Spending money is easy, but saving it is a lot harder. Luckily, there are tons of free financial tools you can leverage to help you save money, pay off and stay out of debt.
Bankrate is one of these tools.
Bankrate offers a slew of calculators all geared towards very specific financial goals. Whether you’re trying to pay off a hefty student loan or save for the down payment on a home, these calculators can help.
Read on to learn how you can use Bankrate to make smart financial choices and achieve your savings goals.
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1. Bankrate savings calculators
Bankrate offers many different savings calculators to help individuals reach their savings goals.
One of these is a very basic calculator where you fill in what your initial deposit is, the amount you’ll contribute per month and how many years you’ll contribute that amount for. There is also a spot to fill out the annual percentage yield (APY). If you already have an account open and know the APY, you can fill that in yourself. If you don’t have an account yet, you can go with the average in the U.S. of 0.58%, according to Bankrate.
Once you have all fields completed, you can see how much money you’ll earn from your savings account, with your initial contribution, total contributions and the interest that was earned.
If you have a specific amount of money you want to have saved by a deadline, you can use Bankrate’s savings calculator.
With this tool, you’ll enter what your goal is and how many years you plan on taking to reach that goal.
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You can then fill in the interest rate per year, and the amount and date of your first deposit. You’ll receive a breakdown of the total you’ll have to put aside per month in order to reach your goal. If you want an even further breakdown, you’ll also be able to see how much that equals per day and week. This calculator is ideal for something like saving for a new car or even a vacation.
Another interesting tool you can use on Bankrate is their million dollars calculator. With this, you’ll need to fill in information like your age, the age at which you’d like to be a millionaire, how much you currently have invested and how much you save a month.
There are also spaces for the expected rate of return, which is pre-set at 7%, and the expected inflation rate, which is on average, 2.9%.
Then, you can see how much money you’ll have at each age leading up to your millionaire status. This will provide you with a very clear look at whether you’re on track to reach your goal.
2. Bankrate real estate calculators
If you are on the hunt for a new home, but need guidance on how much to spend, Bankrate has a tool that can help you.
With their home affordability calculator, you can input your yearly income, the debt you have accrued, if any, the down payment you intend on and the loan term.
You will be given two different sets of numbers based off the information you included. First, there will be a recommended budget, with the price of a home, the monthly payment and the closing costs. Bankrate recommends that you should keep housing expenses lower than 28% of your income per month.
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Then, there will be a maximum budget, with the highest price of a home you can afford, what that monthly payment will look like and what the approximate closing costs will be of a house at that price.
Using this tool can give you a clear picture of what you can afford, to make sure you don’t wind up going over budget.
If you have various locations for home buying in mind, you can dig into this with the cost of living comparison calculator.
Here, you will add the city you currently reside in, where you are moving to and what your current income is.
Then, you’ll be given the cost of living in your new city and how that compares to where you are moving from.
You can even see a comparison in the costs of things like groceries, rent, home prices, gas and health-related costs. This tool can help you make a financially sound decision and also help you avoid unexpected increased costs when you reach your new city.
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If you are selling your home and have no idea what it’s worth, you can simply type in your address and Bankrate will instantly provide you with a home valuation by Zillow. This number is an estimate, but it will drive your understanding.
3. Bankrate investing calculators
Investing can be a really confusing topic, but also a great way to make more money from your cash.
There are several different Bankrate tools that can help you with investing, like the investing calculator. This calculator will allow you to see if you’re on track to reaching your investing goals. There’s also the asset allocation calculator, which can help you build a balanced portfolio.
4. Tools for managing debt from Bankrate
While there are various Bankrate tools to encourage saving and growing your own money, there are also ones that help you pay off debts.
One of these is a student loan calculator. With this tool, you can type in how much your loan is for, what the term is in years or months and the interest rate per year on the loan.
Then, you’ll be able to see what your monthly payment is, the total for the year that will be going toward principal and the total going to interest.
You can even see what the estimated payoff date is, and a schedule of all your monthly payments, including your balance at the end of each month.
If you want to pay your loan off faster and put extra payments in on a monthly basis, yearly or just one time, you can schedule that all in as well to get more accurate numbers.
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