Wheatworks Blog: Financial Matters

Slate.com has an excellent article titled, “How the mortgage industry nurtured deceit“. It’s the story of “liar loans”, the slang for a “stated income” mortgage. It’s a good read …

The MoneyToys(tm) Web Site Calculators have been updated to version 2.1. The most important feature of these new financial calculators for web sites is their ability to read a user’s default regional settings and accommodate the settings with the local currency symbol.

For example, if your web site’s visitor’s computer is configured for English (US) regional settings, the Dollar Symbol will be displayed in the MoneyToys calculators. However, if the visitor’s computer is configured for English (United Kingdom), the browser will display the Pound Symbol. Other countries’ currencies will also be displayed as configured for the visitors’ regional settings.

Installation is simple. Three sample web pages and step-by-step installation instructions are included for each of the MoneyToys calculators.

More information about the 17 MoneyToys Website Calculators is available from MoneyToys.com.

This release is a free upgrade for all current MoneyToys customers. The entire collection of 17 MoneyToys calculators is available for only $139.95 USD.

Wheatworks Software, LLC announces the release of Free Loan Calculator, 4.5, a loan comparison calculator for Windows-based computers.

This free loan payment calculator for Windows allows you to quickly calculate and compare loan payments based upon variable payment frequency. It offers Daily 365/year, Daily 360/year, Weekly, Biweekly 26/year, Bimonthly 24/year, Monthly, Quarterly, Biannual, and Annual payment periods. Free Loan Calculator is a financial calculator designed for 2000/XP/Vista systems. It offers integrated help, provides automatic hints, and offers Wheatworks’ integrated Upgrade Center for easy, online updates. It allows you to compare two loans side-by-side and calculates Principal, Interest, Taxes and Insurance (PITI).

Free Loan Calculator is available as a free download from: http://www.wheatworks.com/free-loan-calculator.htm

Wheatworks Software announces the release of a new Free Rent or Buy Calculator for people considering the question of renting or buying real estate.

Deciding whether it’s better to rent a home or buy a home is a complicated decision. One fallacy that many succumb to is that home ownership is the cornerstone of the “American Dream”. It’s not.

The American Dream is related to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A lot of happy people rent. They’re happy to let a landlord care for the property instead of enduring the stress of falling real estate prices and home maintenance.

Other important considerations include the local real estate market, how long you intend to live in the location, whether it’s a “buyer’s market” or a “seller’s market”, whether you have grown children or haven’t yet had children, and whether your concept of “home” requires ownership.

There are many things to consider when deciding whether to rent or buy a home. Some of these include whether or not you believe real estate is over-priced, the real estate market conditions where you wish to live, how long you’ll live in the home, and other considerations.

The most important consideration is probably financial. Wheatworks’ new Free Rent or Buy Calculator helps people look at the decision from a financial perspective.

Learn more about the Free Rent of Buy Calculator.

Download the Free Rent of Buy Calculator.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

With the addition of two new calculators, the Average Interest Rate Calculator and the Mortgage Qualification Calculator, the MoneyToys(tm) collection of website calculators has grown to include 17 financial calculators for real estate web sites.

MoneyToys website calculators make it easy for a real estate webmaster to add value to a website. With MoneyToys calculator collection installed on a web site, the site’s visitors can perform financial calculations without leaving the site.

The 17 website calculators in the MoneyToys collection are easy to install. Real estate webmasters can modify the 17 real estate calculators’ default values to reflect local market conditions. Loan amount and interest rates, for example, can be easily configured for an agent’s local market.

With only a few lines of HTML, real estate webmasters can quickly add online interactivity to a web site. The font face, colors and sizes of MoneyToys web site calculators are easily modified so they match the design of a website. In addition, the default financial values can be set to fit any local market.

As website visitors enter their financial values in the MoneyToys calculators they automatically compute and display financial answers. By adding this interactivity to a web site a webmaster increases the time visitors spend on the site.

Included in the growing collection of 17 MoneyToys are simple loan calculators, mortgage qualification tools, loan acceleration calculators, downpayment savings calculators, closing cost calculators, refinancing and payment calculators.

The entire collection of MoneyToys is available for only $139.95 USD. Individual calculators are available for only $39.95 USD.

Real estate webmasters and agents may try the entire collection of MoneyToys at http://www.moneytoys.com. For more information, contact Wheatworks Software, LLC, Post Office Box 7, Ruston, LA 71273.

About Wheatworks Software, LLC

Since 1997, Wheatworks Software, LLC has created innovative financial calculators for consumers, professionals and companies in the real estate and financial services industries.

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The Credit Card Bubble Blog at http://www.creditcardbubble.com is a place to consider the impact of the credit card bubble on individuals and the economy. So jump in! Share your thoughts, ideas, tips and forecasts.

If you’ve watched the news lately, you’ve heard about the housing bubble. You’ve also heard about the credit bubble. One thing that hasn’t been mentioned too frequently yet is the credit card bubble.

If you heard about it in passing, the comments were similar to, “home owners are maxing their credit cards to pay for basic necessities like food and clothing.” Or maybe you’ve heard the astounding statistics about the number of credit cards the typical person has and the average credit card debt they carry on their cards.

While it has not received as much attention as the housing bubble or the credit crunch, you’ll hear more about the credit card bubble in the future. And it probably won’t be good news.

Wheatworks Software is pleased to announce the addition of the Average Interest Rate Calculator to the collection of 17 MoneyToys(tm) web site calculators.

This new calculator from Wheatworks is designed for web sites and allows visitors to calculate the average interest rate of their various debts. Knowing the average rate is helpful in determining whether consolidating multiple debts makes good financial sense.

Try our new Average Interest Rate Calculator at: http://www.moneytoys.com/average-interest-rate-calculator.php

Only if it lifts you from abject poverty. Apart from that, happiness is not a function of increased wealth.

A Newsweek article, “Why Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness“, explains well the relationship between wealth and happiness.

If money doesn’t do the trick, what does? The answer is age old; health, relationships, an enjoyable vocation, and a meaning-filled life.

Why is this an important topic? With the daily deluge of bad economic news, it’s important that one consider what matters, truly matters, in life. If you’re like most humans, you’ll not find happiness in a bank vault. You’ll find it by investing in significant relationships.

It has happened again. Another “Not since the Great Depression” moment.

Not since the Great Depression has the Federal Reserve saved a major investment bank from bankruptcy. MarketWatch.com has the article, “Bear Stearns goes on life support as trading crisis turns dire“.

The New York Federal Reserve Bank is backing JP Morgan Chase’s efforts to keep Bear Stearns afloat.

Not since the Great Depression …

Here’s one to stir you up. Some bankrupt lenders are literally “trashing” the financial documents of borrowers, throwing names, addresses, social security numbers and financial records into dumpsters for any identity thief to find and use.

The consequences for the bankrupt lender? None. How do you prosecute a company that no longer exists? In businesses like these, greed trumps ethics every time.

Read the article: Bankrupt lenders throwing away your privacy

Without prosecution for this behavior, don’t expect fear of legal consequences to stop this type of irresponsible behavior.

Buying a house has always been stressful. Few who buy houses are expert enough in all the different aspects of buying a house that it can be done with complete comfort. If you find home buying stressful, you’ll want to read one of my favorite tales of home buying in American literature.

Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel, “The Jungle”, is about the corruption of business in the early 20th century. The novel centers around the struggling Rudkus family who arrive in Chicago from Lithuania. (The University of Virginia’s web site offers the electronic text of “The Jungle” and other great American hypertexts.)

Chapter 4 of the Upton Sinclair’s, “The Jungle”, describes the Rudkus family’s purchase of a home. Sinclair skillfully describes the stress and even terror that can be associated with buying a house. It’s a great read and it may help you feel better knowing that home buying was as stressful 100 years ago as it is today.

“How to tell if now is the time to refinance” is Jane Hodges’ article on MSNBC.com today. It’s a well-written summary of how one can determine whether refinancing is a good option. She looks at both sides of the coin and offer suggestion about situations that make it wise to consider refinancing as well as some reasons it may be unwise or difficult to refinance. It’s a nice summary.

I wrote yesterday about Bruce Schneier’s Password Safe. I use it and I recommend it. It makes password security easy.

Today, think about the financial information you have stored on your computer. Is it in a spreadsheet in your “My Documents” folder? Do you have brokerage or retirement account reports saved as PDF files on your desktop? Is your tax return stored for any good hacker to see in your tax software’s data directory?

TrueCrypt, http://www.truecrypt.org/, is free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux. It is the best tool I’ve found to protect my financial information. I’ve used it for years and do not fear the loss of my financial data … or any other data, files, photos, etc. that I have encrypted. All my USB memory keys are encrypted with TrueCrypt and now (after the release of version 5 last week) my hard drives are too.

In fact, the BEST feature of TrueCrypt 5.0 is drive encryption. You can use TrueCrypt to encrypt your entire hard drive so that, without the correct password, no one can access your computer.

Caution: Even if you protect your computer with TrueCrypt, a weak password is a no-no. I use passwords of 20 random characters containing upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. Brute force efforts might crack them give enough time, but I have nothing that warrants the time a brute force effort would entail.

Here’s an example of a strong password:

K8dn20f^j3#(IaQL1@gM

With a strong password, TrueCrypt and Password Safe, you have a lot of what you need to protect your financial data. All three are free!

Protecting yourself online takes work. One cannot go willy-nilly where one wishes on the Internet … there are bad neighborhoods on the ‘net. Nor can one leave one’s own doors unlocked. Computer security requires constant effort.

Most know to use locked down firewalls and to use encrypted drives with long, random string passwords which are not written on sticky notes and stuck to monitors. The careful computer users make at least two back ups on encrypted devices which are stored off site in vaults.

Now, while paranoia about losing data or losing it to the wrong person may help you be safer than most computer users, you do have to realize that being paranoid (and consequently, safer) doesn’t mean someone’s not out there trying to get you data. There are people who would love to have access to your financial accounts.

You must protect your financial passwords!

One of the best tools for keeping financial passwords safe is Bruce Schneier’s Password Safe.

Learn more about Bruce and information security at http://www.schneier.com. (You’ll be glad you did.) And if you want to secure your financial passwords, try Password Safe. “Password Safe is completely free: no license requirements, shareware fees, or other strings attached.”

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has recently made available the online Financial Explorer which offers “interactive data pinpoints of all the facts and figures trapped inside dense financial documents”. The Financial Explorer provides an overview of a public company’s recent SEC filings and reports, information from the balance sheet, statement of income, and statement of cash flows.

The highly visual interface with graphs and diagrams gives you a nice summary view of a company’s reports. In addition, the Financial Explorer allows you to compare financial data over time. As they say on their home page … “however you wish to slice and dice the data.” Three word summary: Very cool tool.

Check it out at: http://209.234.225.154/viewer/home/

The MoneyToys™ Web Site Calculator collection has grown to 16 calculators with the addition of a Mortgage Qualification Calculator. The Mortgage Qualifier for web sites helps a home buyer determine how much he or she may be able to borrow and what monthly payment amounts a lender may allow based upon the individual’s financial income and debt.

This mortgage affordability calculator also accommodates a co-borrower. The income and debt information of the co-borrower is also considered in the qualification calculation.

Webmasters can modify the default Housing Ratio and Debt Ratio values to reflect those of the lenders with whom you are working. These values vary but it is important to remember the lender determines them for a home buyer. Industry standards at the time of this writing are 28 for housing and 36 for debt. In addition to income, debt and qualifying ratios, the Mortgage Qualification Calculator accounts for the amount a borrower has available for a downpayment and the interest rates they anticipate for different loan terms.

As a website visitor has entered the necessary values, the Mortgage Qualifier calculates and displays the estimated monthly payments, loan amounts and purchase prices for three mortgage loans for which the home buyer may qualify.

For more information:
http://www.moneytoys.com/mortgage-qualification-calculator.php

MoneyToys web site calculators are easy to install. With a few lines of HTML and MoneyToys™ website calculators you can quickly add online interactivity to your own web site! You can change the fonts, colors and sizes of MoneyToys web site calculators so they match the design of your website. In addition, the default values for the financial values can be set by you to fit with your local market.

And with MoneyToys calculators on your web site, your visitors can perform financial calculations without leaving your site! The entire collection of MoneyToys is available for only $139.95 USD.

According to today’s New York Post, it’s not all bonuses on Wall Street. In “Blood on the Street: Trader” the NY Post reports that pink slips were distributed last week following the worst fourth quarter in Wall Street history.

The WashingtonPost.com reports in “Dire Year on Wall Street Yields Gigantic Bonuses” that Wall Street’s 5 largest firms paid a record $39 billion (that’s 39 BILLION dollars) in bonuses while 3 of these 5 Wall Street firms lost more than $80 billion. The 5 firms’ combined profit for the year of $11.5 billion was less than the bonuses! Shareholders are left holding the bag for these bonuses while share prices have fallen this year due to poor performance.

As interesting as the article itself is, make sure you click the link to read the readers’ comments. Some of them are priceless. All of them so far express umbrage at the greed. Pathological greed like this sucks the life out of society.

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Spend less than you earn.

Earn more than you spend.

These two statements mean the same thing and doing them will accomplish the same result. However, they approach sound financial management from two different directions. They are, so to speak, two sides of the same coin.

Spend less than you earn.

This is about controlling your expenditures. If you earn $2,000 per month, do not spend more than $2,000 per month. Reducing expenditures may not be easy, but many people can do it if they are willing to give up something that is not necessary.

Some call this the “latte factor” and they encourage people to identify the daily latte in their lives and then give it up. Of course, if you drink a $4.00 latte every workday and quit it, you’ll save about $80.00 a month if you work 5 days a week. And while that $80 can be helpful, there are other important ways to reduce expenditures.

Did you recently pay off your vehicle? Unless it’s literally falling apart, consider going a year without buying a new one. Save $400 a month on car payments instead. That’s $4,800 per year you’ll save. So, what if it needs new brakes? Spend a few hundred on a new brake job and you’ve still saved $4,500 a year by not buying a new vehicle.

Earn more than you spend.

Here’s the flip side of the coin. Once you’ve pared your expenditures to what you actually need, the other variable in the equation is income.

Think of ways you can increase your income. Stuck in a dead end job? Hang onto it while you search for another with a higher salary. Have a hobby that you enjoy so much you can’t stop? Find a way for it to provide income for you? Have too much stuff? Sell it!

The two sides of the coin of sound financial management are to spend less than you earn and to earn more than you spend. It’s basic, but too many see only one side of the coin and miss out on opportunities to reduce their financial stress.