Calculators

This simple CD interest rate calculator will estimate the amount of interest you’ll earn on a CD. It covers CD terms ranging from 3 months to five years.

How to Use the CD Calculator

To calculate how much interest you’ll earn over the term of a CD, just enter the following information:

Initial Deposit: The amount you plan to invest in the certificate of deposit.

CD Term: The length of the CD, ranging from 3 months to five years.

APY: The Annual Percentage Yield. Note that this is different than the interest rate. The APY takes into account the compounding of interest. Banks disclose the APY so it should be easy to determine.

CD Rates

Rates on certificates of deposits can change daily. We maintain a list of the best CD rates, which we update monthly. In addition, you can see additional rates here (updated daily):

The FDIC publishes weekly data on deposit account rates, including certificates of deposit. According to recent data, the national average yield on a 1-year CD stood at a paltry 0.28%. The rates we track are substantially higher than this, largely because we focus on online banks.

How are CD rates calculated?

Banks determine the yield they will pay on a CD based, in part, on the term of the CD. Generally, CDs with longer terms pay higher interest rates than CDs with shorter terms. There are, however, exceptions to this rule from time to time.

What CD term should I chose?

The best CD term will depend in part on your saving goal. Keep in mind that most CDs charge a penalty if you take the money out before the end of the term. It’s therefore important to consider when you’ll need to use the money before locking it into a long-term CD.

How often does interest compound on a CD?

The compounding rate can vary from bank to bank and from one CD term to another. In our calculator, we compound interest annually. We chose annual compounding because we found that to be a common approach among many banks for CD products. Daily or monthly compounding would increase the interest you earn over the term of the CD.

This savings calculator can help you calculate the interest you’ll earn on a savings account. You can include both an initial deposit and monthly contributions. Indicate how long you’ll make the contributions and your APY, and the savings account calculator returns your total savings.

How to Use the Savings Calculator

The savings calculator requires just four numbers:

Initial Deposit: The amount of money you plan to deposit when you open the account. If the account is already open, the initial deposit should be your current balance.

Monthly Contribution: The amount of money, if any, you plan to save each month.

Number of Years: The length of time, in years, you plan to save.

Annual Percentage Yield: The APY is the interest rate you’ll earn on the savings account. APY accounts for the effects of compounding and is available from your bank.

While the average interest rate is 0.07%, according to the FDIC, you can do much better with an online bank.

3 Ways a Saving Calculator Can Help You Plan

Savings on a High-Yield Savings Account

The savings calculator can help you determine how much money you’ll have after a set number of years contributing to a high-yield savings account.

Emergency Fund Savings

Building an emergency fund is an important step toward financial freedom. One rule of thumb is that you should save three to six months of expenses. You can use the savings calculator to estimate how long it will take you to reach this goal.

Savings in a CD

With a certificate of deposit, you make an initial deposit but no monthly contributions. This calculator can handle it. Simply enter the initial deposit and leave the monthly contribution field blank. Add in the term of the CD in years and the APY.

Getting out of credit card debt is a worthy goal. It can also be quite a challenge. This credit card payoff calculator will help you by calculating how long it will take to pay off your credit card debt given a set monthly payment.

How to Use the Credit Card Payoff Calculator

The calculator requires just three fields:

• Outstanding Balance: This is how much you still owe on your credit card debt. If you have balances on multiple cards, you can evaluate them one at a time with this calculator. Alternatively, you can add the balances together and use the total.
• Interest Rate: The interest rate is the rate charged by your credit card company. If you combine multiple balances from several cards, use a weighted average of the interest rate.
• Monthly Payment: This is the amount you plan to pay toward your credit card debt each month. Note that this is not the same as the credit card’s required minimum payment.

The results show you approximately how long it will take you to pay off your credit card debt. The calculator displays this information in both months and years. It also shows you how much interest you will have paid during this time.

How to Lower Your Credit Card Interest Rate

A key element in getting out of credit card debt is the interest rate. Most credit cards charge double-digit interest rates, some exceeding 20%. One way to reduce interest charges is to use a 0% credit card. These cards enable you to transfer high-interest balances to cards that charge no interest for 15 months or longer.

How to Get Out of Credit Card Debt

There are two basic approaches to paying off any debt, including credit card debt: The Debt Snowball and the Debt Avalanche. Yes, the terminology is a bit goofy, but the concepts are powerful.

With both the Debt Snowball and Avalanche methods, you’ll continue to make the same monthly payment until your debt-free. That’s true even though the required minimum payment will go down each month as your balances decline. Where these two methods differ is in how you determine which credit card to pay down first.

To be clear, you’ll continue to make the required minimum monthly payment on all your cards. After all, you don’t want to incur penalties for missing a payment or negative marks on your credit report. The question then becomes which credit card do you apply any extra payments to first. It’s this question that the Debt Snowball and Avalanche methods attempt to answer.

The Debt Snowball

With the Debt Snowball, the extra payment over and above the minimum required payment goes to pay down the credit card with the lowest balance. With the Snowball Method, you ignore the interest rates. Why?

The theory is that by paying down your lowest balance card first, you pay it off in a short amount of time (at least compared to tackling a larger debt). This, in turn, will motivate you to continue getting out of debt. Some studies back up this approach.

The Debt Avalanche

With the Debt Avalanche, you focus on the debt with the highest interest rate. This could also happen to be the debt with the smallest balance. In that case, there’s no difference between the Avalanche and Snowball methods. In other cases, however, the high-rate debt could also be the debt with the highest balance.

The goal here is to get out of debt the fastest and for the least amount of interest. In the end, the “best” approach is the one that works for you.

This debt payoff calculator estimates how long it will take you to pay off a loan based on making the minimum monthly payment. You can also calculate how long it will take to become debt-free if you pay an additional amount on your debt each month.

How the Debt Payoff Calculator Works

The debt payoff calculator has three required fields and one optional field.

Required Fields

• Loan Amount: The outstanding balance of the debt. If you have more than one loan, you can enter the total outstanding balances of all of them.
• Interest Rate: The Annual Percentage Rate (APR) of the debt. If you have multiple debts, use the weighted average of all of the loans.
• Minimum Monthly Payment: The minimum amount that must be paid on the loan each month. If you have more than one loan, enter the total minimum monthly payment of all loans.

Optional Field

• Extra Monthly Payment: Here enter any amounts over and above the required minimum payment that you plan to make on your debt.

Debt Payoff Calculator Results

The results show you how many months it will take you to become debt-free. It also shows you the same result in years. Finally, the calculator estimates the amount of total interest you will pay over this time.

Practical Applications of the Debt Repayment Calculator

There are several practical applications of this calculator.

First, it can tell you how long it will take you to become debt-free if you make just the required minimum monthly payments on your debt. This can be useful in assessing whether to make additional payments to meet your financial goals.

Second, the calculator will show you how making additional payments will change your debt repayment plan. Here it’s important to consider not only how quickly you’ll get out of debt, but also the total interest you’ll save by making extra payments.

Third, it can help you set financial priorities. Paying off debt is a critical step in your financial journey, but it’s not the only important goal. We should also be saving an emergency fund, investing for retirement, and perhaps saving to buy a home or to pay for a child’s education.

This calculator can help you decide how much of your money should go to pay down debt versus these other priorities. While there is no one “right” answer for every person and situation, in the vast majority of cases, paying down debt should not be the only financial goal you pursue.

Credit Card Debt

It’s important to understand that credit card debt works differently than installment loans, such as a car, student, or home loan. With installment loans, the required minimum monthly payment remains the same throughout the life of the loan. It remains the same regardless of whether you make extra payments. It also remains the same even as the outstanding principal of the loan goes down.

With credit cards, the current outstanding balance determines the required minimum monthly payment. While the calculation varies from one credit card issuer to another, a minimum payment equal to 2% of the outstanding balance is common in the industry. As a result, the above debt payoff calculator does not apply to credit card debt in which you make just the required minimum monthly payment, as that amount changes from month to month as your credit card balance changes.

This loan payment calculator will enable you to determine the monthly payments on an installment loan. Enter the amount of the loan, the interest rate, and the length of the loan in months. This calculator can be used for car, home, or other types of fixed loans.

This simple loan calculator will help you understand the monthly payment on a fixed rate installment loan.

How the Loan Payment Calculator Works

The loan calculator takes just three pieces of information: Loan amount, interest rate, and loan term.

Loan Amount

The loan amount is how much you plan to borrow. The loan amount is the total amount borrowed. For example, if you plan to buy a car for $15,000 and make a $2,000 down payment, the loan amount would be the difference, or $13,000.

Interest Rate

The interest rate is the amount of money lenders charge borrowers on a loan, expressed as a percentage. Also known as the Annual Percentage Rate (APR), the interest rate per period (typically monthly) is multiplied by the outstanding balance of the loan to calculate interest charges.

For example, a 6% annual APR would translate into a 0.50% monthly interest rate (6% / 12). On a loan with an outstanding balance of $10,000, the monthly interest would be $50 ($10,000 x 0.50%).

For the debt calculator above, enter the annual APR that applies to your loan.

Loan Term

The loan term is the length of the loan. For example, car loan terms typically range from three to seven years. A home loan term is commonly 15 or 30 years. For the loan calculator above, enter your loan terms in months. For example, for a five-year loan, enter 60 months (5 x 12).