Amortization Schedule Calculator (Loan Payoff Table)
See every payment of a fixed-rate loan with a full amortization schedule: monthly principal, interest, remaining balance, extra-payment savings, and payoff date.
Amortization — interactive calculator, computed instantly in your browser.
Reading an Amortization Schedule: Where Every Mortgage Payment Goes
Balance Falls Slowly at First — Interest Ate the Early Payments
An amortization schedule is the full autopsy of a loan: every payment, split into interest, principal, and the shrinking balance that remains. Fixed-rate mortgages and car loans follow the same rigid arithmetic — the payment never changes, but its composition flips from almost-pure-interest to almost-pure-principal over the term. This calculator prints the complete table and lets extra payments rewrite it.
1. The Payment Formula (and Why Month One Hurts)
- $250,000 at6.5% for30 years: r =0.0054167, n =360 → M ≈ $1,580.17 per month
- Month one's interest: $250,000 ×0.0054167 = $1,354.17 — 85.7% of the check. Only ≈$226 reduces the debt
- Each month the balance dips, interest dips a little, and principal grows a little — the schedule's interest column declines from day one to payoff
- Total interest over the full term: about $318,900 — the loan costs more than itself in fees-to-borrow
2. Extra Payments Delete the Tail
A dollar of extra payment attacks principal once — but it also cancels every future interest dollar that principal would have spawned, across all remaining months. Adding just $100/month pulls the payoff forward by roughly five years and shaves tens of thousands off the interest. Two classic accelerators: biweekly payments (half the monthly amount every two weeks =13 full payments a year instead of12) and rounding the payment up to the next hundred. Both must be marked "apply to principal" with the servicer — otherwise it just pre-pays next month's interest.
3. When the Schedule Actually Matters
- Refinancing decisions: a lower rate resets the clock — compare remaining interest under the old schedule versus closing costs under the new one
- Selling early: in years1–5 most payments haven't touched principal, so equity grows slowly — a key number before any move
- Buying points: paying upfront to lower the rate shifts the whole curve down; the break-even is how many months of savings offset the point cost
- Never "skip" a payment and let the servicer apply it to future installments — direct it to principal or the schedule doesn't move
🔗 Loan Math Cross-References
The schedule is the loan's autobiography — payment by payment, watch it alongside the 💰 Financial Hub tools that shaped it.
Refinancing rewrites r and n mid-story; re-run the mortgage and early-payoff calculators to judge whether the reset pays for itself.
Frequently Asked Questions (Amortization)
A table listing every payment of a fixed-rate loan with four columns: the payment number, how much goes to interest, how much reduces principal, and the remaining balance. It starts at the full loan amount and ends at exactly $0.00 on the final row.
M = P × r ÷ (1 − (1 + r)^−n), where P is the principal, r the monthly interest rate, and n the number of months. For $250,000 at6.5% over30 years that is about $1,580.17 — the same figure every month until payoff.
On a $250,000 loan at6.5%, month one accrues $1,354.17 of interest — roughly86% of the first payment. Only about $226 reduces the balance, which is why refinancing or extra principal early in the term saves the most money.
Extra dollars go straight to principal, shrinking the balance that future interest is calculated on — compounding works in reverse. $100 extra per month on a $250k/6.5%/30-year loan cuts roughly five years of payments and tens of thousands in interest.