Summary Sheet
This is the ultimate nerd table. We recommend you fill it out. It is very useful to summarize all of your calculations in one place. Being able to quickly review your goal information will allow you to make smarter decisions.
We entered a few examples in the summary sheet for you to follow. The summary sheet is broken into three sections: short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals. In the short-term section, we entered a goal of paying off credit card debt of $4,000 in two years. This example assumes you are paying 17.5% interest with no annual fee. Remember, to make calculations to pay down credit card debt you must use a calculator. In this example, we entered data for the first three columns and the last column. Those are the only places you need to enter information concerning debt repayment.
Under medium-term goals, we entered the goal of saving $50,000 for a house down payment. Assuming an inflation rate of 3% we then went to the 3% column, row 5, in Appendix 1. The number listed in the cell is 1.193. We call this an inflation factor. Multiplying $50,000 by 1.193 gives us $57.965. This is the amount of down payment money we will need in five years assuming an inflation rate of 3%.
We then assumed a return on our savings of 5%. Going to Appendix 2, column 5% and row 5, the number in the cell is 5.5256 — the discount factor. Dividing $57,965 by 5.5256 gives you $10,490. Dividing $10,490 by 12 equals a monthly payment of $874.
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