DIY Personal Finance Tools: Mortgage Calculator and Schedule

No matter how many tools there are available on the internet, there is always value in learning how to do something yourself. It might not be as efficient at first but learning how things work can lead to learning transferable skills and obtaining a greater understanding than you would have had otherwise using the available resources. Today, we are going to talk about the benefits of creating your own mortgage calculator.

Lets’ take a look at the benefits:

Learning How to Use Excel

While creating the mortgage calculator and schedule itself may only be useful to those people who may need to buy a house in the near future, there is a benefit to creating the schedule itself because the creation involves learning how to effectively use some features of Microsoft Excel. These features include the =PMT function, which can be used for any type of loan that utilizes the effective interest method, including mortgages and car loans, and absolute references, which are essential for creating more complex Excel spreadsheets. 

Using the amortization schedule for more than just the mortgage

Creating an amortization schedule for the loan, allows you to easily visualize the amounts going to principal and interest with the monthly payments, which is a benefit by itself. However, in the right circumstances the schedule will allow you to calculate the mortgage interest payments used for tax planning purposes.

You Can Build on It!

Creating the mortgage schedule by yourself in Excel allows you to easily add on considerations for monthly costs. Once you learn about the mortgage amount, you can estimate other costs of ownership like property taxes and insurance to give yourself a more detailed model for a real-life scenario.

Now that you know some of the benefits of the benefits, you need the tools to start on this project yourself. Fortunately, we have created a YouTube video (our very first one!) on how to make this schedule yourself in Microsoft Excel. Go ahead and watch below!

If you are interested in learning more things like this, be sure to like the video and let us know!