Credit Card Payoff Calculator with Excel

, every little web applet pretty much to determine how long something as “simple” as paying off a credit card seems to be laced with spyware or less than honerable intentions.  I’m sure there are multiple exceptions, but off the top of my head, only the one for discover card customers probably is benign, and I’ve often wondered if the whole reason to put it up is to encourage people to go “hey I can pay this off in no time no sweat” and go further into the whole.

So, that being said, how do we get a calculator for credit card debt payoff without having to infect our computer with malicious code?  Simple.  Use something already existing.  For windows users, the choices are in order of personal least to most favorite:

1. calc.exe (not going to cover steps of)
2. excel / office
3. open office
4. gnumeric

Reason being for the preference is really because I prefer strongly a lighter weight program that doesn’t memory whore and resource whore a computer, especially if there’s no real tangible benefits for the particular user.  2-5 all support the method of calculating credit card payoff debt and now a step-by-step guide follows:

Define your Variables and Give yourself descriptions, for example

A B

1 PV, Principle Balance                         =Amount You owe Credit Card

2 APR                                                   =Your Credit Card Annual Pct Rate

3 n, Months per Year                            =12

4 Minimum Payment                            =How much you actually pay, it’s okay if it’s more and I suggest
trying several values above and beyond your monthly minimum

5 Nper, Time Periods to Resolve          =nper(b2,-b4,b1)

6 Years to resolve                                =b5/12

And voila, instant credit card payoff function — now you can see how long you’ll REALLY be paying

[repost from site cache]