Loan Calculators Online

Which Loan Calculator Is Right for You?

The most common loan calculators online are mortgage loan calculators. In these times of falling mortgage loan rates, mortgage refinance calculators help homeowners determine how much they can save by refinancing. It's not a simple calculation, as this mortgage refinance calculator at Bankrate.com illustrates.

There are lots of one-time fees to take into account when analyzing a mortgage refinance loan: application fee; attorney's fee; title search fee; and so on. You may also pay for "points" or discounts off the annual percentage rate of your new mortgage. There may be an early repayment penalty on your old mortgage. Mortgage refinance calculators can make sure you don't omit any of these factors. You can also discover how much difference the interest rate will make over the course of the loan.

I can remember when I was a teenager, a good rate for home mortgages was 18-20 percent. Now rates are at historic lows, with some loans offered at under 4 percent. So if you're paying anything north of 6%, a refinance could make sense and save you a ton of money over the next 15, 20 or 30 years.

A home equity calculator tells you how much of your home you truly own - that is, the current value of the principal that you have paid so far. Home equity is often used as collateral in home equity loans, and there's a home equity loan calculator at LendingTree. Note that Lending Tree, and other lenders, will not lend you the full amount of your home equity; home equity loan calculators typically tell you how much you can borrow, in addition to the actual equity you have in your home.

Loan Rates and Amortization

A mortgage loan rate calculator (also called a loan comparison calculator) helps you compare the interest rates and terms of different mortgage offers. The mortgage loan rate calculator at Calculators For Mortgages accepts as input the amount borrowed; interest rate; and number of years to repay for two mortgage scenarios. It returns the monthly payments; total of payments; and total interest paid.

A loan amortization calculator gives you a month-by-month breakdown of where your monthly payments go; that is, how much of a payment pays off principal and how much pays interest. The loan amortization calculator at Bret Whissel's blog is especially flexible; any of the variable factors can be calculated after entering fixed values for the others. It also provides a summary showing total interest paid as a percentage of the amount borrowed.

An interest-only mortgage loan calculator is used to show the amortization schedule of hypothetical principal payments made on an interest-only loan. The one at MortgageLoan.com accepts as input the amount borrowed; the interest rate; and the number of years of the repayment period. You can then insert various principal payments at various times to see how they affect the overall amount of interest paid and the monthly payment. You'll want to be sitting down when you see how much interest you pay on a typical home mortgage over a 30 year term!

The mother lode of all loan calculator Web sites may be Dinky Town. Despite the odd name, here you will find over 300 loan calculators for mortgages; vehicle loans; boat loans; home improvement loans; unsecured personal loans; and other types of loans.

Do you have a favorite online loan calculator? Post your comment or question below...