I’m trying to create a personal budget using Excel. Two handy functions are FV (to calculate what my total savings will be in X years) and PMT (to calculate how much I need to save each month in order to reach a particular goal).
The problem is, plugging the same numbers in gives different results for the two functions. Is it me or Excel?
I meant to post this in general questions. Sorry.
FV is for future value of investments and PMT calculates repaying a debt so I don’t think you should consider them interchangeable.
Well yeah, but should one be the inverse of the other, more or less?
Let’s call the result of FV(rate, nper, Payment, pv) “FutureVal”.
If I execute PMT(rate, nper, pv, FutureVal), shouldn’t the result be the same as the “Payment” argument passed to FV?
No. One is charging you interest, the other is crediting you with interest.
I just needed to insert a minus in front of the pv in PMT.
exactly
I see no debate here.
You’ll get more mileage over in GQ (where you will next find it).