FV
Calculate what regular payments and a starting balance grow to at a fixed interest rate.
Syntax
FV(rate, nper, pmt, [pv], [type])| Argument | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
rate | Required | The interest rate per period. |
nper | Required | The number of periods. |
pmt | Required | The amount added each period. Money paid in is negative. |
pv | Optional | The starting balance. Money put in is negative. Defaults to 0. |
type | Optional | 0 (the default) for payments at the end of each period, 1 for the start. |
Examples
Every example below was executed against VisiGrid engine 0.54.0 — not
transcribed from another vendor's documentation. Reproduce any of them with vgrid calc.
| Formula | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|
=FV(0.05/12,120,-100) | 15528.23 | 100 a month for ten years at 5% a year. |
=FV(0.05/12,120,-100,0,1) | 15592.93 | Paid at the start of each month, every deposit earns one more month of interest. |
=FV(0.05,10,0,-1000) | 1628.89 | A single 1,000 left for ten years, with no further deposits. |
=FV(0,10,-100) | 1000 | With no interest the total is just the deposits. |
Deposits are negative
Money you pay in leaves your pocket, so it is negative, and the balance you get
back is positive. Enter a deposit as a positive number and FV returns a
negative result — the same size, with the sign telling you it was set up
backwards.
A lump sum is compound growth
With no regular payment, FV is ordinary compound growth, and gives the same
answer as POWER:
=FV(0.05,10,0,-1000) → 1628.89
=1000*POWER(1.05,10) → 1628.89FV earns its place when there are regular deposits as well, where the
closed-form formula is tedious to write out.
Beginning or end of the period
type matters more than it looks. Deposits made on the first of the month earn
a month’s more interest than deposits made on the last — about 65 extra on the
ten-year example above.
Excel compatibility
Matches Excel, including the sign convention and the optional pv and type arguments.