Calculator 2 Student Loan Calculator With Extra Payments

We've created this Student Loan Calculator With Extra Payments to help answer the question: "What if I paid an extra $50 or $100 per month on my student loans?" Simply enter five required student loan values: (1) your requested loan amount, (2) annual interest rate, (3) repayment term in years, (4) start date of your loan, and (5) your desired extra monthly payment amount. Instantly review a student loan results summary set above a full student loan amortization schedule for two scenarios: with extra payments, and without extra payments. This student loan amortization calculator is easy to navigate, features clearly labeled input cells, improves the readability of financial results, and has pre-set print commands.

student loan calculator with extra payments (325KB)

Important — Read This Before You Download!

The Student Loan Amortization With Extra Payments calculator is a downloadable Excel file (325kb) that contains advanced Excel functions. The calculation sheets and cells are password protected, however, no password is needed to download, save, and use the calculator. Though very easy to use, some students and parents find the instructions and screen shots displayed below on this web page helpful.

Please do not rely on these calculations. They can never match the terms and product specific calculations as presented by your lender. All of our calculators are copyright protected and carry an "as is" legal disclaimer. If you own a web site and would like to recommend this calculator to others, please link to this instruction page and not to the Excel file directly.

Downloading The Excel File

Click the Excel file link above to download the student loan amortization schedule with extra payments. When prompted, "Save" to your computer or temporarily "Open" the file. A "Macro" warning may appear if your Excel security is set to high or if you currently have macros disabled. The only macro we set in this file is to facilitate printing. You can print just as easily without this macro, therefore, disabling this feature should not disrupt the calculations.

Enter Your Student Loan Values

Your first step is to enter the loan values you were quoted by a lender or received from your financial aid office. There are five student loan values you will need to enter. Please review the bullets and also the screen shot of Step 1 follow.

1. Requested loan amount
2. Annual interest rate
3. Repayment term in years
4. Loan start date (example: 8/5/06)
5. Extra monthly payment

This student loan amortization schedule was designed to accept no more than 360 payments. For example, a 30 year student loan with 12 monthly payments per year equals 360 total payments. Student loans in general will not exceed 30 years and are paid monthly by check or electronic debit.

If you enter a number incorrectly, an alert will appear with instructions on how to correctly enter the student loan value. If you attempt to enter information into a protected cell, an alert message will appear stating that the cell is locked or protected. Basic guidelines for entering values into this student loan amortization schedule are as follows:

• Requested loan amount — enter whole number between 1 and 200000
• Annual interest rate — enter as decimal .01 to .200 or number 1 to 20
• Repayment term in years — enter whole number between 1 and 30
• Payments per year (monthly) — this can't be changed, cell is protected
• Loan start date — enter any date greater than 1/1/1970
• Extra monthly payment — enter whole number between 1 and 1000

Review Student Loan Results Summary

Once you've learned which student loan values to manipulate, you can begin comparing student loan offers. You can compare multiple offers from the same lender when given different combinations of student loan years (10, 15, 20, 25, 30) and rates (5%, 6%, 7% 8%). Or you can compare student loan offers from competing lenders. Simply print the first page or the whole worksheet after entering the values for each student loan offer. You will want to understand the impact of the loan amount, term length, and interest rates on your minimum monthly payment. You will also want to understand the impact of extra monthly payments on the total amount of interest due over the life of the loan.

We can now describe our student loan example above in two ways. First, assuming that no extra monthly payments are to be made. Second, assuming that extra payments will be made.

No Extra: A 30 year student loan with an annual interest rate of 4.5% will require a minimum monthly payment of $177.34 per month. A total of 360 payments are to be made, of which $35,000 will be applied to the original principal borrowed, and $28,842.35 will be applied to interest owed to the lender. The sum of all 360 minimum monthly payments equals $63,842.35 — total principal plus interest paid.

With Extra: The same 30 year student loan with an annual interest rate of 4.5%, with an extra payment of $252 per month, will increase the monthly payment to $429.34 per month. As few as 98 payments are to be made, of which $35,000 will be applied to the original principal borrowed, and $6,850.82 will be applied to interest owed to the lender. The sum of all 98 monthly payments equals $41,850.82 — total principal plus interest paid.

Important points to notice while reviewing this student loan results summary:

• While adding the extra $252/mo increases your monthly payment, you're required minimum payment remains at only $177.34 per month, helpful when cash is unavailable.
• Number of payments (checks to be written) decreased by 262, from 360 to 98.
• Interest paid decreased 76% or $21,991.53, from $28,842.35 to $6,850.82.
• NOTE: A common strategy is to consolidate your student loans to reduce both the required monthly payment and annual interest rate, then make extra principal payments each month. This can effectively decrease your total interest paid as we have shown here. See our student loan consolidation calculator to review an example consolidation loan calculation using the same $35,000 loan amount.

Review Student Loan Amortization Schedule

Detailed loan amortization schedules are available for both "with" and "without" extra payment scenarios. Keeping the summary results from Step 2 in mind, begin your review of the first student loan amortization schedule - with extra payments. Below we have listed some general information related to each column heading listed on the student loan amortization schedule:

• Pay No — lists payments in order up to the total number calculated in Step 2
• Payment Date — first payment begins one month after the loan start date in Step 1
• Principal — amount of each minimum payment applied to reduce the loan balance
• Interest — amount of each minimum payment applied to Interest (cost of borrowing)
• Minimum Payment — minimum monthly payment calculated in Step 2
• Extra Payment — your extra principal payment applied to reduce the loan balance
• Beginning Loan Balance — balance before applying the principal payments
• Ending Loan Balance — beginning loan balance less principal payments
• Cumulative Interest — accumulates the interest payments over time

For the student loan example shown above, the first minimum monthly payment of $177.34 is due on 9/1/2006. Portions of the first payment will be allocated to principal $46.09 and allocated to interest $131.25. The beginning loan balance before applying the first minimum and extra payments is $35,000, equal to the request loan amount. Reducing the beginning loan balance of $35,000 by the first principal and extra payments of $46.09 and $252.00 respectively equals the ending loan balance of $34,701.91.

Notice that interest is calculated each month there is a beginning loan balance. For example, the first interest amount due on 9/1/2006 is calculated by applying the effective monthly interest rate to the beginning loan balance: $35,000 x (4.500% / 12 months) = $131.25. As the beginning loan balance decreases, the amount of interest paid to the lender also decrease.

To review the student loan amortization detail for the no extra payments scenario, select the "No Extra" worksheet as you would any Excel worksheet. Remember that this second worksheet is not meant for input. All input is done in Step 1 of the "With Extra" worksheet.

Print Your Student Loan Amortization Schedule

To compare student loan offers or to share your results with others, we've built in a print function. If you have macro's enabled on your computer, click the button labeled "Click for Print Preview." Verify that the page setup and number of pages to print are correct, then click any available print icon or select File, Print from the menu.

The print range we pre-set should exclude the first two left columns. This will save ink or toner by not having to print the background colors and the Step 1, Step 2, and Step 3 headings.

Related Student Loans Ed Web Pages » Student Loan Consolidation Information
» Student Loan Consolidation Comparison
» Student Loan Amortization Schedule
» Student Loan Amortization Schedule with Extra Payments