Really useful SOA calculator..

that is an excellent SOA calculator.

I hope you find the calculator useful. It was written with the Dealing with Debt discussion board on The Motley Fool website in mind, but thought I'd add in the MSE support too. When an individual creates their SOA for the first time, it can be a real challenge for them to work out what they spend their money on, so being prompted for the most common categories can be very useful. The calculator does some cross-checking e.g. if you enter petrol costs but don't add in car maintenance it will flag it up to you, and if you have a mortgage it will check that you include your house as an asset!

As immoral_angeluk has spotted, you can use it to format your SOA to be posted into discussion boards such as MSE, for others to comment on. You can also save your SOA information (on your PC, not on any server) so that you can come back to work on it another day or refine it in a few months time once you have cleared a few debts and have more spare cash.

All the best
Clariman

looks fab thank you. Ive bookmarked it to use later as I need to do a new SOA soon.

Hi jess444. I wrote the calculator and it has been tested by a number of users and with different browsers and I have not had any reports of it not working. So that probably means it is something specific to your setup or the steps you took.

The data gets stored in cookies, so you need to permit cookies in your browser. Most people do permit them and the likes of MSE will use them to remember your user name etc. That is worth checking.

Beyond that, then it may be the steps you took? Here are some notes that might help. First of all, the Save Data button does not give a confirmation message to say that it has saved the data away (perhaps it should, but that's for later). Similarl the Load Data button does not give confirmation that it has done anything but you should see your data displaying on the screen.

Second point to note is that the Calculator won't let you Save data unless you have pressed the Calculate button at least once. If you try to do so, it will pop up a warning message to tell you.

The Steps to Save Data are

1. Enter your data into the form
2. Press the calculate button to see the results calculated on screen
3. Press the Save Data button
That's it.

To Load Data, simply return to the calculator and press the Load Data button. All the information should be on the screen and the results calculated.

Let me know if that helps. If not, please let me know what browser and version you have and I'll see if I can reproduce the problem.

HTH
Clariman