Give money the P&I and let it calculate the interest. Yes, it may be off by
a few decimals of a percentage, but it's not your banks loan calculator. It
won't necessarily calculate it exactly as the bank does, and include things
like partial months at the beginning of the loan, etc.

At the end of the year, reconcile the loan account with the mortgage
statement, with the difference in principal going to the mortgage interest
category. If you're not too anal about it, it works fine.
--
Chris Cowles
Gainesville, FL


Matt Welch wrote:

- quote -

I used Money about 5 years back, and eventually bailed, because things
were just too hard to do. (And not just on Money, but on Quicken, too.)
Now that most financial institutions are on line, I've decided to give
things another try.

My first challenge has been getting my mortgage set up. I've gone
through the normal flow, and everything seems great, but the first sign
of trouble comes when I ask Money to calculate my P+I, given the life of
the loan and the interest rate. Money comes up with a number 2 cents
less than what my lender has arrived at. No problem, I just enter my
lender's number into the wizard. Things seem to work out well from
there, except that the principal Money comes up with is 3 cents low,
compared to my lender, and the interest is 3 cents high.

Now, I can correct this every month, but it's a bad first step when the
first challenge I face in my reentry into computerized asset management
results in the need for monthly manual intervention. Is there a way to
correct Money's assumptions about my P&I values?

Thanks for any help on this, the first of no doubt many questions.

I have removed my email addres from my news reader, so please reply to
the group.

Matt