How to Calculate a Car Payment in Excel (5 Steps)
By Shreya Mehta
Determining what your monthly car payments will be before you purchase a car, will allow you to carefully gauge whether you can afford to purchase the vehicle. It will also help you plan your monthly budget, so you know how much money will need to be set aside for this expense. Analyzing what your car payments will be based on factors such as the interest rate, loan term and loan amount can easily be done in Excel. You can analyze various scenarios by changing one variable and see how it affects the monthly payment.
Step 1
Open a new worksheet in Microsoft Excel and enter the following information in each cell: cost of car, down payment, loan amount (cost of car-loan payment), annual interest rate, and loan term (number of years x 12).
Step 2
Click on a blank cell and select "Function" from the "Insert" menu. Type "PMT" in the search field and click on the "Go" button.
Step 3
Enter the "cell reference of the interest rate/12 "in the Rate field of the Function Arguments dialogue for the monthly interest rate. Enter the cell reference for the loan term in the Nper field and the loan amount cell reference in the Pv field. The Fv field will be empty because you want to pay off the entire loan. The Type will also be empty because the default is 0, which indicates the payments will be made at the end of each month.
Step 4
Click "OK" to get your monthly car payments.
Step 5
Change any of the variables, such as the interest rate or purchase amount, by changing the data in the reference cell. The monthly payment number will automatically update to reflect the change.
Writer Bio
Shreya Mehta graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a Bachelors degree in business administration with a double concentration in finance and MIS. She attended Bentley College to obtain a MBA in finance and Masters in IT. She has been working for a financial software company for the past three years as an associate content manager.