rpn-planner.jpgI’ve been doing a lot of financial planning over the last several years, for obvious reasons (retirement). It pays to “do the math,” to invoke a trite expression.

There are a number of on-line sorts of tools provided by your favorite financial institutions, but sometimes it is necessary to do some more personal budgeting and planning. That’s when the old fashioned calculator comes in handy.

It seems funny to call a calculator “old fashioned,” but, it’s true. After the first “Bomar Brain” calculators appeared in the early 1970s the technology skyrocketed. Everything “hot” quickly became “not.” The best part of it was the prices kept dropping even as the technology improved.

I got hooked on Hewlett-Packard “Reverse Polish Notation” calculators. I don’t have a dedicated calculator anymore, but I have a dead-ringer for an HP for my PDA called Math-U, from Creative Creek. On the desktop or laptop, I use “Excalibur,” a functional equivalent, although not a look-alike to the HP series.

OK - so what am I budgeting with all these fancy tools? Our guns and ammo habit, of course. Like how many rounds per month we can afford to keep in practice or how much can we set aside for the shiny new pistol, AR or who knows what else? I’ll keep cranking the numbers and get the job done.