Ultimate Financial Calculator

174 thoughts on “ultimate-financial-calculator”

1. Buying an RV and the dealer is trying to show me the savings by financing through them. His offer is:

   $25,131 loan @ 6.74% 180 months. ($222/month).

   My credit union offers 3% for 72 months if I put a little extra down $24,131 loan @ 3% 72 months ($366/month)

   He is trying to tell me that if I finance through them and yet make a payment of $366/month that I would be paying through my lender anyway ($222 + $144 additional each month), the loan will actually be paid off faster (69 payments) and will be less expensive than my credit union. He says this is because it is a simple interest loan and interest is compounded daily.

   Using your calculator I am not finding this to be true. Using his method of extra payments, I am coming up with 88 payments and much more interest than if I went with my credit union. Either I am using the calculator incorrectly or this guy is trying to just get more $ out of me. Any thoughts? I am not “fluent” with financial numbers/terminology but I just cannot help but feel that I am being “had”. Any info you could provide would be appreciated. Thank you!

   Reply

   • Your instincts are good. Think of it this way, When shopping for a loan, you are making a purchase. What are you buying? A loan. The cost of the loan is the interest due. If you are coming up with paying more interest to the dealer’s lender, then you certainly wouldn’t want to do that.

     If you are not sure that you used the calculator correctly, then you’ll need to ask questions relating to your concerns.

     Did you see the tutorials listed on this page about how you can enter extra payments?

     Reply

     • I did see the tutorials and I believe did it correctly. Basically he sent me a screen shot of a TVM calculator he used that showed:

       Present Value $-25131
       Payment $366
       Annual Rate 6.74%
       Periods 69.11 months
       Compounding Daily
       Mode Beginning

       I do not see how he comes up with 69 months.

       When I input that same info on this calculator I come up with 87 months with total interest of $6,871. I guess my only concern was the whole “compounding daily” thing. Is that the same at your “initial compounding”? That is where I selected “Daily”

       Getting the 3% loan for 72 months at $366/month through my bank I am only paying $2300 in interest. So I believe thats the way I will go.

       Sorry for the confusion – this is all new to me and a little foreign. Thank you for your assistance.

       Reply

       • A couple of things…

         "Beginning Mode" normally means that the 1st payment is due on the same date that the loan originates, meaning on the day the money is borrowed. If that’s the case, using this calculator, the total interest would be $6,637. My guess is you had the 1st payment due one month after the loan date.

         More importantly, I think I know what the dealer is doing. If you take the loan amount, $25,131 and divide by $366, you’ll get 68.66. Call that 69 months. The problem is, that’s not the way to solve for term because it’s not allowing for the interest to accrue!

         Hopefully they are just ignorant about the calculation and not being outright dishonest.

         Reply

       • Oh, and about the "Initial Compounding", I use that phrase to indicate to users that it is possible to change the compounding later in the cash flow stream. (See "Rate Change") In your case, set it to daily and I assume that does not change.

         Reply

         • Thank you for all of your help. I am feeling better about my decision now.

2. What calculator would you recommend to calculate $200,000 as initial investment on 8-7-15, with a withdrawal on 8-22-16 of $70,000 and ending balance of $109,645 on March 27, 2018?

   Reply

   • What’s the question you want to be answered? What you gave me seems to be the inputs, or am I missing something?

     Reply

   • Thanks for your follow-up on the other web page.

     If you want to calculate a rate-of-return for this cash flow using this calculator, follow these steps:

     1. Click on "Settings" and then "Analytics". Check "Include internal rate of return (IRR) on schedule" option.
     2. Set "Initial Interest Rate" to "0".
     3. Set "Schedule Type" "Savings"
     4. Enter 3 rows:
        1. Set Series to "Deposit" Date to 08/07/2015 and Amount to 200,000.
        2. Set Series to "Withdrawal" Date to 08/22/2016 and Amount to 70,000
        3. Set Series to "Withdrawal" Date to 03/27/2018 and Amount to 109,645
     5. Click on the "Schedule" button. Scroll down the schedule to the footer are and check "Internal Rate of Return (IRR):"

     There is no need to click on the "Calc" button. The "Schedule" button also calculates.

     Reply

3. Hi, thanks for this great site! I’ve learned so much, but I still don’t know which calculator to use to figure out whether the people buying a property from my dad under a real-estate contract are not paying him what he is owed or if the interest being charged is excessive. The escrow company is no help, they wouldn’t provide a payment or amortization schedule, but they did give me the entire payment history including date paid, interest paid, principal paid and new principal balance and new total balance. I tried using your loan payment calculator to figure out how much has really been paid and how much future payments should be. The buyer’s payment history has been very variable (to be nice about it) with late payments and occasional extra payments which have all gone toward interest. At one point there was a year of missed payments followed by a $5000 “make-up” payment. Since they “gave” their son the property, he has been making regular monthly payments, but he feels as I do that my dad might be owed some more money, but we don’t know how much and he says he is willing to make extra payments. My dad will probably agree to forgive money owed him if the son doesn’t pay money owed by his parents, but we still want to know. BTW they are friends of my dad and he really doesn’t want to ruin the relationship over a few grand and it is against our religion to sue people. Anyway, do you have a calculator that can produce a payment or amortization table from historical payment information, maybe a reverse engineering in which one plugs in date of payment, interest paid, principal paid and balance? I tried calculating this with the UFC as a loan repayment problem, but values don’t match the amounts paid and balance from Escrow company’s info. If there is a calculator please help me figure out how to use it: here are the loan terms: 70K at 5% p/a with daily interest and a $500 dollar monthly payment and “if not sooner paid pursuant to this contract, the entire balance due Seller shall be due and payable 30 yrs from effective date of the contract.

   Reply

   • Thanks, Beverly, I’m happy to hear you’ve learned a lot.

     If you want to find the exact balance of a loan, this calculator is the one to use. You can enter individual payments or a series of payments on the exact date made. Please scroll down the page and read tutorial #1 to get an overview of the calculator and then see tutorial #25 for a specific example of calculating the balance.

     I am a bit confused with your question, however. Are you saying there is escrow amount paid as well? If so, you’ll want to ignore them for the purposes of calculating the balance on a loan.

     Escrow payments should be tracked separately from the loan. This calculator has no provision for entering escrow payments. You could keep the payments and disbursements in a spreadsheet.

     Reply

4. Hi Karl,
   I’m trying to use your UFC to reconcile a home mortgage with a redraw facility.

   The initial funding amount was settled mid-month(17-Nov), but the interest calculation is done at end of month (31-Nov), with the first repayment due one month after initial settlement (15-Dec).

   Initial funding amount was $345,500
   Interest rate is 3.79%
   Bank charged interest of $502.25 on 30-Nov
   Loan repayment of $1607.36 made on 15-Dec (this is the required periodic payment monthly)
   Bank charged interest of $1110.91 on 31-Dec

   Closing balance on 31-Dec was $345,505.80

   How do I handle this situation with your calculator to ensure bank reconciliation?
   Thank you,
   Bronwyn

   Reply

   • Hi Bronwyn, it looks to me as if you’ll be glad you double checked. I think the interest amount is too high.

     I do have a couple of questions though, so I might be wrong. On Nov. 30th, the bank is just posting the accrued interest charge I assume. That is, you are not making an interest-only payment. If that’s the case, you set up the calculation this way:

     Row 1. Date: Nov 17. Loan amount.
     Row 2. Date: Nov 30. Payment amount 0.00. (Anytime you indicate a 0.00 payment, the interest is calculated and added to the balance.)
     Row 3. Date: Dec 15. Payment amount: $1,607.36.  (I wasn't sure if you wanted to confirm this amount or if you are accepting it as the payment. To confirm the amount, that is, that it is the "normal" payment amount, you would need to enter the number of monthly payments and set the amount to "Unknown".)
     Row 4. Date: Dec. 31 Payment amount: 0.00
     

     Don’t forget to enter the required values in the top part of the calculator.

     Does that at least get you started?

     Reply

     • Thank you so much Karl!
       Your assumptions were correct and I was accepting the payment amount as this is the contracted value.
       When I added in subsequent payments for January and February, and then the interest accruals, the balances shown (between the UFC and my bank statement) are within a few dollars, so I think it’s probably just a timing issue. I’m ok with that.
       I’ll definitely be using your UFC going forward to keep my bank honest! I’ve bookmarked your page. I wish I had this for the last 20 years of home loans!
       Thanks again for your help.
       Bronwyn

       Reply

       • You’re welcome.

         Interesting though that you get only a couple dollars difference. I had about $30. Perhaps I had a typo.

         Since you get only a few dollars difference, if you’re interested, you can probably back into the same number the bank gets by changing either the "Initial Compounding" or, under the "Settings" menu, the number of days per year i.e. 360, 364 or 365.

         Reply

5. Hello, GREAT SITE! Many, many thanks!

   Quick question – we carried back a loan of our business to our buyer, and as we approach the date upon which he begins making payments (was initially deferred for 2 years), he’d like to know the payoff amount on a particular date. The loan was created with monthly compounding, however how would we get to an exact amount, say 10 days into the next (monthly) term, such as last payment date + 10 days?

   thanks again

   Reply

   • You’re very welcome. And thanks for the compliment.

     This calculator is the correct one to use. Have you seen the links to the tutorials on this page? #25 deals specifically with loan payoffs.

     For your particular case, the last row will be for an "Unknown" payment amount on the date that the borrower wants to know the balance. Calculate that unknown, and that would be the balance of the loan due.

     Hope this is clear. If not, just ask for more detail.

     Reply

6. I think the spreadsheet is great once you figure out which one works best for your needs; however, I’m not sure what happened, but I loaded info and then thought I’d better save it. I purchased and now it’s in a format that my computer says is dangerous. I wanted to mAke some changes but can’t find the original spreadsheet. I would like my money back if this cannot be resolved. So frustrated.

   Reply

   • Hi Cheryle, thank you for your C-Value! purchase. We should be able to gets things sorted out quickly.

     First, the inputs are saved in an XML file. That’s just a text file. You could use notepad to open it and view it’s contents.

     As to how to save and then reload the file you’ve saved, that process works just like saving a word processing file.

     The easiest thing at this point, to find the file you’ve saved, is to go to the file menu and do a "Save As…". This will open the file save window and you should be able to see the folder when the files are being saved. (You can subsequently change to any folder you desire.)

     Please let me know if this does or doesn’t help.

     Reply