TVM CONSOLE
Step 1 · What you put in
What you invest today. Handed money instead — like a loan? Make it negative.
Optional — blank or 0 means none. 500 means $500 in, every time.
Step 2 · Set the return — and how long
Yearly rate. Savings run about 4; markets about 7.
How many years you let it ride. 2.5 works too.
Step 3 · The projection
Dial in where you stand today, then project where you land.
The one rule: money you put in is positive; money handed to you (a loan) is negative.
Balance over time appears here after a run.
Flip the question · Solve for something else
Where the balance lands when time's up.
Or · Load a ready-made mission
Each mission loads a real scenario into the dials above and runs it.
Under the hood · The math
PV·(1+i)ᴺ + PMT·(1+i·τ)·[((1+i)ᴺ−1)/i] + FV = 0
τ = 1 when payments land at the beginning of each period · 0 when they land at the end
One equation runs this whole console: what's on the table today, grown by interest, plus every payment along the way, grown by interest, plus whatever's left at the end — it all has to sum to zero. You type years and a yearly rate; the console quietly converts to months (years × 12) and a monthly rate (rate ÷ 12) before solving.