Loan repayments

[prl]

On 12/01/2014 20:43, Egbert van der Wal wrote:
>  An additional complication is that the interest is fixed for 4 year 
> periods, and the current percentage is valid until december 2016. What 
> it will be next is currently unknown.
My home loan is like that (except that it has no initial fixed interest 
period). I've had four interest rate changes since the loan started 
about 18 months ago. Gnucash's loan calculator, with its fixed 
payment/fixed period/fixed interest rate model can't handle that. It 
also can't handle things like the fact that the loan allows me to make 
advance payments, and to also draw down amounts I've paid in advance.

Gnucash's loan calculator model just can't manage those sorts of 
complication.

I simply treat the monthly interest on the loan as a loan expense (the 
bank debits the interest amount from the loan account each month). I 
could do a rough estimate of whether the bank has charged the correct 
interest amount, but I haven't so far.

For all those reasons it's not possible to calculate exactly when I will 
have paid out the loan, though I do keep a spreadsheet estimate of how 
much I have paid in advance and what future advance payments I can make.

Peter