Help me to be a responsible loan shark.

April 10, 2008 10:41 AM

I'm selling a piece of property to someone with a seller-financed loan -- so I make the money from the power of compound interest instead of a bank. We've got lawyers handling the paperwork for the transaction. However, I've never been a loan shark before. Suggestions for financial software to manage the loan so I can enter payment amounts and dates and such and keep the magic of compound interest accurately compounding?

I'm platform agnostic among OSX, WinXP, and various linuxes.

I prefer something that's actual software instead of a service that I have to keep paying money for (Quicken and your expiring ability to download activity, I'm looking at *you* right now).

I am okay with entering the payment and date data by hand, but I'd like to be able to export the records so I can share them with the buyers periodically. I find the idea of an excel spreadsheet kind of sketchy, mostly because I don't trust my own ability to correctly make the formulae.

posted by rmd1023 to Work & Money (6 answers total)

I have done similar things with Excel, and aside from your own lack of confidence I think it's the perfect vehicle to do the things you want done. I urge you to bite the bullet and get an Excel for Dummies book to brush up on the formulas, then maybe pop by your bank or credit union and ask a loan representative to check your math. This is precisely the sort of need Excel was created to fill.

In fact, you should probably talk to an accountant anyways before you get too far into this process to ensure you are complying with the applicable regulations and setting aside enough cash to pay off any tax burden you incur when it comes due. You can ask that person to check your math, too.
posted by BigLankyBastard at 10:56 AM on April 10, 2008

I like OS X's FinKit for simple financial calculations, but I've just now noticed FinFlow, another product from them, which looks more like what you're looking for.

Seconding talking to an accountant.
posted by infinitewindow at 11:27 AM on April 10, 2008

GnuCash has a compound interest calculator built in. It's multiplatform.
posted by Emanuel at 12:15 PM on April 10, 2008

I'd talk to an escrow company instead of an accountant.
posted by yohko at 2:50 PM on April 10, 2008

Best answer: Sent you mefimail. Excel spreadsheet is fine, backing it up is critical, recommend you enter the data, then protect most of the cells. You'll need to send them info every year during January stating the amount of interest they paid to you, and probably some other info. If you do escrow, you generally have to pay them interest on money held. IASNAA(I am so not an accountant.)
posted by theora55 at 3:09 PM on April 10, 2008

Response by poster: i've got the excel spreadsheet, and it looks spiffy. i'll take a look at gnucash and finflow/finkit for report generation, too, so i may be back to mark more answers as WICKED PISSAH.

thanks, folks!
posted by rmd1023 at 6:21 PM on April 13, 2008