What Your Financial Calculator Must Do

This is a follow-up to "20 Essentials for Achieving Financial Literacy."

Any serious finance student (or serious self-directed investor) must have a serious calculator. When it comes to finance and investing, you will need to do a heck of a lot more than just add, subtract, multiply and divide. So if you're serious about managing your investments like a pro, make sure you pick up a financial calculator that, at the very least, can perform the following five functions.

1. Present Value

Definition: Present value is the current value of a certain amount in the future, given an interest rate which is compounded with some rate of frequency. This is sometimes referred to as "discounted value." ...