understand your financial position
Enter your income, expenditure, debts and assets, then click "Calculate". Your SOA results can be formatted for printing or for posting on a discussion board to seek comment from others. The format for print option can also be used to share your SOA with advisors such as the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) or CCCS. Your SOA data can also be saved for future use.
The SOA Calculator helps you work out whether your income is sufficient to meet your expenditure. Simply enter details of all your monthly income and expenses, then press the Calculate button. Review any warning messages that appear below the button and make any amendments that these may prompt.
When you are happy with your results, you can format them for printing or posting on the Stoozing discussion boards (this site), The Motley Fool or Moneysavingexpert (MSE). Posting an SOA on a discussion board is a great way of getting comments on your monthly budget from others and fine-tuning your expenditure plans.
Although the term 'secured debt' may sound very reassuring, it isn't. Well, it is a reassuring term for the lender but certainly not for the borrower. When a debt is secured, it means that the lender and borrower have agreed that one of the borrower's assets is used as "security" for the loan. If the borrower does not pay back the loan, then the lender has the legal right to take the asset that has been used as security. The asset that is normally used as security is your home. For that reason, problems paying secured debts can have a very serious impact, because you could lose your home. In contrast an 'unsecured debt' is a free standing one that is not secured on your assets. That is why you should enter your mortgage and other secured loan repayments in the Expenses table. However, don't forget to include the loan amounts too in the Secured Debts table!
The calculator has 9 buttons you can use which are divided into the following 3 sections: "Main Functions", "Format Results for discussion boards" and "Load and Save Data". This describes what they all do.
Calculate is the main button that processes the form. It takes all the information that you type in, checks it, does the calculations and then displays the results at the bottom of the screen.
Reset Form sets all the input fields in the form back to blanks or zeroes. Please note that it does not clear any data that is stored on your computer using the "Save Data" button.
Format for Print opens up a new window with all your SOA details and results in a format suitable for printing. You can also copy and paste this information directly into an email or a word processing document.
Stoozing opens up a new window with all your SOA details and results in a format that you can copy and paste into our discussion forums on Stoozing.com.
MSE uses all the control tags required to copy and paste the information in to the discussion boards on the Moneysavingexpert website or any other discussion forum that uses the vBulletin format.
Save Data stores the information you have entered on your computer so that you can retrieve it later. Note that the data is stored for 200 days from the date you last saved it.
Load Data looks for data that you have previously stored (using Save Data), loads it into the calculator and re-calculates the results.
Erase Data deletes any saved SOA data that is on your computer (i.e. deletes the cookies). Once you have done this, you will not be able to reload the data: you will have to type it all in again. Note that this does not clear the data in the screen. To clear the data on the screen, use the Reset Form button.
Using an online calculator makes it a lot easier for you to create and amend your Statement of Affairs. However, it does require you to type in quite a lot of information, some of which you may not have at hand when you start. For this reason, our SOA Calculator allows you to save your data for later use. This means that you can make a start right now, then come back to complete it in a few days time.
Your privacy is very important to us, so please read this paragraph before deciding whether or not to use the optional Save Data function. This is particularly important because you will be entering sensitive financial information that you may not want others to see. First of all, rest assured that stoozing never stores or processes any information that you enter on its servers. In fact no data is stored anywhere at all unless you choose to use the optional Save Data function. When you click on the "Save Data" button, it stores all the information that you have entered as 'cookies' on your computer. If you share your computer with other users, then you need to be aware that others may be able to see your saved information. The SOA Calculator stores its cookies for 200 days and then they get deleted unless you have re-saved your data in that time. If this concerns you then you have two choices. Either don't use the Save Data function at all or make sure that you use the Erase Data button when you finish using the calculator.
