ECON v1.

June 1998

Blake T. Garretson
bgarrets@eng.utoledo.edu
http://eng.utoledo.edu/~bgarrets

Files in this zip file:

----------------------ECON.TXT: This file
ECON.LIB: The library file (lib#: 1002)

Program Notes:
-------------You can change the library number if you want with no
adverse effects. This library is a straight forward
program using only UserRPL. (Well, almost. The library
auto-install routine is SysRPL.) I don't plan on
rewriting this in SysRPL because the math is so simple
that the speed increase wouldn't be noticed. I don't
think a size decrease would be a huge incentive to
rewrite it either because it is only a little over 1K.
Speaking of which...

BYTES should yield

# 9463d
1256.5

What ECON does:

--------------ECON basically replaces the use of tables and/or

calculations to find the time value of money. I

wrote this a year ago when I was in an engineering
economy class. I was sick of looking in the tables
in the back of the book every few minutes to find
a number so I wrote this program which does the same
thing. The library contains 11 functions in the
form X->Y. (That's supposed to be an arrow between
the X and Y.) This is a common notation which
means "Find X given Y". There is also a function
called INSTR which reminds the user of the correct
form of input.

In ECON, the abbreviations are:

F: Future Value
P: Present Value
A: Annuity Value
G: Graduated payment
A1: First payment (used in graduated payments)

The arguments that must be entered on the stack are

the interest rate, I, and the number of periods, N.
(These are the only arguments accepted for the first
softmenu of functions. The second set also accept a
third argument, G, which has to do with graduated
payments.)

Examples:
--------Pretend you have $10,000 and you want to know how much
it will be worth in ten years. The money is in a savings
account at an interest rate of 3%. Therefore, you put
0.03 on the stack, and then 10. (In other words, Interest

Rate goes on Level 2 and the # of Periods goes on Level 1.)

The first function in the library is F->P which means
find the Future Value of money given the Present Value.
So now press F->P. You will get a result of 1.34391637934
which must be multiplied by the Present Value to get the
Future Value. 10000 X 1.34391637934 = 13439.1637
This means that in ten years you would have $13,439.16
if you put in $10,000 today.

The other functions work similarly. I'm not going to

fully explain each function because if you need these,
you probably are in an economy class where you have a
book with tables in the back. This program just duplicates
the tables' functions, but make it quicker to come up
with the numbers on a test.