Effective Interest Rate
The term effective interest rate is the actual return from a savings account or any investment where you pay interest when considering the effects of compounding costs over time. Through an effective interest rate, you can fully and correctly determine the real percentage rate that you own on a loan’s interest, a credit card, or any other debt type.
An effective interest rate is also referred to as an effective annual interest rate, the annual equivalent rate, or the effective rate.
The Effective Interest Rate Formula:
With:
i = Nominal Interest Rate
n = Number of periods
What does the Effective Interest Rate Mean?
When you look at loans, the way through which they are advertised will give you two types of information. Firstly, we’ll have the nominal interest rate, which doesn’t consider the effects compounding interest or fees have on the financial product. Secondly, and the one we focus on now, the effective interest rate, which gives you the real return paid on savings of the actual cost of a loan because it does take into account the effect fees and compounding interest have on the financial product.
For that exact reason, knowing and understanding what the effective interest rate means is important. Through a proper understanding of the effective interest rate, you can compare offers more accurately to make an informed decision based on the result.
How to Find the Effective Interest Rate?
To adequately explain how to find the effective interest rate from any financial product’s promotional information, we will look at two examples. Firstly, we’ll have Loan A that has a 5% interest rate that’s compounded monthly. Secondly, we’ll have Loan B with a 5.1% interest rate that’s compounded bi-annually.
Both of these loans are advertised with their nominal interest rate. Remember, this is the one that doesn’t take into account the effects fees and compounding interest has on the loan. To calculate the effective interest rate, we’ll use the formula shown above.
While the nominal interest rate for Loan A is smaller than that of Loan B’s, the effective interest rate from Loan B is lower than that of Loan A’s. This occurs because Loan B has fewer compounding times over the course of a year.
Popular Real Estate Terms
Increase in the value of property arising from holding it. The gain is realized only when the property is sold at which time it is taxable. An example is the increase in the appraised value ...
Past action of a property owner or tenant. ...
The meaning of a guarantee covers a legal and financially-binding agreement signed between three parties involved in real estate or financial transactions. In this document, typically ...
See effective tax rate. ...
In a construction loan, payments made to a contractor as the various construction stages are completed. The contractor uses progress payments to pay the various subcontractors and suppliers ...
Cash outlays required to maintain an investment position. ...
Book value is a quintessential term used in the financial world and the real estate business. Though, there are slight differences in its interpretation in these two areas of ...
An offering of securities, stock and/or debt, directly to investors rather then through the public exchange markets. An advantage of a private placement to a real estate business is that ...
If you are involved with real estate, chances are you've come across the term "convey" or conveyance. But what does convey mean in real estate? This term is crucial whether you're buying, ...
Have a question or comment?
We're here to help.