Yesterday I posted a comment to Help a Reader: Calculating Loan Options over at Free Money Finance. In this comment, I mentioned a spreadsheet I have and that I was going to share it. First, though I have to defend the rate choice I made.

I don’t have a home and have yet to go through the whole loan process for one, so I don’t KNOW what goes into the closing costs. I chose a no closing cost mortgage rate because of my lack of detailed knowledge on the subject. Every portion of a percentage point costs more for the loan, so it’s always best to go for as low a rate as you can get (without risking a rate hike, such as with an ARM).

Now for the spreadsheet. I’ve uploaded it as both Excel and NeoOffice/Open Office spreadsheets, the Excel version should work, but the spreadsheet was created with NeoOffice.

Amortization Spreadsheet in NeoOffice/OpenOffice

Amortization Spreadsheet in Excel

I’ve actually modified these to a slightly easier to use format.  All you really have to do is enter your information in the top left corner and it will do the rest.  You can override the payment by just entering the actual payment in place of the calculated payment or, if a single payment is different, you can just enter it into the payment column for the correct payment.