When you invest in a fixed deposit, you lock-in a lump sum amount over a fixed tenor. The fixed interest rates and tenor offered on fixed deposits makes it easy for you to gauge the returns in advance.
However, you would need the assistance of an FD calculator to calculate the returns accurately. An FD return calculator is a tool that fetches some inputs from you regarding the FD plan you wish to deposit your money in and does the rest of the work like selecting the applicable interest rate, calculating the interest and returns on its own.
Follow these steps to find the returns of various FD plans online:
- Step 1: Start by choosing your customer category. There will be separate categories for a new customer, senior citizen, existing customer, etc. and the interest rate applicable to each category might be different.Therefore, selecting the right category becomes essential to help the FD calculator monthly interest perform precise calculations.
- Step 2: Now, pick an FD type i.e. cumulative or non-cumulative. It will determine your overall returns as the calculator will display the periodic interest payouts in case of non-cumulative FDs and the total accumulated interest will be displayed at once if you select cumulative FD as the FD type.
- Step 4: Now, enter values like amount and tenor and the calculator will display the returns and interest earnings accordingly.
How to use an FD calculator to invest wisely in an FD plan?
- By using an FD calculator, you can check the returns provided by various FD plans to find the one that suits your financial requirements.
- The FD interest rate is the key factor that determines your returns. The bank FD interest rates in 2020 are not quite satisfactory especially since the banks decided to lower their interest rates after the RBI kept the repo rate lower to attract borrowers.
- However, you still can manage to bag enough returns at maturity by investing in a corporate FD that offers higher FD rates.
For example, Bajaj Finance is offering interest rates up to 7.35% which is almost 1-2% higher than the bank FD rates.
Let’s say you want to invest a sum of Rs. 5,00,000 in a fixed deposit plan of 5 years. To see the difference between bank FDs and company fixed deposit plans like Bajaj Finance FD you can refer the below table:
| Amount | Tenor | Fixed deposit | Interest rate | Interest Earnings | Final maturity value |
| Rs. 5,00,000 | 5 years | Bajaj Finance FD | 7.35% | Rs. 2,04,559 | Rs. 7,04,559 |
| Rs. 5,00,000 | 5 years | Bank FD | 5.35% | Rs. 1,52,189 | Rs. 6,52,189 |
You can see that this difference in interest rates is big enough to create a huge difference in your returns.
With Bajaj Finance, you also get a chance of investing in multiple FDs at once by using the multi-deposit facility.
An additional FD rate of 0.25% is offered to senior citizens and you can also take the advantage of a flexible tenor that ranges from 12 to 60 by locking-in your savings for a period that suits your financial plans.
Moreover, these fixed deposit plans have received high ratings from ICRA (MAAA/stable) and CRISIL (FAAA/stable) which means that your deposits are secure against changing market conditions.
Also, if you don’t feel like investing a bulk amount, you can start depositing every month by investing in the Systematic Deposit Plan. This plan allows you to deposit a monthly sum of Rs. 5000 and the number of deposits can vary from 6 to 48 as per your capacity.
A tenor up to 60 months can be selected for each deposit or all the deposits can either mature on the same date i.e. only the first deposit will be locked-in for the entire tenor or have subsequent monthly maturity dates.
