Amortization Calculator: See Your Full Payment Schedule
An amortization schedule shows how every mortgage payment splits between principal and interest over the life of your loan. This calculator generates that full schedule, so you can see exactly how your balance drops over time and how the principal/interest mix shifts.
The pattern that surprises people
In the early years of a mortgage, the large majority of each payment goes to interest, with only a small slice reducing your actual balance. That flips slowly over time. By the final years, almost all of each payment goes to principal. This is why your balance barely moves in year one but drops quickly near the end, and why extra payments early on are so powerful, they attack principal before all that interest has a chance to accrue.
What you can learn from your schedule
Seeing the full schedule helps you understand real things: how much total interest you'll pay over the loan (often shockingly close to the loan amount itself on a 30-year term), how a 15-year term dramatically cuts total interest versus a 30-year, and how extra payments reshape the whole curve. If seeing the total interest motivates you to pay faster, the payoff calculator shows what extra payments would do.
Why this matters for choosing a term
The amortization schedule makes the 15-vs-30-year tradeoff concrete. A 15-year loan has higher monthly payments but a far smaller total-interest number, because you're not dragging the balance out over three decades. Seeing both schedules side by side is often what makes the decision clear, and if you already own, the refinance calculator shows what switching to a shorter term would cost.
