LoanStar App Reviews

I was able to do several scenarios of a potential refinance of my home, using Numbers on my MacBook Pro. Essentially it enabled me to build a spreadsheet without a bunch of formatting, and for that im impressed. Its quick and easy, as well as versatile. Its certainly worth the LOW cost. DB Cooper, from below ground

This program is OK and does what it is supposed to do. There are many free spreadsheets on the internet which can do essentially the same thing. LoanStar has fields for date, loan $, payment, int rate, and months. So you can input Loan $, Int Rate and Months, and the Calc button next to Payment comes alive and you can click on that to see what the monthly payment is. Or you can input Loan $, Payment, and Months and the button next to Int Rate comes alive. You click on that to see what the interest rate is youre paying. Youd think that the final field would fill automatically without having to make the extra click. Overall it works fine.

You can construct this analysis in Excel, but why should you when, for $2, you can buy this little app that does it all for you automatically?! Input the loan parameters in the small green box you see above, click the "Excel" button and, presto, Excel launches and completes the worksheet within about 2-3 seconds. Perfect. You can still format any way you like in Excel. As a bonus you have the ability to input unscheduled principal payments to see what happens. As I said: You can design your own Excel worksheet to do this, but why should you when Lone$tar is so inexpensive and works so well!

I used to use Interest Vision on the PC to do exactly what this app does. The beauty of this app is that it is so fast and so simple to use - much easier than launching Excel or some web-based financial site. Just launch thee app, put in the numbers and click the button you want to solve for. Great for quick "what if" stuff like "How much would I save and how much faster would I pay off the mortagage if I paid $50/month more?"

The time value of money needs 5 variables; this calculator allows the use of 4, and misses the future value needed to calculate interest only or baloon notes. Without it, it doesnt help me much because most mortgages I work with need a baloon calculation. Ill revise this review if an update occurs which includes future value.

Of course, its a simple program; but it does exactly what it should ... delivers information about your liabilities and how you should best deal with them and how long it will take to do that. Theres only one thing Id like. The program works flawlessly except that it will not calculate a payment with a 0% interest rate. I realize that one could just whip out a calculator and figure out how much a credit card payment would be if you wanted to pay it off before interest began accumulating. However since the program works fine with ANY interest rate at all ... no matter how small (0.01%) ... why not just make it work with 0%. If it did that, it would be perfect for what it does.

i would have rated this app five stars if it had the option: pay extra per month. that way I know how much interest I will actually be paying if I pay extra on a monthy basis.

Ive been burned and downloaded stupid apps before and just sucked it up. However, with this one, their screen capture is totally misleading. The large interface it shows isnt this app; its an Excel file you have to link -- and the math doesnt work to boot. Ive used Philip Kapustas "Home Loan Diary" (later renamed "Early Mortgage Payoff") for more than a decade. Its awesome, totally worth it (the only Shareware Ive ever paid for after the trial period was up because I actually wanted to use it). Its accurate (which LoanStar is absolutely NOT). Unfortunately, its only available for PC. Been searching for something similar for my MacBook and Im striking out. The large, pretty interface isnt Loan Star. Its a "linked" Excel file. Cumbersome, no decent instructions, counter-intuitive interface and then this "linked" crap. I feel like their screen shot is intentionally misleading, because it conveniently crops out the header/title bar of the Excel page, so you cant tell its there and a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PROGRAM. Save your buck, and put it toward paying down a bill.

This applications does eactly what it says it will do and does it easily and quickly and for only 99 cents. Sure there are other calculations you might need or want, then spend the money and buy one--if you can find it. I saw a complaint that it displays the amortization schedule in Excel not within the App itself. To me, thats a good thing as most people who want to do these kind of calcualtions have Excel and this makes for flexibility and a lower price. Further, for those who dont have Excel, the App also provides a text and CSV format. I have seen far more expensive Apps that wont even produce a schedule or if they do, wont allow it to be printed. This is a BARGAIN that works!!!

This is one of the best programs i have ever used. Thank you

For somewanting to track a mortgage, do what if analysis (a change in period, interest or additional payments) I rate this app as tops for clairity and ease of use. It also allows to see the total mortgage impact of any of these changes in parameters. Finaly, the ability to the data sheet to Excel opens another great world of utility.