** Reply to message from A <[email protected]> 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 -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
