Ultimate Financial Calculator™
Ultimate Financial Calculator™
Time-value-of-money calculations with regular or irregular cash flows. Solve for:
- Present Value (PV)
- Future Value (FV)
- Payment amount, rate or term
- Exact loan payoff amount
- 25 step-by-step tutorials
The Ultimate Financial Calculator (UFC) is the most sophisticated, most flexible calculator on financial-calculators.com and I think on the entire internet. It works extraordinarily well as both a time value of money calculator and as a loan or mortgage payoff calculator.
See the tutorials below for step-by-step instructions.
If you are someone who needs date accurate results with either regular or irregular cash flows (loans, payments, deposits, withdrawals, investments), this is the calculator you should study and use.
Questions?
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C-Value!™ CV1 or TValue™ TV5
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What is Time Value of Money?
Time Value of Money (TVM) is the concept that the value of money itself changes over time. Having a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. Solving for present value, future value, amount, interest rate and term are some standard time value of money (Wikipedia) calculations. The free UFC is capable of performing any of these calculations with regular or irregular amounts as of any date for investment, savings or loan cash flow.
Time value of money example
As a free time value of money calculator, UFC can calculate unknown amounts for complex and irregular cash flows. The below example answers the question, "How much do I need to invest for 48 quarterly periods to have a total future value that will then let me withdrawal $1,000 monthly for 180 months?"
To answer this question, set the calculator up as shown:
If you are someone who regularly needs to do TVM calculations, then it is worth your time to study the features this calculator offers. It can replace easily three-quarters of the calculators found on this site — and on other websites too!
Calculator's Features
Solve for any unknown
- Payment or loan amount
- Deposit or withdrawal
- Yields: APR, APY or IRR
- Balance as of a specific date
- Date a specific balance is reached *
- Present value (PV)
- Future value (FV)
- Balloon payment amount
- Payment required to reach a specific balloon
- Number of payments
- Interest rates - nominal or effective *
- Discounted values
- Remaining balance
- Deposit required
Any type of calculation method
- Normal amortization or investment
- Rule-of-78s
- Canadian methods
- US Rule — simple interest
- Supports 360, 364 and 365 day years
- Exact day or periodic interest calculations
Scheduled (but adjustable) Payment Frequencies
- Daily
- Weekly
- Bi-weekly
- Twice monthly (Half-month)
- Every 4 weeks
- Monthly
- Bi-monthly (every two months)
- Quarterly
- Every 4 months
- Semi-annual
- Annual
* Feature only available in C-Value! ™,
our cash flow calculator for Windows™
Flexible Reports & Schedules
- Amortization & investment schedules
- Schedules with details or totals only *
- Custom headers and labels *
- Change fonts, colors *
- Select a fiscal year end *
- Reg. Z APR disclosure report *
Handles any type of cash flow
- Normal
- Interest only
- Enter your own payment amount
- Negative amortization
- Skipped payments or deposits
- Fixed principal + interest
- Percent step amounts
- Dollar step amounts
- Balloon payments
- Extra payments — principal only
- Payments to interest
- Cash flow amounts set to any random date
Compounding Frequencies
- Exact Day / Simple
- Daily compounding
- Weekly
- Bi-weekly
- Twice Monthly (Half-month)
- Every 4 Weeks
- Monthly
- Bi-monthly (every two months)
- Quarterly
- Every 4 Months
- Semi-annual
- Annual
- Continuous
- Change the frequency of compounding during a cash flow
- No compounding option when rate changes
Using UFC as a Mortgage or Loan Payoff Calculator
A well-designed loan payoff calculator will answer any of these questions:
- How many payments do I have left?
- When will my loan be paid off if I make extra payments?
- What payment is required to pay a loan off by a given date?
- The borrower missed payments, paid late and paid additional amounts and there were interest rate changes, what is the exact loan balance due as of today?
C-Value!, A TVM Calculator for Windows
An extremely flexible time-value-of-money calculator for Windows computers.
- Loan or investment calculations.
- Cash flows can be regular or irregular
- Create and print schedules.
- Save your data to disk for later use.
Suitable for auditors, accountants, lawyers and you!
Answering the first three questions is straightforward and takes but a second, but, as you may have guessed, calculating the payoff amount for the fourth scenario is more involved. For instructions on how to use the UFC as a tool for tracking a mortgage or loan balance with payment and interest rate changes, read my tutorial Calculate Loan Balance — Loan Payoff Calculation.
Mortgage or loan payoff examples
If you want to know how many payments are left or when the last payment is due, enter the current interest rate (4% for our example) and set compounding. Then in row one, enter the last known loan balance and the balance as of date ($250,000 and Sept. 1). In the 2nd row enter the due date of the next payment after the loan balance date in row one (this may also be the balance date), enter the scheduled payment amount, set "#Periods" to "Unknown" and set the payment frequency (monthly). Your screen will look like this:
After clicking "Calculate," your screen should look like below. There are 143 remaining payments, and the last payment will be due on August 1.
Now, let's delve in a bit deeper. You plan to pay an extra $150 a month on your mortgage, and you want to know the payoff date. The UFC excels as an early payoff calculator. If we use the above example, all you need to do is change the payment amount to $2,350.00 and set "#Periods" to "Unknown" again.
Click "Calculate" once again. Your screen should look like below. Now only 132 payments are remaining, and the last payment will be due on September 1 a year earlier.
Now, if you're lucky, the mortgage is paid off just as the first child is going off to college. :-)
Financial Calculations Step-by-Step Tutorials
The below tutorials walk you through the steps for setting up the indicated financial calculation. I recommend that you right click on a link and select "Open in New Window" so you can have the calculator handy in this window as you read.
- Calculate Payment
- loan or mortgage periodic payment calculation
- also an introduction to this calculator
- Investment Cash Flow
- calculating final value
- Calculate Income From An Investment
- How to calculate income you can expect from an investment
- Adjustable Rate Mortgage or Loan Calculator
- ARM with interest rate changes on any date you desire
- Calculate a Loan's Term
- How to solve for an unknown number of payments
- Calculate Loan Amount
- How much can I borrow?
- Balloon Payment Calculation
- Calculate the balloon amount
- Balloon Loan Calculation
- Calculate the periodic payment required to result in a specified balloon
- Random Extra Principal Payment
- How to prepay principal on any date
- Loan with Series of Extra Principal Payments
- How to calculate loan or mortgage with extra payments
- Construction Loan Calculator
- Generally a short term loan with multiple borrows
- Monthly Skipped Payments
- Loan or mortgage with scheduled skipped payments
- Odd Length First Period
- Interest payment options for initial period
- Interest Only Loan
- Initial series of interest only payments
- Biweekly Mortgage Payments
- Pay 1/2 the monthly payment every other week to reduce the total interest paid
- US Rule
- No interest charged on interest — separate tracking of interest balance
- How much do I have to save or invest?
- State your goal - calculate periodic investment amount needed to reach goal
- Paying for College
- You may have longer than you think
- Multiple investments with multiple, overlapping withdrawals
- Demonstrates solving for unknown in complex cash flow
- Future Value Calculation
- How to set up simple or complex cash flows to calculate FV
- Present Value Calculation
- How to discount a simple or complex cash flow to find its PV
- Calculate PV of Fixed Principal + Interest Loan
- Calculate PV of the declining payment amount
- Demonstrates the cash flow analytics of this calculator
- Calculate Rate of Return (ROR) on an Annuity
- How to set up an annualized ROR calculation
- Calculate Time It Takes to Reach Investment Goal
- Set a goal and see how long it takes to reach it
- Calculate ROI for X Days
- Exact day return on investment calculation
- Calculate Loan Balance — Loan Payoff Calculation
- Enter payments for any amount on date made — audit balance due
Calculators the Ultimate Financial Calculator Replaces
With this calculator's flexibility, it will meet the needs of anyone searching for:
- loan repayment calculator
- loan payoff calculator
- mortgage payoff calculator
- repayment calculator
- student loan repayment calculator
- home loan repayment calculator
- car loan repayment calculator
- debt payoff calculator
- early mortgage payoff calculator
- debt repayment calculator
- individual or specialty TVM calculators
TValue is a trademmark of TimeValue Software.
Join the conversation. Tell me what you think.
David says:
Hi Karl
Thanks for the work done with this UFC calculator and others. I keep coming back to them time and again.
One of the reasons I use it is because leasing companies don’t always provide up front schedules and then charge to get an extra statement!! Particularly when I want to get in front with my book work. 🙂
One of my leasing companies is doing something a little bit different and the calculator is not quite matching. See how you go. Thanks in anticipation of a brilliant solution. David.
=Scenario=
Vehicle Loan = $56,409 (includes all other fees) @ 4.9500% over 60months but paid at $494.52 biweekly (fortnightly).
Monthly admin fee of $8.25 charged to account.
Question 1: When the monthly admin fee is applied it is not added to the principal and then extra interest calculated but the principal component of the next fortnightly pmt is reduced by that admin fee. Can this be accommodated by the calculator?
Question 2: The calculator calculates the first Interest & Principal paid exactly. However, from then on the Interest calculated is consistently higher by up to $0.17 each repayment when compared to the leasing company’s statement. Where’s the best place to correct this?
Karl says:
Hi David, I’m happy to hear that you’ve found the calculators to be useful.
I’m not sure that I understand exactly the term that you’ve outlined. And when it comes to a 0.17 difference, the details of the terms are important!
But a few thoughts, the term of the loan is quoted in the number of months and the payments are scheduled every other week. What’s the compounding frequency?
It seems to me that the monthly admin fee either is or isn’t being added to the balance. It would be easier to duplicate the calculation if we knew the answer to this question. Can the lender document this for you? Basically, the admin fee has me confused.
David says:
Hi Karl
Please find below in CSV format the first 6 transactions as taken from the Statement of Account, which are representative of the cycle. Hopefully this might help.
From my understanding of the contract the compounding frequency is monthly. I did try biweekly but that appeared to make the discrepancy worse.
Regards
David
Date, TRXN, PmtRcvd, Interest, Principal, PrincipalBalance, DebitFees, CreditFees
10/09/19, O/Bal, -, -, -, $56409.99, -, –
20/09/19, Pmt, $494.52, $76.50, $418.02, $55990.98, -, –
04/10/19, Pmt, $494.52, $106.31, $388.21, $55602.77, -, –
10/10/19, AdminFee, -, -, -, $55602.77, $8.25, –
18/10/19, Pmt, $494.52, $105.57, $380.70, $55222.07, -, $8.25
01/11/19, Pmt, $494.52, $104.85, $389.67, $54832.40, -, –
Karl says:
David, I can’t even get the first interest payment to match. By my calculation, it should be about $1.00 more, depending on the compounding selected. What settings to you pick to match interest rates?
David says:
Karl, I set the days per year to 365. That gets the first TRXN to be exact.
I don’t understand the 360days option – are there days in the year that interest is not calculated on?
Regards David
Karl says:
There are so many (necessary) options, I forgot to try a different days-per-year setting.
(Note to users: if you want me to help understand a calculation, I will be happy to do so, but please let me know of any changes to the options you make.)
David, no, unfortunately, unless the lender is a relative, interest is accrued for every day of the year. The day-per-year option is used for calculating the daily interest rate. The annual rate is divided by either 360 or 365 days. The 360-day option came about with the rationale that a year would be divided by 12 equal months of 30 days each. It also results in a slightly higher daily interest rate and thus slightly higher interest charges.
No to your problem.
As I said, I am able to match the interest rate. However, this led me to notice a problem with what you sent me. Take the first payment:
Date TRXN PmtRcvd Interest Principal PrincipalBalance, DebitFees CreditFees Sept. 10, 2019 Open Bal: $56409.99, - – Sept. 20, 2019, Pmt, $494.52 $76.50 $418.02 $55990.98, - –The calculator and above agree on these facts: interest due $76.50. Pmt 494.52 – 76.50 for interest gives us a principal pmt 418.02
However, the details you are providing have a factual error. The opening principal balance 56409.99 minus the 418.02 principal payment does not equal $55990.98, it equals 55991.97.
Since we do not agree on the principal balance after the first payment, the calculator will never match the interest payment you are showing as of Oct. 4, 2019.
Is the lender providing you with the data? How do they arrive at their principal balance? Frankly, it looks as if they are cheating themselves. I would be very interested in hearing their explanation.
David says:
(Reply button has disappeared)
Hi Karl. Sorry my mistake. The Opening principal balance is 56409.00 – I must have been half asleep when I did entered that. I have now checked to make sure that there are no other errors in what I sent you. Regards David
Karl says:
David, the correction makes a difference!
Okay, I have the schedule matching to the penny through the last payment provided, i.e. Nov 1, 2019.
The way the lender is providing the data might be confusing, but I don’t see any errors. The key is, the principal balance amount is prior to the impact of either the debit or credit fees. Think of it this way, the fee amount seems to be a notice of what’s going to be due on the next pay period. No interest it being charged on the fee.
My entries are below. Of course the dates, here in the U.S. are in MM/DD/YYYY format:
Under settings, I have the rounding option set to "Open Balance"
I use the XPmt option to pay the fee, because this makes the entire payment be applied to the principal.
I left compounding set to "Monthly."
And since I’m entering the payments as made, one at a time, there is no payment frequency setting to worry about.
I hope you can duplicate this. Good luck.
Karl says:
One more thought. The lender’s software (which probably cost them thousands of dollars to buy or develope 🙂 ) seems to have the capability of allowing them to enter fees that do not accrue interest. This calculator does not have that ability. I simulated it by advancing the fee from Oct 10 to Oct 18 (when I assumed that it was due), thus avoiding the interest charges.
David says:
Hi Karl. Thank you for the info. I had considered that it was something along those lines you discussed but I couldn’t quite prove it. Thank you for your time and effort in providing a solution. Much appreciated. Regards David
Karl says:
You’re welcome. Glad to be of some help. It was an interesting problem.
Tracy says:
Hello Karl,
I just found this calculator which is great. I have a client which I sold my RV to. The aggrement is $650 monthly with a late fee of 5% for payments paid after the 5th of every month. How would I add this additional fee? Could you help me out. Thank You
Karl says:
Thank you!
In the "Series" column, one of the options in the dropdown is "Fee." The calculator is not going to calculate the 5% for you. You’ll need to calculate the amount, but you can enter the result using this fee option.
When the borrower pays you, and if you want to show the fee as being paid specifically, then use the fee option and enter the amount as a negative value. That decreases the amount owed by the fee entered.
Glenn MacLaren says:
. Hi Karl, thanks for the great calculator…I am a mortgage broker in Canada, and some of our lenders calculate Variable Rate mortgages with a monthly compounding(vs semi annual). Is there a way to have the Canadian version of compounding interest to have the option of selecting monthly compounding? I see right now, there is only annual and semi annual.
Karl says:
Hi, that sound to me like what we down here would call "Normal". Can you set the amortization method to normal, and compounding to monthly and let me know if that matches what you expect?
Glenn MacLaren says:
Ok, let me ty that. thanks
Diana K says:
Hi Karl – This calculator is exactly what my company needs.
I wanted to make sure I am doing this correctly
One of our customers has a loan out for $232,114.20 that was invoiced on 2/10/20
We are giving them a 6 month skip with a 5% interest for 24 months. The loan would start on 8/10/20. We are charging them the 6 month interest on the months they are skipping. I hope I did it correctly. I am getting a monthly rate of $10,408.48 and the interest would be $17,689.36. Can you clarify if this is correct?
Karl says:
Hi Diana, glad to hear that you think the calculator will be useful.
To your specific question, I can’t tell from the information if the numbers adhere to the terms of the loan your firm is quoting the customer. But, the numbers are "right" in the sense that given whatever inputs and setting you used, they are accurate. 🙂
Do you have a question about how to use the calculator? Or is there anything that looks off to you?
I assume you set the first row as a loan with a date of 2/10/2020 and the second row as a payment with the date set to 8/10/2020. The second row includes the number of expected payments and their frequency.
Diana says:
Hi Karl,
Yes those were the exact parameters I used. Loan date 2/10/20 $232,114.20. 6 month skip starting payments at 8/10/20 for 24 months.
I ended up putting this info in again but I got a different interest/monthly loan amount from the last time I worked on this.
Last week I got $10,408,48 monthly and interest total of $17,689.36
I just did the same thing and I got $10,397.10 monthly and interest of $17,416.12
1. why would I be getting a difference?
2. What is the calculation to come up with the interest due for the 6 month skip?
Thank you and Stay safe.
Karl says:
Hi Diana, The only reason the calculator would produce different results is that one or more settings or options was set differently. Did you happen to change days-per-year and then not set it back, for example? There are perhaps a dozen or more settings, and changing one will cause results to change. That’s why the options are available!
Your loan has what we call a "long initial period." The payment frequency is monthly, but the first payment only happens after six months have passed. There are specific options available to the user for how long initial period interest is calculated and charged. To access, click on "Settings" and pick "Interest Options."
Go here for details about how they can be set if you want more background. Scroll down the page a bit until you see "Long First Period."
Zach says:
Hi Karl, I just want to confirm I’m using the calculator correctly to solve a problem.
The goal- I want to calculate my yield on the purchase of a real estate note.
The note: 180,000 @8% 360 months- pmt-$1,320.78, rate changes to 12% after 84 months, new pmt- $1,778.72.
The purchase: 90,000 now and 90,000 after 60 months.
I originally setup the $180K loan to solve for initial pmt at 8%, then put in a rate change after 84 months to 12% and solved for new pmt for the balance of the term (276 mo).
Once the above was in the calculator, I changed line 1 loan from $180K to 90,000 and inserted a new row (line 3) as a loan with a date 60 months later for 90,000. I put “unknown” in the initial interest rate box at the top and hit calculate to solve for the cash flows below. It returned 13.6324%. That appears correct, but is there a more direct or different way to get there with the calculator? Also, if I knew my initial purchase was 90,000 but wasn’t sure of the 2nd pmt in 60 months, could I put 12% (desired yield) in the initial interest box, and solve for needed pmt in the 2nd installment (ie loan) box?
You mention a premium subscription coming in 2020- is this going to replace the downloadable windows version or will it be a separate online version? Thanks. Zach
Karl says:
Hi Zach, yes, there is a more direct way to calculate yield.
Click on "Settings" and select "Analytics" and check the include IRR on schedule option. The IRR (yield) will be in the footer of the schedule. 🙂
And yes, you can solve for the required payment as you describe.
The premium version will be online, and will be separate from the downloadable C-Value! program. The Windows version of C-Value! will eventually go away, but probably not right away.