Question

can anyone help me with the formulas for excel? I need to find the the number of months it will take to pay off a loan of $213,468 with payments of 400 monthly at an interest rate of 2.4% compounded monthly? I put =NPER(2.4%/12,400,213468,0,1) into excel but it calculates a negative number.

Answer 1

I think you use the NPER function (which basically returns the number of payments total)

according to excel's help file, it says


"

NPER


Returns the number of periods for an investment based on periodic, constant payments and a constant interest rate.

Syntax

NPER(rate, pmt, pv, fv, type)

For a more complete description of the arguments in NPER and for more information about annuity functions, see PV.

Rate is the interest rate per period.

Pmt is the payment made each period; it cannot change over the life of the annuity. Typically, pmt contains principal and interest but no other fees or taxes.

Pv is the present value, or the lump-sum amount that a series of future payments is worth right now.

Fv is the future value, or a cash balance you want to attain after the last payment is made. If fv is omitted, it is assumed to be 0 (the future value of a loan, for example, is 0).

"

Answer 2

in this case,

rate = 0.024
pmt = 400
pv = 213468

the other values can be omitted

Answer 3

hmm nevermind, it's not working for me

Answer 4

=NPER(2.4%/12,400,213468,0,1) but this returns a negative dollar amount, not payments

Answer 5

yeah I'm not sure why it's doing that

Answer 6

well I tried an online loan calculator and it said "Your payments are not sufficient enough to cover interest. Loan will never be paid off."

Answer 7

it's possible that the answer of -362.9783517 means that it will take roughly 363 months (a little over 30 years) to pay off the loan

Answer 8

thanks