Financial calculator help

[speechchick71]

I bought a new car almost a year ago....thus, a loan.  I am trying to find a calculator that will tell me how quickly I will have it paid off for how I am doing it.  I make a standard amount (more than 1/2 the minimum) every 2 weeks so I'm actually making 13 months of payments every year.  Just by doing that, I know it will be paid off earlier but I also know that by paying every 2 weeks, I'm cutting down on my interest.  All the calculators I'm finding are only giving you the option of monthly payments and how much extra.  Does anyone have a good link to a calculator to do what I'm looking for? 

And also, being that I've been paying on it for almost a year, will the numbers be skewed that much if I take what the current loan amount it and base it off those numbers?

[justme]

Not sure of a calculator, but if your rate is under 3% you won't be saving much. Mine is 2.9% and the majority had always been to principal. With like fifteen months left I did the calculation and found out I'd save only 50 paying it off early. On a four year loan it was only 600 total interest. And the first 12 months was 1/3 of the interest.

[Jake 48]

Bankrate.com, has all different types of calculators, easy site to use

[steph08]

www.dinkytown.net has the best calculators. Here is one for early auto loan payoff - www.dinkytown.net/java/AutoPayoff.html

[busymom]

Not to hijack this thread, but on the topic of calculators: I've got 19 years left on a 30 year mortgage, that I've been throwing some extra money at. Most of the calculators I find assume you've been making extra payments all along (we couldn't afford that when the kids were little). So, is there a calculator that can tell you, based on your current mortgage balance, if you continue making extra payments from now on, how much longer it would take to pay it all off? Thank you! (Yes, I would like to plug in different numbers, to see the possibilities.)

[Deleted]

Busy I tried to find one like that and never found one.

What I ended up doing was "pretending" I had just taken out my current mortgage and changing the interest rate to reflect the amount of real interest I was paying. Then I'd plug in the prepayment numbers I wanted to play around with.

I'm sure it wasn't 100% exact, but it gave me a pretty good idea. 

[Lizard Queen]

fncalculator.com is an android app that I used for my finance classes.  I usually used the tvm calculator, but there is also a loan calculator on there that looks like it could work.

[Rocky Mtn Saver]

I like the calculators at Bank Rate dot Com:

www.bankrate.com/debt-management.aspx

[movinonup]

If you still need a calculator, this is intended for mortgages, but can be used for any loan.
mtgprofessor.com/calculators/Calculator2a.html

-movinonup

[Plain Old Petunia]



I always make my own Excel spreadsheets. I calculate my loan as scheduled, and insert a column for additional payments. As I make the additional payments, I insert them into their column. As scheduled payments post, I replace the scheduled interest with the actual interest.

The beauty of this is the remainder of the schedule recalculates as you go along. You can plug in any scenarios you wish into the additional payments column and see what effect it has.

For a mortgage, the interest is calculated this way:

Principal x rate / 12

For a car loan, the interest is calculated this way:

Principal x rate x number of days since last payment / 365

I would be happy to email either my mortgage or car loan spreadsheets to anyone who wants them.   It would be easy to edit them to fit your own mortgage or car loan.  Or, give me the details of your loan and I can edit mine for you.   Just PM me.

I would just insert my spreadsheet right here in the thread, if I could figure out how.

[Deleted]

Nov 9, 2014 14:33:39 GMT -5 busymom said:

Not to hijack this thread, but on the topic of calculators: I've got 19 years left on a 30 year mortgage, that I've been throwing some extra money at. Most of the calculators I find assume you've been making extra payments all along (we couldn't afford that when the kids were little). So, is there a calculator that can tell you, based on your current mortgage balance, if you continue making extra payments from now on, how much longer it would take to pay it all off? Thank you! (Yes, I would like to plug in different numbers, to see the possibilities.)

I have always used this template from Excel. It's simple, but very customizable. You enter your original loan terms in top and it creates and amortization table and from there you can just put in the extra payments in the months you make them. It's fun to play around with.  Well...if you're a nerd like I am.  

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