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What is your car payment costing you in lost opportunities? Even with a $300 a month car payment the numbers can be astounding. This is not like your average car payment calculator.

For the sake of true car payment calculation, lets assume you had a $300 a month car payment and every 2 or 3 years you just kept trading it in for another car of about the same payment per month.

The upside is that you would always have a brand new car every two or three years, but there is a tremendous downside you have not considered.

What if instead of buying a brand new car, you went and bought a cheap $3,000 car with cash and invested the money that you would have made in car payments.

Every two or three years you could simply buy another cheap car with cash so you would never have a payment again.

Instead of sending $300 a month to a car payment, you take your $300 a month that you would have used to pay a monthly payment and you place it in a great mutual fund or other investment that grows 12% a year.

If you did this for 20 years you would wind up with $303,012.14 at the end of just 20 years. If you were able to do this for 30 years you would have $1,069,759.02. That is well over a million dollars you would have for simply not having a payment. No car payment calculator can show you that.

This does not even consider how much other extra money you have invested. This is just a simple $300 a month car payment turned into an extra investment.

If instead of buying that brand new truck or SUV at $400 a month payment, consider the numbers with that amount. After 20 years of investing $400 instead of sending it to the car company you would have $404,016.19 and after 30 years that number would be $1,426,345.37.

Plus, you will rack up a huge amount of savings in cheaper insurance costs.

Imagine a teenager at 18 years old wanting to buy a new car for college. They want to get one that is fairly modest with a payment of $250 a month. Consider instead, that the teenager bought a cheap $2,000 car and decided to invest the $250 a month from that point on.

The teenager never added anything more than $250 a month up until retirement. Would you guess that by the time this teenager retires at 65 years old, having only contributed $250 a month, he or she would have $6,953,778.85. That is a huge nest egg to retire on just because they decided early in life to not have a payment.

It is amazing how powerful our income truly is. If a simple $300 a month turns into more than a million dollars over the course of 30 years, how much are all your monthly debts costing you in lost opportunities?

You do not have to buy and drive junker cars all your life. Simply set money aside a small amount of money each month and upgrade every year with cash. You will find yourself driving a decent car within a few years. Life truly is better with no car payments.

There are many items to mark off your checklist before purchasing a house or a car. You should make a budget, determine what you can afford, comparison shop, and think about your financing needs. Once you’ve covered all of the above issues, but before you go off to purchase a car or a home, you should have an idea of what the monthly payments are going to be like. There are plenty of loan calculator and amortization schedules out there to calculate those payments for you.

Find a loan calculator and use it

Here is how loan calculators work.

Determine the amount of the loan you are seeking. Don’t go overboard. Only apply for financing that you need.

Choose the loan term in years or months. The smaller amount of time usually means larger payments. If you choose a term that’s lengthier, the payments go down, but you are usually paying more in interest.

Write down the interest rate.

Indicate when the loan will begin. This is known as the loan start date.

Most loan calculator and amortization tables are able to calculate the monthly payments based on this information.

Extras

Perhaps you want to figure out how those monthly payments will change based on extra payments in the schedule. You should be able to calculate the ways extra payments will change your schedule in a variety of different ways.

- Add a certain dollar amount to your monthly payments.
- Add a certain dollar amount every year during a particular month.
- Make a one-time only additional payment to your mortgage or loan company.
- These are three ways to alter the payoff information for your loan.

When purchasing a home, an amortization calculator can help you to learn just how much of a home you can afford to purchase. This tool is easy to use and it can be found throughout the web for use without any charge to it. One thing that it can help individuals to learn is just how much of a home they can afford to purchase. Because it is hard to determine this with a lender that is just looking to close the deal, these calculators can help you to do it quite easily actually.

The amortization calculator will calculate just how much you will pay in your home monthly as well as totally. It will help you to know where your monthly payment is going each month, to principle as well as how much will go towards the interest. And, it will calculate what your monthly payment is likely to be. All of these elements can help you to determine how much of a home you can actually afford. Here’s how.

You will need to input the values of the home mortgage you plan to purchase into the amortization calculator. This will include such things as the interest rate of the loan that you qualify for, the terms of the loan (how long it will be for) as well as the amount of money you plan to borrow. When you do this, it will produce an amortization schedule that will tell you just what you need to know about the loan. The most important factor for many is how much that monthly payment will be.

If you enter in the amortization calculator the factors that you would like, you will find out if this amount of money borrowed at these terms will be the right result in monthly payments for you. If not, go back to the beginning and change the amount of home you plan to purchase. Then, refigure out the amortization scheduled to see if this actually helps the payment to be more reflective of what you would like it to be.

You may also want to consider changes in other aspects too. For example, if you can extend the loan terms for a longer period than you have them listed, you can usually gain by lowering your interest rate as well as stretching payments longer. This can help you to lower the monthly payment of the home. Or, if the amount is too low but you don’t like how much interest you are paying, go back to the amortization calculator and shorten the terms. This will cut the amount you are paying considerably in interest and raise the monthly payment.

These tools are ideal for anyone that is looking for them. They are easy to find and can help you to easily see how to shop for a loan. Instead of going with what the lender is telling you, determine which option is the right one for you in the end. An amortization calculator is ideal for these needs and many more as well.