Researching and writing Home Cents has led me to hundreds of interesting personal finance websites and blogs, many of which offer helpful calculators to measure some aspect of your financial situation. Whether it's figuring out the cheapest way to get a new car or how much you need to save for retirement, these calculators are ready with quick answers. Keep in mind that they are driven by standard formulas and rules of thumb, so your own situation may require more thought.
Here are some of my favourite calculator sites, but please feel free to comment and share some of your own.
Canada's Office of Consumer Affairs: The mandate of this department of Industry Canada is to protect consumers and their calculators are designed to help us make smarter spending decisions. You can use the calculators on this site to decide whether to lease or buy a vehicle and whether to rent or buy a home. The daily spending calculator helps you figure out where your dollars and cents are going.
Bankrate.com: This U.S. site primarily aggregates rate information but also has the broadest list of financial calculators I've seen. Bankrate.com boasts more than 250 calculators that allow you to compare mortgage, home equity and auto loan costs, perfect your budget, pay down debt, and plan for your retirement and investing goals. While several of the calculators are a little too geared to our American friends, I like that the calculators range from the common ( Should you refinance your mortgage?) to the obscure ( Will driving to a cheaper gas station save me money?)
CanEquity: This Canadian mortgage website has the best mortgage payment calculator I've come across. It gives a detailed breakdown of your mortgage and calculates a payment schedule over your full amortization. It also provides summaries of the balances, payments and interest over the life of the mortgage. While Canada's best mortgage interest rate has been entered as the starting point, you can customize it to track your payments to the penny.
Dinkytown.net: A site that licenses financial calculators for posting on other websites, Dinkytown.net lets the average user try out their java-enabled calculators for free. There is a section containing only Canadian-oriented tools and there are some handy ones. Find out how much you need to build an emergency fund or how much life insurance you need.
Bank and insurance company websites: Many of the country's major banks and insurance companies offer up a wide selection of financial calculators on their websites. I won't list them all here but it's worthwhile to check them out. One of my favourites is RBC which offers several car loan calculators along with easy-to-use worksheets and ways to plan your retirement. I also like Empire Life's calculators to help figure out how much income you can expect in retirement and how much you need to save.
Gail Vaz-Oxlade: I've mentioned personal finance guru Gail Vaz-Oxlade and her budgeting tools a number of times in this blog, but I'll do so again to point out two interactive worksheets on her site. Gail's Interactive Budget Worksheet and her Own Up to Your Debt Worksheet are easy ways to quickly tally how much you're spending and how long it will take to pay off your debt.
. Weigh in on whether you would stash some extra money into an RRSP, RESP or a TFSA.