The immense power of compound interest is such that adding a small amount of extra principal to each of your mortgage payments will result in thousands (or tens of thousands) in interest savings over the life of your loan. Using only high-school mathematics, Tim Hill provides clear and readable lessons that you can use to understand and pay down your mortgage by using Microsoft Excel (or any spreadsheet software). This entirely practical guide teaches you how to use worksheet functions, array formulas, data tables, and other spreadsheet features to manage your business and personal finances. You'll also learn the auxiliary skills needed to create and maintain financial spreadsheets: rounding numbers, data and time arithmetic, summing and counting values, and more. Plenty of examples show you how to use these tools for any type of debt or savings: mortgages, student loans, leases, credit-card debt, car payments, medical expenses, annuities, and retirement funds. You can download the sample workbooks to follow along with the author's examples and calculations. - Covers all versions of Excel. - Learn about basic financial concepts, including cash flows, timing issues, and the time value of money. - Compute the payments needed to pay off a loan or to meet an investment target. - Separate the interest and principal portions of your mortgage or loan payments for tax purposes. - Convert between the commonly used methods of quoting interest rates. - Create amortization schedules to see how your debts change over time. - Build summary tables to compare loans that have different interest rates, loan amounts, or payment terms. - Derive the true interest rate of your investments or loans, including "interest-free" loans. - See how much time it will take to pay off a loan, meet an investment target, or retire. - Determine how much to invest now to meet a future goal. - Calculate how money will accumulate in your retirement or savings accounts. Contents Part I - Loans & Mortgages 1. Getting Started with Loans & Mortgages 2. Present Value (PV) 3. Future Value (FV) 4. Payments (PMT) 5. Interest Rates (RATE) 6. Periods (NPER) 7. Interest and Principal Components 8. Converting Interest Rates 9. Loan Amortization Schedules 10. Summarizing Loan Options Part II - Dates & Times 11. Getting Started with Dates & Times 12. Date & Time Basics 13. Date & Time Functions 14. Date Tricks 15. Time Tricks Part III - Sums & Counts 16. Getting Started with Sums & Counts 17. Counting Basics 18. Counting Tricks 19. Frequency Distributions 20. Summing Basics 21. Summing Tricks

This entirely practical guide teaches you the most important aspects of loans, interest rates, credit, savings, and investments. Using high-school mathematics, Tim Hill provides clear and readable lessons that you can use to understand, avoid, negotiate, renegotiate, and pay down your debts. The result: a strong grasp of basic financial concepts, including cash flows, timing issues, the time value of money, and compound interest. - Stresses fundamentals and hard numbers, without the purposeless feel-good filler of conventional personal-finance books. - Conveys insight and removes doubt as to how your debts and savings will change over time. - Encourages the precise logical thinking needed to deal shrewdly and confidently with creditors and banks. - Explains the monstrous power of compound interest, the root cause of the pain of excessive debt. - Teaches general principles that can be applied to a wide variety of financial products, including mortgages, student loans, credit-card debt, leases, car payments, medical expenses, annuities, retirement funds, and stock purchases. - Includes examples that extend your knowledge rather than merely reinforce it, while avoiding empty and excessive routine computations. - Treats financial mathematics as a logically coherent discipline, not as a disjointed collection of techniques. - Reviews the necessary mathematics. - For advanced readers, the tools of elementary calculus are used to prove results, solve equations, and derive optimal values. Contents Introduction 1. Interest 2. Present Value 3. Annual Percentage Rate 4. Mortgages 5. Annuities 6. Stocks 7. Personal Savings 8. Student Loans 9. Kelly Strategy 10. Mathematics Review

This no-nonsense guide provides students and self-learners with a clear and readable study of trigonometry's most important ideas. Tim Hill's distraction-free approach combines decades of tutoring experience with the proven methods of his Russian math teachers. The result: learn in a few days what conventional schools stretch into months. - Teaches general principles that can be applied to a wide variety of problems. - Avoids the mindless and excessive routine computations that characterize conventional textbooks. - Treats trigonometry as a logically coherent discipline, not as a disjointed collection of techniques. - Restores proofs to their proper place to remove doubt, convey insight, and encourage precise logical thinking. - Omits digressions, excessive formalities, and repetitive exercises. - Covers all the trigonometry needed to take a calculus course. - Includes problems (with all solutions) that extend your knowledge rather than merely reinforce it. Contents 1. A Few Basics 2. Radian Measure 3. The Trig Functions 4. Trig Values for Special Angles 5. Graphs of Trig Functions 6. The Major Formulas 7. Inverse Trig Functions 8. The Law of Cosines (and Sines) 9. Solutions 10. Trig Cheat Sheet

This no-nonsense guide provides students and self-learners with a clear and readable study of algebra's most important ideas. Tim Hill's distraction-free approach combines decades of tutoring experience with the proven methods of his Russian math teachers. The result: learn in a few weeks what conventional schools stretch into months. - Teaches general principles that can be applied to a wide variety of problems. - Avoids the mindless and excessive routine computations that characterize conventional textbooks. - Treats algebra as a logically coherent discipline, not as a disjointed collection of techniques. - Restores proofs to their proper place to remove doubt, convey insight, and encourage precise logical thinking. - Omits digressions, excessive formalities, and repetitive exercises. - Covers all the algebra needed to take a calculus course. - Includes problems (with all solutions) that extend your knowledge rather than merely reinforce it. Contents 1. A Few Basics 2. Exponents 3. Polynomials 4. Factoring 5. Linear & Quadratic Equations 6. Inequalities & Absolute Values 7. Coordinates in a Plane 8. Functions & Graphs 9. Straight Lines 10. Circles 11. Parabolas 12. Types of Functions 13. Logarithms 14. Dividing Polynomials 15. Systems of Linear Equations 16. Geometric Progressions & Series 17. Arithmetic Progressions 18. Permutation & Combinations 19. The Binomial Theorem 20. Mathematical Induction 21. Solutions

Can a set be a member of itself? How do we know that the square root of 2 is irrational? Can a graph really represent a function accurately? Is a function just a rule? Does canceling (crossing out) terms mask important algebraic properties? This entirely practical book is for the student who wants a complete command of the prerequisite material on the first day of calculus class. Success in calculus depends on having a reasonable command of all that went before, yet most precalculus students are taught only simple tools and techniques, leaving them with a superficial understanding of problem-solving. Tim Hill explains why things are true and encourages students to go beyond merely memorizing ways of solving a few problems to pass exams. - Teaches general principles that can be applied to a wide variety of problems. - Avoids the mindless and excessive routine computations that characterize conventional textbooks. - Treats the subject as a logically coherent discipline, not as a disjointed collection of techniques. - Restores proofs to their proper place to remove doubt, convey insight, and encourage precise logical thinking. - Omits digressions, excessive formalities, and repetitive exercises. - Provides exceptional preparation for a calculus course.- Includes problems (with all solutions) that extend your knowledge rather than merely reinforce it. Contents 1. Sets 2. The Real Number System 3. Functions 4. Graphs 5. Solutions

This no-nonsense guide provides students and self-learners with a clear and readable study of the most important ideas of precalculus mathematics. Tim Hill's distraction-free approach combines decades of tutoring experience with the proven methods of his Russian math teachers. The result: learn in a few weeks what conventional schools stretch into months. - Teaches general principles that can be applied to a wide variety of problems. - Avoids the mindless and excessive routine computations that characterize conventional textbooks. - Treats the subject as a logically coherent discipline, not as a disjointed collection of techniques. - Restores proofs to their proper place to remove doubt, convey insight, and encourage precise logical thinking. - Omits digressions, excessive formalities, and repetitive exercises. - Provides exceptional preparation for a calculus course. - Includes problems (with all solutions) that extend your knowledge rather than merely reinforce it. Contents 1. The Real Line and Coordinate Plane 2. Straight Lines 3. Circles and Parabolas 4. Functions 5. Graphs 6. Trigonometry 7. Solutions

In simple and easy-to-understand language, author Rich Brott explains that financially, you must "live below your means". If you have been living above your means, you are already in serious debt with no hope of becoming debt free unless you quickly change your financial habits. If you have been living within your means, you may be debt free, but you have little or no savings or investments to carry you through your retirement. What you must begin to do is live below your means. The book will show you how to do just that. Once you've accomplished the basics of getting out of debt, staying out of debt and continuing to live below your means, then the next big hurtle is to set financial goals that will keep you invested in simple, well-diversified, conservative investment vehicles. The only way to reach a financial goal is to work at it. The most important step in reaching that goal is to develop a plan to achieve it. That's why it is so important to plan ahead for your retirement and your financial future. While the idea of planning ahead and building a solid financial strategy for success can sometimes be intimidating and overwhelming, once you get started, it will become easier. With a little planning and a better understanding of what your investment options are, you too can successfully manage your money and pursue your financial goals.