Financial Calculators App Review

Financial Calculators App Review

As a person who enjoys number crunching I wanted an app for calculating Mortgage and Auto loan payments, as well as compound interest, and a basic calculator.  But I did not want to download multiple different apps.  Fortunately, I found FNCalculators', "Financial Calculators" app.  Like many apps, FNC's app is free to download and use as long as you don't mind ads across the bottom of the screen. But unlike so many other apps, this one has more than a dozen useful calculation apps.

For me, it really does not get any more easy than this.  Financial Calculators is a collection of 18 calculators that are useful in most financial transactions.  The following is a list of all the calculators that are included.

• TVM Calculator (Time Value of Money)
• Currency Converter
• Loan Calculator
• Compound Interest Calculator
• Credit Card Payoff Calculator
• Retirement / 401k Calculator
• Tip Calculator
• Calculator 
• APR Calculator (Annual Percentage Rate)
• ROI Calculator (Return On Investment)
• Auto Loan Calculator
• Credit Card Minimum Payment
• Discount and Tax Calculator
• IRR NPV Calculator (Internal Rate of Return / Net Present Value)
• Percentage Calculator
• Bond Calculator
• Stock Calculator
• Misc (including Unit Conversion and Dates)

While I will not detail every calculator, I will at least cover the one I use most often.  

The Loan Calculator

The Loan Calculator has four tabs, Loan, Comparison, Refinance, and Term.  The Loan tab requests values for "loan amount" , "interest rate (per year), "loan term" (years and / or months), and "additional payments per month" (optional).  All output values are displayed near the bottom.  But there is the extra feature of "Amortization", which allows you to see the full payment scheme. 

An example for the use of this tab would be if I wanted to know what each of my payments would be over the life of my mortgage or auto loan.  The amortization will give the principle and interest paid per month. Mostly I like to see where the switch will come when I am paying more principle than interest.  Or I like to see how much more quickly I would pay off the loan with added monthly payments. 

If you choose Refinance tab, the screen will change to include the "interest rate" (per year) and "loan term" (years and / or months) of the New Mortgage as well as all the details of the old like in the Loan tab. When I was preparing to refinance my home and car, I looked at these values to figure out how I could make the payments lower.  For the house I was trying to pull money out to fix it up.  For the car I just wanted a lower payment. 

For the Term tab you will get "loan amount", "annual interest" (%), "min monthly payment", "max monthly payment", and "payment increment".  The purpose of this tab is to give you an idea of how long the term of the loan will be if you provide the inputs.  As an example, if you wanted to purchase a Tesla Model S with all the bells and whistles, you might pay $118k.  At an interest rate of 2.0% with a minimum payment of $1.5k and a maximum payment of $2.5k per month, with an increment of $250, you would see a range of 40 to 68 months.

Look and Feel

Each calculator is quite simple and in general the app provides a great deal of white space and large colorful buttons to accommodate the user.  FNC uses a different colorful icon to represent each calculator.  

There are ads in my version of the app (the free version), but they're just a small banner across the bottom of the screen. The pro edition is $5 if you don't want to see any ads. It should also be noted that the primary icon that represents the app has a green background with the pro version, rather than blue like the free version.

Most of the time I feel that there is no other calculation app that I'd rather use, because this one doesn't over-do the colors or try to add backgrounds that would only detract from the purpose.  

Settings

Within the settings menu it is possible to edit the list of calculators that are presented.  If you, like me, only use 4 or 5 of all the calculators, you may want to scale back the list.  I don't usually do this if for nothing more than because I want to see all the possibilities.  If you prefer a white or black background, this can be changed in the settings. But one of my favorite features I did not discover until a few days before writing this review; the ability to show all the calculators as a grid, rather than a list.  I have to admit that this was a great help to be able to see them all, rather than being required to scroll down for the rest. 

If you need at least one calculator for financial transactions I recommend FNCalculator's "Financial Calculators" app.  If you need multiple calculators, I don't know of a better app for 18 calculators in one, than this one.

Check out FNC's app on the three biggest platforms