Excel Amortization Table
I recently purchased a new car - a 2006 manual Saturn Ion. As with any good car purchase I had to take out a hefty auto loan for most of the car's worth. Thanks to a large amount of student loans and a short work history, the interest on the car loan was quite bad. I began to wonder if and how I could pay less interest on the life of the loan.
There are two main options I decided to explore. First, I wondered how much increased payments would affect the life, and interest, of the loan. Second, I wanted to look at the amount I would save by refinancing the car after a year under a lower interest rate. I was also interested in the gap of my loan (the difference between the trade-in value and loan principle), which would also be the amount I would owe the bank if I totaled my new car.
The only numbers I had to do a bit of research on was the rate of depreciation and the value of my car. I did some guess and check for the depreciation, but later found out that twenty percent is pretty standard for vehicles. Also, I based all of the rows under the data tab on the life of the loan, not when the principle drops below zero (in case of refinancing or increased payments).
When I had finished the sheet, not only could I view the remaining loan amount due and experiment...
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