Fun with PalmPilot and TVM

Accounting's not necessarily known for being a highly interesting subject, and after having taken two financial accounting and two finance classes in my undergrad years, I wasn't expecting to learn much from my MBA level course.

So imagine my surprise today when I learned not one, but two new things.
#1, if you invest $1 at 10% for 10 years, compounded annually, you'll get $2.594. You say, well so what? Yes, I agree. That's not exciting at all, but as you compound it more and more, the amount you get becomes closer and closer to 2.718. Were you to compound it continually, you would get $1*e^.10*10, or just "e". I thought that was neat.

#2, All the Time Value of Money Tables are inter-related. The formula for Future Value of an Investment is FV=PV*(1+r/n)^t*n. So the formula for Present Value of a future $1 is PV=1/FV.

With Future Value of an Annuity, you can add up the FV factors. The FVA factor for 8%, 5 years is one plus the sum of the 8% FV factors for years 1 through 4.
(1+1.080+1.166+1.260+1.360)=5.867

For the Present Value of an Annuity you divide the FVA factor by the FV factor (or multiply by the PV, since they're inverses).

I also figured out how to calculate loan amortization payments without a financial calculator. The formula is Pmt*FVA=Principal*FV. By entering the formulas into a spreadsheet on my PalmPilot, I've successfully given my humble PalmPilot TVM capabilities. Thumbs up.

What's the point of all this? Basically, that I now have a spreadsheet on my Palm that eliminates my need to bring a financial calculator to school. For those that are interested in the speadsheet, here you go: TVM.xls