How to Calculate a Loan With Different Payment Dates

Many types of loans, including student loans and credit cards, calculate interest charges by the day rather than the month. The interest you pay is based on the day when the lender receives payment. If the day on which you send the payment fluctuates each month, or if you send multiple payments each month, it is difficult to predict in advance exactly how your loan payment schedule will look. However, you can calculate the remaining balance on your loan by determining how much of each payment goes toward interest and how much is left to pay off principal.

Instructions

1

Look up your most recent loan balance on your statement. Also note the day on which your last payment was applied to the loan.

2

Find the interest rate on the loan statement. Divide the interest rate by 100 to convert it to a decimal. Divide the result by 365.25 to convert it to a daily interest multiplier. For example, if your interest rate is 7.9 percent, divide by 100 to get 0.079 and divide that by 365.25 to get 0.0002163 as your daily interest multiplier.

3

Count the number of days between your last payment and when you expect your next payment to be applied to your loan balance. If your last payment was April 20 and your next payment will be applied on May 13, there will be 23 days between payments.

4

Multiply the daily interest multiplier by the number of days between payments and your loan balance. The result is the interest charge that will come out of the payment you send. In this case, if your loan balance was $7,914.50, you would multiply 0.0002163 by 23 and then by $7,914.50 to get an interest charge of $39.37.

5

Subtract the interest charge from the amount of the payment you will send to find out how much of your payment will go toward principal. For example, if you are sending a payment of $200, subtract the $39.37 of interest to arrive at a principal payment of $160.63.

6

Subtract the amount of the principal payment from the amount you owed on your loan after the last payment. This is how much you will owe after your payment is applied. In this case, your loan balance of $7,914.50 will decrease by $160.63 and you will now owe $7,753.87

7

Repeat the process for each payment, being careful to accurately count the number of days between the previous payment and when the next one will be applied.