I have Q2009 premier I am setting up a student loan for my son. I know how to set up a regular loan but it's the accrued interest I don't know how to handle. Here are the details...
The loan is disbursed to the college in Sept. Interest begins to accrue.
The next semester is disbursed in Jan. More interest accrues.
They begin billing and deducting the actual payments in April.
So from April to July...I've been paying ONLY the interest.
However, the Aug payment will begin impacting the principle as well.
How can I handle only paying the interest from April to mid-Aug and then the usual payments afterwards?
I set up the loan as if I was beginning to pay in April so all these months Quicken thinks I am paying both interest and principle.
I can tell you how I handle loans, loan payments, and interest which would work for your situation, but my style isn't for everyone.
When I make a loan payment I do not use the split to capture the separation of principal and interest. I send the entire payment to the loan account. I then enter another transaction for the interest payment. I started doing this because I wanted to see everything in the account. It made it easier to compare my Quicken loan account to what my lender was sending me. It's a style that you may not prefer, but it'll work for your situation. You send in the payment, and then you add a second transaction for the full interest amount. The principal of the loan account never changes.
That's how I do it, and is what I had intended to describe. I don't see this as complicated at all. It's only two transactions each month, one of which you have to do just to make the payment. The only way I can envision it being simpler is to not use Quicken at all.
I agree with your final point. There isn't a correct answer and all we can do is offer suggestions and let the OP decide what's best for their situation.
"Scott Lindner" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net:
account,
I appreciate all this advice. It certainly is a big pain to track this either way. Just to clarify, this student loan is a fixed rate loan and here are the details...
They made two disbursements to the university along with their current balances as of the July 2009 payment:
Now I assume that the term of the loan started on April 2009 and will be finished on April 2019. Do you think that is correct?
Also, I believe that since my outstanding interest is $49.82, that my August payment will finally be split between principle and interest. The question is...how much? I should know in a couple of days as the loan website hasn't updated yet for my 8/14/09 payment.
So....given all this convoluted information...which of the methods that you all so graciously offered would be best? Or perhaps you have new ideas given all the details now.
Again, I thank you in advance for your kind advice.
Ok...here is what I decided to do. I decided to keep the student loan as a Quicken loan. I went back and adjusted all of the automated payments for 4/09 to 8/09. In other words, for April through July, I set the interest to the full amount of $85.53 and the principle to zero. That accounts for the fact that I only paid interest for those 4 months so the loan balance stayed the same. Then for my August payment, I adjusted the automated split to reflect what the statement said I paid (which was $68.81 for the interest and $16.82 to reduce the loan balance.)
I do believe that this will work now although I will have to always change the true split of the automated loan split in order to really reflect what the balance of the loan is.
Does anyone have any comments about this plan? I think it's workable even though it's a pain in the butt as I do not know the true split until several days after the payment is made so I'll always have to remember to go back and fix it.
Once again, I want to thank you all for your advice. It was extremely helpful and I doubt I could have gotten this advice anywhere else on the net.
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