The Excel formula for calculating the discount rate is =RATE (nper, pmt, pv, [fv], [type], [guess]). It’s often used to calculate the interest rate for a loan or determine the rate of return ...

Daniel Jassy, CFA, is an Investopedia Academy instructor and the founder of SPYderCRusher Research. He contributes to Excel and Algorithmic Trading. Compound interest is interest that's calculated ...

You'd start by calculating your monthly payment (if you don't already know it), using Excel's PMT function. Following our example above, for a loan with a 7% interest rate, 12 payments a year ...