Investment return rate calculator

[Snowgirl]

Does anyone know of a good tool, preferably an Excel/OpenOffice spreadsheet that I could use to calculate my effective return rate on my investments? Something that could tell me last year I had X%, year before Y%, since beginning, ... The place that hold my investments tell me the last 12 months rate, but that's it. It would need to handle periodic and one-time contributions. And in typical saving advice fashion, free if possible! I would pay a small fee thought if needed, working in software myself, I know it "cost" something!

Without that, it's hard to see how much my money grows, because I constantly add to it. Could write something myself, but that'd be done in many months, and I'm sure someone on the web already did it for me!

[jIM_Ohio]

Search the forum for IRR, this was discussed around Jan 1st. There is more than one way.

The easiest way

(Beginning balance/ending balance)-1

If you had desposits

[(Beginning balance+deposits)/ending balance]-1

If you had several deposits over course of year, you could approximate it by

[(begin balance-.5*deposits)/(ending balance+.5*deposits)]-1