Use these tools to help calculate and manage your finances easily whether you’re buying a home, considering a loan, planning your retirement or managing your day-to-day finances.
Keep in mind, the earlier you begin planning for any major investment the better return you’ll receive on that investment whether it’s a car, house, college education or your retirement!
Calculate Loans, Mortgages and Whether it’s More Prudent to Rent or Buy
- Mortgage Loan Calculator – Do you want to know how much house you can afford or what you’re monthly payments would look like if you refinanced your home at a lower interest rate?Are you looking to take out a loan and want to know how much interest you’ll pay out over the life of the loan? The Mortgage Loan Calculator provides easy to use functionality for quickly performing mortgage and loan calculations.
- Rent or Buy – Use this buy or rent calculator from the NYTimes.com to know when it makes more sense to rent rather than buy and calculate how long you need to stay in your home for buying to pay off.
How Long Will It Take You To Pay Off Your Credit Cards
This credit card repayment calculator provided at FTC.gov provides a sobering look at how long it can take to pay off a credit card by making only the minimum monthly payment. On the other hand, it will also provide you an incentive to get out of debt quickly by showing you just how much you’ll save in interest payments when you accelerate your credit card repayment schedule.
Here’s an interest saving example: Let’s say you have a $1000 credit card balance at 19% interest. Assuming you don’t add to this balance it will take you 5 years and cost you $388 in interest payments making the estimated minimum payment of $50 per month. However, if you double your monthly payment, you’ll pay off your debt in 11 months and pay only $98 in interest for a savings of $290!
Calculate Your Retirement
Are you well positioned for retirement or do you have a ‘long row to hoe’? These calculators will provide you a reality check on your retirement preparations.
- Retirement Planner Calculator from CNNMoney.com
- AARP Retirement Calculator helps you take the dread out of planning for your retirement. AARP maintains an extensive resource center for retirement planning in addition to its retirement calculator.
- Social Security Benefit Calculator – the Retirement Estimator from the Social Security Administration will help you calculate your social security benefits based on current law and real time access to your earnings record.
Other SSA Planners and Calculators
The Social Security Administration provides access to a whole range of benefits calculators including tools to help you estimate survivor’s benefits, disability benefits and more. Start at the Social Security Benefits Planner Page.
Financial Calculators for Every Occasion
Walletpop.com provides access to a zillion (more or less) financial calculators as well as a whole bunch of other great financial advice. Pop on over and take a look…
- Auto Loan Calculators
- Bond Calculators
- Budgeting Calculators
- Credit Card Calculators
- College Planning Calculators
- Credit & Debt Calculators
- Mortgage Calculators
- Mutual Fund Calculators
- Life Insurance Calculators
- Paycheck Calculators
- Retirement Calculators
- Roth IRA Calculators
- Savings Calculators
- Stock Calculators
Wow! We calculate that that’s a lot of calculators!
Don’t Forget the Budget…
We talk about the powerful budgeting tool available at Mint.com elsewhere on this site. Check it out and get your personal finances under control.
The Only Certainty is Death and Taxes
- We’ve been using TurboTax for years to file our taxes. They offer powerful tools to help you manage your taxes whether your an individual with a simple return or a small business with complex tax needs.They also offer a free version of their tax preparation software if you have a simple return and they give you a try before you buy option (online version only).
- Turbotax aren’t the only ones offering free tax preparation and filing for simple returns. Be sure and check the offerings available from H&R Block for a comparison of tax preparation services.
- Teaspiller.com – need an accountant to prepare your taxes or perform other accounting and financial work for you but don’t know where to turn? Teaspiller.com provides you access to and reviews of over 30,000 accountants.
- The IRS – i.e., the horse’s mouth of all things tax provides a rich resource for tax preparation and tax filing advice. And now that they’re no longer sending out tax forms, you can download whatever you need from their site.
