Personal Finance Resources

If you want to estimate car payments before you buy a new or used car, you’ve found the right page. I have compiled a spreadsheet that you can download and put in the specifics of your situation and calculate a payment that will be very close to what your actual payment might look like. This is a simple spreadsheet that will calculate your payment only. After your payment is calculated, you will then have to add any additional monthly payments for insurance or other protection you may need.

Using the Estimate Car Payments Spreadsheet

This xls file is pretty easy to use. Here are the quick instructions:

• Input the loan amount that you will be taking out for the car in the Principle Loan Amount cell.
• Put in your interest rate.
• Last, input your number of years to repay the loan in the Loan Term in Years cell.

After you have inputted the information, the Monthly Payment will be calculated automatically for you. In the example, there is a $19,000 loan taken out over a 5 year period with 12% of interest. The monthly payment comes out to $422.64. Sounds pretty high, doesn’t it? Well what the advertisements on TV don’t tell you about the $99 down, $99 per month is that they are probably doing a 7 year note or even longer. So it makes sense to do your own estimation; chances are it will work out a lot closer to the actual number you will be paying than what the commercials will lead you to believe.

Here’s the xls spreadsheet for download: Estimate Car Payments .xls

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Deciding whether to buy a new or a used car can be difficult. When considering your options, which of these three do you fall under:

1. I am looking for a particular car, and am not concerned with its depreciated value over time.
2. I am looking for a balance between investment value and features/preferences.
3. I am looking for a car that will retain the highest value possible over time.

There are distinct advantages and disadvantages no matter which way you choose to go. But let’s look at my recommendations based on the above categories. If you fall into Category 1, you should buy a new car, and drive it for years to come. The key thing here is, that you do not sell you car within the first two years, as new cars lose 60-70% of their value during this time. You should expect less maintenance costs with a new car, but I highly recommend obtaining a great warranty package as well to further reduce your maintenance costs, the point being that since you will be making a car payment, you want to have as few unforeseen costs as possible.

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It’s a known fact that shopping for car insurance is a pain in the rear.  It’s a state law, and you hate it, but you have to pay it.  Or maybe you want that big policy because you just bought a new car, and nothing would be worse than totalling the new car and not being able to replace it.  But before you pick up the telephone or go online to find car insurance quotes, be sure you know what you need.  Here is a quick list of things to think about before contacting a company about car insurance:

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