Get startedGet started for free

Calculating PV when f > 1 and n > 1

1. Title Slide

Let's now see how discounting the future value to find the present value works when we split one year into different periods, or in other words, for different frequencies, as well as for different number of years. Let's imagine that you need $1500 in four years time. You want to know how much you need to put in the bank today. In other words, you want to discount the future value of $1500 to find its present value. The bank pays an annual or nominal interest rate of 6% per year. However, it does compound its interest on a six month or semi annual basis. So the frequency f is going to be 2. Because we're working backwards from four years in the future to find the present value, and because the bank pays semi annual compounded interest, the number of periods between the future value and the present value is four multiplied by two, which of course is eight. So if we have a future value of $1500 four years from today, and if interest rates were 6% and we're using a discounting frequency of two, the present value is 1184.11. Another way to say this is that if you had 1184.11 today, invested it and received 6% interest compounded semi annually, you'd have 1500 in four years time. Now from an investing point of view, you wouldn't really mind which finding you had, the 1184.11 today or the 1500 in four years time, because they both have the same value. Here in the second example, we've used the different inputs. Now let's open up Excel again and see if we can get the same results as these last two examples. When we enter the formulas, we're going to have to be really careful about getting our brackets in the right position in our formulas. So here I've just scrolled down to the next section in our Excel workbook called Present Values Using Discounting, and I just want to walk through the last two examples that we've seen to make sure that we can get the same numbers in Excel. Now in the first example that we walked through, we had a future value of 1500 four years from today, nominal rates at 6%, and we're assuming semi annual discounting, so the opposite of compounding. And we want to know what the present value is. So let's start by just putting in our input. So we've got a future value of 1500, we've got nominal rates of 6%, and we've got semi annual discounting, so the frequency is two. And we want to discount back four years to get the present value. So we can see the present value formula in cell D109 there just to help us remember what it is, because it is quite hard to remember where to put all the brackets and everything, isn't it? So the present value equals the future value times one divided by, open bracket, one plus the nominal rate of 6% divided by the discounting frequency of two. And then we're going to close that, and we're gonna raise that all to the power of N4 times F2. And we get, when we do that, 1184.11. Now we can also use the present value formula in Excel just to confirm that number. So let's start by putting a minus sign out the front of the PV function to make sure our answer is a positive number. We want the rate per period. Well, it's a 6% nominal, and it's a frequency of two, so we divide that by f. The number of periods we're discounting back is the number of years, four times two, the number of discounting periods in a year. We're not making or receiving any payments along the way, so PMT is zero, and the future value is 1500. And as always, we're assuming that all the action, the discounting, or the compounding happens at the end of the period, so type is zero. And we get the same result, 1184.11. So here's the second example that we've just seen. Let's see if we can get the same result. What is the present value if the future value three years from today is 1250? And we're going to assume nominal rates are 10%, so the nominal rate is 10%. And we're using monthly discounting, so the frequency is 12. And remember, our future value was three years from today. So what's the present value? Well, we start by taking the future value, and we multiply that by one divided by open bracket one plus the nominal rate of 10%, divided by the discounting frequency, which is 12. We're going to close that bracket and raise that all to the power of n times f, which I can pick up there, and we can just close that bracket. So the present value is $927.17. So let's just make sure that we can get that using the PV function. And so the rate per period 10% divided by 12, the number of periods three times 12. We're not making or receiving any payments, so PMT is zero, and the future value is 1250. And the type is zero. And we can see when we do that, we get the same result, 927.17. Well done.

2. Let's practice!