Create a Quick Loan Calculator in Excel

You can use Excel to help figure out what your loan payment would be should you decide to borrow money. Here's a quick way to set up a loan payment calculator in your Excel worksheet:

Step 1: Enter the following titles in six consecutive rows:
Cell A1 Price
Cell A2 Downpayment
Cell A3 Principal
Cell A4 Interest
Cell A5 Years
Cell A6 Payment

Step 2: These titles will become the cell names for the cell to the right of each cell containing a title. Highlight the cells containing titles and the cell to the right of each of those cells (12 cells altogether). Choose Insert | Name | Create from the Excel menu. The Create Names window will appear with "Left column" checked. Click OK. The names have been assigned.

Step 3: Enter known amounts in the cell to the right of each of the cells containing titles. For example:
Cell B1 10000
Cell B2 20%
Cell B4 6.5%
Cell B5 4

Step 4: Enter a formula to calculate loan principal in Cell B3:
=Price*(1-Downpayment).

Step 5: Enter a formula to calculate the loan payment in Cell B6:
=PMT(Interest/12,Years*12,Principal).

Once the calculator is in place you can substitute amounts for Price, Downpayment, Interest, and Years and the calculations will update automatically.