>> longer since it does seem to be doing something to the CPU.)
>>
>> Thanks for the help,
>>
>> Roberto
>>
>> P.S. I'm using the version packaged with Fedora Core 1: gnucash-1.8.8-1
>> according to rpm -q
>>
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>>  
>>
> OK, I tried compiling a fresh gnucash 1.8.9 from scratch to see if 
> that was the problem. No, it still occurs.
>
> Next I tried a completely fresh file, starting off with just a blank 
> checking and a blank car loan set of accounts. It still occurs.
>
> Then I tried the exact same thing on my laptop, also running fedora 
> and also running gnucash 1.8.8-1 rpm. ... It works!!!!
> I followed the exact same steps on my laptop and my PC: even side to 
> side through a ssh shell (the computer with a problem is at home). One 
> works and one doesn't. I'm totally clueless about what might be going on.
> Any ideas? Anything else to try or test? Could it be one of the 
> libraries that gnucash is dependent upon?
>
> Roberto

I figured out how to make it work. There's still a bug somewhere, but 
I'm not sure where.

I removed my ~/.gnucash, just to make sure everything REALLY started 
fresh. And that seems to have done it. It now works as expected. So.. it 
must have been something in the configuration or preference files stored 
in ~/.gnucash. I don't remember what I might have changed in my options, 
perhaps auto-decimal points (perhaps placing decimal points somewhere 
where they shouldn't be placed or something like that?)