You don't even need special shareware in most instances. Simply enter
52 in the payments-per-year field instead of 12.
For example, more recent versions of Microsoft Excite includes an
amortization schedule which I have just tested and if you enter 52
payments per year instead of 12 you get the correct results, including
a payment schedule, interest and principal portion, as well as current
balance calculated correctly for weekly payments.
The only slight problem is that in my version of Excel the program
does not give the correct dates for each payment, i.e. it lists all
payments being made on the same day of the month as you specify as the
initial date at which the payments begin. I think this is a pretty
minor fault since any weekly payment schedule would be very easy to
specify and carry out - that is, every Monday, every Tuesday, etc.
I haven't checked the underlying algorithm for accuracy, but even if
it doesn't correctly take into account the few days' difference in the
interest, the change if each payment were calculated precisely vs only
aproximately, is only a matter of a few pennies in the principal being
charged against and, when you factor in the interest rate times those
few pennies, we aren't looking at much more than a difference in
rounding off numbers which you will probably find that banks always
calculate in their favor anyway.
Although Excel gives the single payment date rather than one for each
week, the actual calculated payments are correct for weekly payments.
For example, instead of a $1,088.53 monthly payment for a 30-year,
6.625% $170,000 loan, changing the payments-per-year to 52 gives a
$251.03 each week.
I used no references or links for this answer other than checking with
my copy of Excel. I also tried several freeware and shareware
calculators I have and most of them also worked properly, giving the
same answer within a few pennies per year so I hope you will consider
this an adequate answer to your question. If you do not have Excel,
simply try altering the number of yearly payments in whatever program
you already have and it will probably work, if not, many other
freeware calculators will handle this. |
Clarification of Answer by
siliconsamurai-ga
on
03 Aug 2002 11:36 PDT
My apologies for my misunderstanding but I can’t see where your
original question said anything of that sort, you merely asked for an
amortization schedule by the week rather than the month The question
did not specify that the total period of the loan was only to be a few
weeks or I wouldn’t have attempted to answer it the way I did. Now I
understand why you couldn’t find a shareware program which would do
what you wanted.
The minimum loan period for the Excel template I recommended is 1
year. I have tested an old shareware program I have which will did
accept 1/12 as the number of years and therefore did calculate shorter
loans but I don’t believe it is still available. Loans as short as
you are thinking about are not normally made in that fashion since the
interest is simply averaged over the term of the loan based on half
the total value of the loan.
For example, a 10 week loan of $50,000 at 6% interest would only
involve $576.92 if repaid as a single payment at the end of the loan.
Complex payment contracts and amortizations schedules are normally not
applied to such small amounts since there is so little difference
between the results of such a scheduled payment plan and simply
averaging the loan out to $25,000 for the 10 weeks or $288.46 ($28.85
per week) which is what you get as the interest on a $50,000 loan for
10 weeks at 6% interest paid off in 10 installments. The difference
which would result by amortizing such a loan rather than simply
calculating the total interest based on one half the full amount would
only amount to a few pennies at most.
Unless you are interested in much larger amounts, at least 10-times
more, the difference would still be almost negligible. I could easily
create a simple program or spreadsheet template to do this but not for
the price you have offered.
However, that doesn't answer your corrected question either, it merely
explains why there are few programs which do what you want.
There is a complete explanation of this and an equation to calculate
tables at:
http://www.cs.unb.ca/~alopez-o/math-faq/node76.html if you wish to do
this yourself.
There is an online Java applet and downloadable application which will
do what you need published by The University of Utah at:
http://www.math.utah.edu/~alfeld/Loan/index.html#download
This is based on the number of payments but does not require a
specific loan period so it could calculate, for example, a 10 week
loan payment schedule based on weekly payments.
I believe this actually answers your question as now stated but
perhaps it does not. This is not shareware, it is freeware.
Although I have tried to explain my answer so you understand why I
gave it. And explained the reason I gave it, that is, because your
original question didn’t say anything about a total loan period of
just a few weeks, I fully understand why my original answer is not
helpful to you and don’t think you should pay for it unless you find
the U of U program useful.
I suggest that, if the U of U program isn’t what you need, you simply
request a refund from the editors on this question since, although I
believe I answered the question as originally posed, it apparently
wasn’t the question you intended to ask. I feel certain that when
they read this clarification they will either remove this answer so
you can start over with another researcher, or simply offer you a
refund.
I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you but I
sincerely thought I was providing the help you requested.
Best wishes
|
