
^C^IParameter Screen

The Parameter Screen is the first of the two major "action
screens" of IRA Investor.  Here, you set up the basic information
needed for your IRA.  Use the mouse, arrows or ENTER to move
between the different fields, and type in new values as
appropriate.

There are six fields which IRA Investor needs you to fill in
before you can get on with the program:

   Your birthdate:   Used to calculate IRA contribution and
                     deduction limits.

   Starting Date :   For our purposes, the year you set up your
                     hypothetical IRA.

   Income :          For IRA's we use what is called "Modified
                     Adjusted Gross Income.  Your total wages and
                     tips (from your W-2 form) plus other taxable
                     income.  Do not include IRA deductions.

   Retirement Plan : Whether you are covered by a "qualifying"
                     retirement plan.  Basically, if you or your
                     spouse have a retirement plan or 401K plan,
                     you are covered.  This is also used to
                     calculate the deductible portions of your
                     contributions.

   Filing Status :   Your filing status for tax purposes.  You
                     can file as Single, Married filing jointly,
                     Married filing separately, or as Head of
                     Household.

   Expected APR :    The interest rate you would expect to earn
                     (on average) on money invested in your IRA.

Your income, filing status, and retirement plan coverage may
be changed (from the Analysis Screen) for each year of
your IRA.  But for now, what you enter will be copied down to
every year by default.  You must enter the interest rate,
starting year, and your birthdate here.  For Filing Status and
Retirement Plan, you may change values by pressing SPACE to move
through the possible values or by pressing the beginning letter
of the value you want.  In the case of Filing Status you may also
press F8 for a pick list.

When you're done entering the parameters for your IRA, just press
F10 to go to the schedule screen described below.

Other applicable keys from the Parameter Screen are F1 to bring
up this help screen, F2 to toggle between sound and silent mode,
F4 to load a previously-saved IRA Analysis (see the documentation
on the Analysis Screen to find out how to save one), F9 to show
the "About" text file you saw on first running this program, and
ESC to exit.

^P

^C^IAnalysis Screen

The main action of IRA Investor is in this screen.

You will see the first screenful of the IRA schedule.
For each year in the life of the IRA, you see your
compensation (Income), filing status (Status) and whether you are
covered by by a retirement plan (Plan?).
Also displayed are: your contribution for each year, the amount
of any contribution which you can deduct, and the balance in the
account at the end of the year.  For the sake of simplicity, IRA
Investor assumes that all contributions (Payments) are made at
the beginning of each year, and the Balance is calculated at the
end of the year.

You can scroll and page through the schedule with the up and down
arrows and the PgUp and PgDn keys, or click the mouse to move
around.  You may also use TAB and SHIFT-TAB to move between the
columns you can edit.  Home brings you straight to the top of the
schedule, and End takes you to the bottom of it.  F2 toggles
between sound and silence.  F3 lets you save this IRA Analysis
for later reference, and F4 lets you retrieve a previously-saved
IRA.  F5 prints out the whole schedule (be sure to get your
printer ready, and place it at the top of a page, since the
printout is formatted with page breaks), and F10 displays a brief
summary screen giving information on the IRA (which you can also
print out).

Now we get to the heart of IRA Investor, the ability to see
the effect of "deferred compounding".  Edit the schedule to
create the IRA investment scenario you would like to test.  For
example, go down about a third of the way in the Income column
and give yourself a raise.  Now move over to the filing status
column and switch it to "Joint".  Now use the repeat function(F7)
to copy these lines down to the end of the schedule.  Move over
to the Contributions column and set up any payments that you
like, then move to the end of the schedule and press F10 to see a
summary.  The summary assumes that you retired at whatever year
you had highlighted when you pressed F10.  For the moment, we
will ignore the fact that you cannot make any withdrawals from
your IRA until you are 60 years old.  Whatever year you use, you
will see that the IRA earns a higher effective interest rate than
the same payments in a taxable investment would.  This is because
with a taxable investment, you have to pay tax on all the
interest you earn along the way.  And any money you send off to
the IRS is no longer in your account to make money for you!

If you want to add a fixed amount to a number, you can type
"+100" to add $100 to its prior value.  This will work in general
for any numeric input throughout this program; if you type a
number preceded by "+" or "-", the amount you type will be added
or subtracted from the prior value of the field.

Press F6 to restore a changed field to its "regular" value.

^P
To repeat a field press F7.  This will bring up a box in which
you can input the number of times to repeat the field at the
point of the cursor.  You can choose to repeat only the amount
from the current column, or all the fields on the current row.
You should first type in the amount you want to repeat, then
press F7 while the cursor is on the field you just changed.

To exit the Analysis Screen and return to the Parameter Screen,
press ESC.  Note that when you do this you will lose any changes
you have entered, unless you have pressed F3 to save it to a data
file.

The Save and Load features bring up screens showing you a list of
IRA data files you have already saved.  All files are saved using
a file extension of ".IRA", but this isn't shown on the screen.


^C^ICredits

^C^V
^CWritten by Cregg Hardwick
^CConcept by Al Vekovius

^CCopyright 1992 by Softdisk, Inc.
^CAll rights reserved.

^CPlease Don't Feed the Animals!
