Re: [libreoffice-users] Question

** Reply to message from A <publicface@bak.rr.com> on Fri, 29 Nov 2013
20:45:54 -0800

Now I see how the existing FV would do what I needed to do. What threw me was
that it says to enter a payment value which there is none except the interest
accrued. Reading the info on the Wiki page explains that one can use 0 as the
payment then get the value including the compound interest. It would be very
helpful if the Help file included that key bit of information. I was
surprised that LO didn't have what would be a common financial function, but
in fact it did, I just didn't recognize it.

Cliff

> Now that Dave was kind enough to translate the problem into common 
> financial terms I recognize, finding the FV function is easy.
>
> Menu->Insert->Function->Select Financial->FV
> OR, use the function wizard to accomplish the same.
>
> I've always hated word problems, I could never translate words into math 
> equations.  But the OP asked about calculating compound interest which 
> is not the same as future value.  Calculating FV is definitely an 
> important first step.
>
> This link: 
> http://www.ehow.com/how_2166243_calculate-compound-interest.html shows 
> the same formula Dave provided (albeit Dave's formula was much more 
> helpful), but they go the extra step of showing that the compound 
> interest is actually the Future Value minus the Present Value.
>
> I had to scratch my head over this a few times and re-read the link 
> quite a few times before I finally saw the answer sitting there in front 
> of me.  They calculate the interest on $1000 in the example link - show 
> that FV = 1210, and finally show that the interest ends up being the FV 
> of $1210 minus the original PV of $1000: so interest earned is $210.
>
> I would never have recognized the formula in the link as being FV, and 
> so without Dave's help I couldn't have figured any of this out.
>
>
> On 11/27/2013 04:12 PM, Dave Liesse wrote:
> > I've had troubles in the past finding specific financial functions, as 
> > well.  Can't help from the function standpoint in this case, but you 
> > could always fall back on the actual equation:
> >
> > FV = PV*(1+i)^n
> >
> > where FV is future value, PV is present value, i is the periodic 
> > interest rate, and n is the number of periods.
> >
> > Dave
> >
> >
> >
> > On 11/27/2013 15:10, Cliff Scott wrote:
> > > I haven't done much spread sheet formula work so please don't mind a 
> > > couple
> > > of simple questions.
> > >
> > > I would like to do two things:
> > >
> > > 1. Calculate compound interest on an amount given the rate and number of
> > > interest periods. Looking at the list of functions there are lots of 
> > > ones
> > > that come close to that, but I wasn't able to find one that would do 
> > > exact
> > > that.
> > >
> > > 2. How do I write a conditional loop in Calc? If I want to calculate a
> > > formula for 10 iterations how would I do that? For instance
> > > Value=Value*N+Value. That would give me the compound interest also. I 
> > > can do
> > > it with a bunch of cells strung out each one representing one interest
> > > period, but for any length of time it becomes unwieldy.
> > >
> > > Thank you very much for any help.
> > >
> > > Cliff

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