Financial calculators are a type of electronic calculator that’s usually used by finance professionals or business students for computing multiple complicated financial functions that a regular calculator couldn’t handle.
Here, we’ll talk about something that is easier and more accessible for everyone: online financial calculators. They are helpful when it comes to financial predictions and assessing different financial strategies.
We’re here to explain what precisely financial calculators are, why they’re a helpful tool for managing finances, and how you can use them to your benefit.
Let’s dive in!
What Are Financial Calculators?
Financial calculators are necessary for anyone who wants to be in control of their finances. They are the most efficient way to calculate your rates, conversion, compound interest, and much more.
You might be wondering – “What is the best financial calculator for me?”
Depending on your preferences, you can choose to buy a physical financial calculator or go with the online one. Let’s first see what physical calculators are, how they work and look, and where you can buy them.
Physical Financial Calculators
There are different types of financial calculators, and many professionals or students use them for both client work and certification exams. All of them can be found on Amazon, but the prices might be hefty.
Financial calculators are known for their functionality and versatility. A typical financial calculator has a lot of separate buttons that can be used for different kinds of financial calculations and functions, which makes them very convenient.
Most of them can be programmed, which means that users can easily change them to add any equations they might need. This can usually be done quickly, so it’s not like you need any programming knowledge.
Financial calculators usually have a long battery life, and some even use solar power. They can have a single-line display or a four-line one with a dot matrix, and some are even graphing calculators with LCD screens. Some even have a worksheet mode!
We’ve made a list of the best financial calculators according to Amazon if you’re interested in buying physical financial calculators:
- Texas Instruments BA II Plus;
- Texas Instruments BA II Plus Professional;
- HP 17bII;
- HP 10bII;
- HP 12c Platinum;
- HP 10bII+ Financial calculator.
Now let’s discuss online financial calculators.
When You Should Use Online Financial Calculators
Financial calculators can be used for many financial calculations—whether you need to calculate your taxes, interest rates, amortization, depreciation, or anything else.
The reason their usage is so widespread is because of their functionality and accessibility. You don’t need to wait for your Amazon order to get an accurate breakdown of your calculation!
The biggest advantage of online financial calculators is that they can help you decide which investment opportunity is worth investing in or whether the financial decision you’re about to make is beneficial for you or not.
One functionality of a desktop calculator that many people use is estimating the time value of money (TVM). This feature will help you calculate if the money you have today will have a higher value in the future, and that’s the information you want to have when considering loans and investing.
Aside from high-level functions, financial calculators also have basic equations, backspace, and storage.
Why You Should Use Financial Calculators to Handle Personal Finances
Whether you’re an accountant, business owner, or any sort of financial professional in analytical industries, you can benefit from using financial calculators.
There are many ways to use online financial calculators to help you manage your money. Everything from retirement to car loans to credit card debt is part of everyday life.
In the rest of the article, we have prepared a list of the top 11 best financial calculators you can find online.
Online financial calculators are free, extremely simple to use, and built for specific financial calculations, so they aren’t confusing. Finding out about your amortization schedule is as simple as a few keystrokes.
The main reason you should use financial calculators is to take your finances into your own hands. This is the first step towards owning your own lifestyle, or, as we call it—the process of lifestyle ownership.
Are you familiar with lifestyle ownership?
If not, we’ll break down the concept by the end of this article, so you’ll get everything you need to truly own your lifestyle.
Top 11 Financial Calculators in 2023
Online financial calculators are super simple to use. Whether you want to calculate the net present value (NPV) or net future value (NFV), they’re here. You don’t need a fancy Casio FC-200v professional financial calculator or an HP 12cp. Just remember to always have your financial information at hand to make the whole process even smoother.
Here is a list of the 11 best financial calculators that you can find online for every financial aspect of your life.
11. Retirement Calculators
Funding your retirement is a long-term process that should be taken extremely seriously. One important part of saving for the future is taking care of your 401(k), your IRA, and your current savings and investments.
Retirement calculators are a useful tool that can help you on this journey. They can steer you in the right direction, let you model different retirement scenarios, and take into account variables that can affect your retirement funds.
There are many retirement calculators found online, and one of the most popular is the NerdWallet retirement calculator.
First, enter your current age, income, savings balance, and how much you save for retirement per month. You can also add optional aspects like what you expect to receive from Social Security, your spending level while retired, or change the expected retirement age.
This calculator also assumes increases in salary and inflation. You’ll get your results in a graph, and they’ll also give you explanations and advice.
10. Mortgage Calculators
Financing a home can be a stressful and complicated process, but a mortgage is the most practical way to obtain your own property. Instead of using a certified financial planner (CFP), you could just use an online mortgage calculator.
Using a mortgage calculator is handy before deciding to purchase real estate to determine whether you can even afford to live comfortably while staying on top of your bills.
For the beginning, you can try the SmartAssest.com mortgage calculator. It’s quite simple to use. To get an estimate of your monthly mortgage payment, including taxes, fees, payments, and insurance, all you have to do is enter the required information.
You just have to put in the price of the home, your down payment, the mortgage interest rate, and the type of loan.
You’ll get an overview of your total monthly payment, including your mortgage payment (P&I), home insurance, taxes, and other fees.
Additionally, you can calculate your tax, insurance, and HOA fees by filling in information about the location of the real estate you want to purchase, your annual property tax, your yearly homeowner’s insurance, and your monthly HOA/Condo fees.
They also provide recommendations for minimum savings and minimum income before purchasing real estate, with breakdowns and explanations.
9. Credit Card & Debt Payoff Calculators
If you have credit card debt, this financial calculator can tell you how long it will take you to pay it off or how much you need to save to pay off your debt faster.
We already mentioned that the collective U.S. consumer debt is $14.9 trillion. You can get out of this situation by managing your money and using debt repayment calculators.
Using the information from these financial calculators and the information you put in, you can get the recommended monthly payments that you need to meet your goals.
Having a debt repayment plan that you stick to is the only way to get out of debt.
There are plenty of online calculators you can use for this need. You can check if any of this comprehensive list of debt calculators works for you.
You can choose which one to use based on your concrete problem, whether it’s the calculation of your credit card payoff, debt consolidation, snowball elimination, or other things.
All of these are comprehensive and simple to use.
8. Auto Loan Calculators
Purchasing a vehicle is another significant investment in the life of the average American, and many people take out loans as a solution for that.
So, if you want to buy a car but don’t know anything about car loans, using the right car loan calculator is the simplest way.
You can try this car loan calculator—Auto Loan Payment Calculator.
Use the auto loan calculator to estimate your monthly car loan payments. Enter a car price and adjust other factors as needed to see how changes affect your estimated payment.
The data you enter is the price of the car you want, the down payment (which is optional), the trade-in value (also optional), the length of the loan, the annual percentage rate (APR), and sales tax.
Then you get an estimated monthly payment with a breakdown, and you can search for cars in your budget.
7. Savings Calculators
Savings are essential for almost any life event or goal, whether it be big or small. There are many different types of savings calculators, depending on the estimates you want to get.
Use them when you want to calculate how long it will take you to save for something, how much you should save each month to reach your goal by a given date, and—probably the most important one—use the compound interest calculator for your future investments.
Online calculators can help you save money. But if you’re ambitious and want to make the best use of it, a compound interest calculator can be especially useful.
Consistent investing is the key to success, and even small deposits to your savings account with compound interest can help you reach your goals faster.
You just need to put in your starting amount, the number of years you want to save for, the rate of return, any extra money you want to add, how often you want to save, and if you want to compound daily, monthly, quarterly, or annually.
If you aren’t sure about some of these things and what they mean, scroll down to find handy explanations.
You get a graph of your balance by year and an estimated total in dollars.
6. Investment Calculators
Investment calculators are slightly more complicated, and these calculations are where you could use the help of a financial professional or a financial risk manager (FRM).
These calculators can be convenient when you want to invest in something to multiply your wealth. You can get answers to calculations like investment return, internal rate of return (IRR), interest rate conversions, risk priority number (RPN), stock options, investment distributions, and more.
Try using calcXML if you want to calculate anything, from the return on your real estate investment to the value of compound interest to your risk tolerance to the long-term impact of increased investment return.
When you click on this link, you’ll find a list of all the questions regarding investment calculations that you could have, and by clicking on the ones you want to ask, you’ll be sent to a new page with a calculator.
All of these calculators are simple to use and give you complete results.
5. Loan Payment Calculators
Loans are common in today’s world, despite the fact that no one likes them. They can be overwhelming at times, so it’s crucial to stay on top of the repayment plan.
Loan payment calculators help you figure out how much you can afford to borrow and how to pay it back.
You can use a loan payment calculator even before you take out a loan, as long as you have all the relevant financial information at hand.
This payment calculator figures both types of monthly loan payments—interest-only vs. principal and interest.
The information you need to put in is the principal owed ($), the annual interest rate (APR%), the term (number of years), and then hit the “calculate payment” button, and you’ll get your results immediately at the bottom.
4. Personal Finance Calculators
Personal finance and taking care of your budget are essential for everyone. This should be done every once in a while if you want to stay on top of things.
It helps you with your personal finances, home budget, net worth, credit assessment, and more.
This is one of the most common choices people who are interested in Personal Finance Calculators make.
You get everything from a basic calculator and a basic financial calculator to a home budget analysis. When you click on the provided link, you’ll be taken to a page with a list of calculators regarding personal finances.
Here you can pick any calculator that fits your problem, and you’ll be taken to a separate page. These calculators are straightforward to use. If you don’t understand some of the aspects, you can scroll down to find a list of all the terms used in the calculator with their explanations.
3. Business Calculators
Running a business is complex and stressful. This is why most business owners choose finance professionals to handle their accounts for them, but that isn’t realistic for everyone.
If you have a small business, are just starting one, or want to take the matter into your own hands from time to time, you can use various online financial calculators to regulate expenses for your business and do the needed cash flow analysis.
Here you can find a list of business financial calculators that you’ll most likely need.
You can choose the calculator that fits your situation. For example, do you want to find out how many and at what price you must sell your product to make a profit? Or do you want to figure out how much cash you’ll need to keep your business running? Or do you have any other possible questions that a business owner could have?
Keep your financial information close at hand, but if you aren’t sure what some of the terms on the calculator mean, you’ll find a list with comprehensive explanations if you scroll down.
2. Tax Calculators
Taxes can be complicated and hard to do, but apparently, not everyone hates them that much. About one-third of Americans, or 34%, like or even love doing taxes.
But, no matter how you feel about them, they have to be done.
You can try this calculator if you want to see how much your taxes will be this year.
Their tax calculators give information about federal income taxes, margin tax rates, payroll taxes, estate taxes, and more.
Make sure to keep your financial information close at hand when filling these out. Besides the 1040 tax calculator, you can also do computations for earned income credit, estate tax planning, and more.
1. Infinite Banking Concept Calculator
Infinite Banking is the financial strategy we’re talking about and teaching, but if you’re not familiar with it, stay with us till the end of the article so you can understand it thoroughly.
Everyone who is doing infinite banking or even considering starting infinite banking can use this finance calculator to figure out their rate of return (ROR). The great news is that you don’t need an expensive and professional financial calculator to see how much money you can make using an infinite banking strategy.
You only need an online infinite banking calculator to get the most out of investments and boost profits over the long run, whether your profession is developing financial strategies for clients or planning your own financial future.
There are a few different types, but most of them require you to pay. However, there is always the option to search for a free trial.
We will now show you a financial calculator that is free for calculating your ROR—the best calculator of our top 11 best financial calculators.
This app is available for your mobile phone (Android and iOS) and desktop, so it’s really convenient for everyone. A big advantage of this calculator is that it has many options you can choose from when calculating. On top of that, it’s free and easy to use.
If you need a step-by-step explanation of how you can calculate your ROR, we covered it in the How to Use Infinite Banking Concept Calculator article.
You Don’t Need a Financial Calculator to Own Your Own Lifestyle
We mentioned the Infinite Banking concept earlier—a financial strategy that utilizes your whole life insurance policy to become your own bank. With this system in place, you’re able to mimic the traditional banking system, but instead of using savings accounts, you use a more powerful tool—a whole life insurance policy.
This strategy was developed in 1980 by Nelson Nash. And here at Wealth Nation, we’ve upgraded this concept a little.
We don’t just teach you how to design and use your policy; we also teach you the psychology of money so you can make conscious financial decisions that will build you long-lasting wealth.
The way to do that is to buy a whole life insurance policy specially designed for the process of lifestyle ownership (or infinite banking). These types of policies have a savings component where cash value accumulates.
And the second step in the process is to…
Watch Our Free Masterclass
We hope that we helped you understand the importance of taking your finances into your own hands, which financial calculators are the best to use, and how to use them.
More importantly, we hope that learning about whole life insurance and its infinite possibilities sparked your curiosity and that you’re ready to learn more. The best way to start is to watch our free masterclass.
Join us for an hour of learning where we break down the concept and teach you how to design and use your whole life insurance policy to achieve your financial goals. Lifestyle ownership begins with wealth consciousness and taking full responsibility for our lives!