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FV & PV in Excel

1. FV & PV in Excel

So back in the Excel workbook you can see the demonstration that we completed in an earlier lesson. So if you just scroll down we can see that we've got some templates set up to help replicate the example that we just saw in the video. So I'm just gonna scroll down and in the first example we want to calculate the future value when we know that the present value is 100, the annual compound interest rate is 5% and the term is 3 years. Now here is the algebraic formula that we introduced in the lesson, the future value equals the present value times 1 plus I all raised to the power of n. So let's see if we can get the same future value of 115.76. So I'm gonna start by typing equals the present value times open bracket 1 plus the annual compound interest rate of 5% all raised and to do the raised button in Excel you hold the shift, press 6 for the arrow up to the power of 3 years. And when I hit enter you can see that I've got 115.76. So you can see the handy little formula there in cell D46 just to remind ourselves what the formula is. Now really usefully in Excel, Excel has something called the future value function or the FV function. And so if I start typing FV, the FV function comes out and if I just hit tab the bracket opens so you can see what the inputs are. The first input is the rate and the rate in this example is the interest rate of 5% so let me just reference 5%. NPER stands for the number of periods and in this example the number of periods was 3 years. Now along the way there's no payments being made or received, we're trying to figure out how much we have in 3 years time so there's no annual payments to worry about so in this specific example I'm just gonna type 0 for no payments. Now what's the present value? Well we know the present value, the present value is the 100 that we have up in cell D41. And finally we have type and we've got 2 options here, either 0 or 1. 0 means any cash flows paid happens at the end of the period, the end of the year and that's really the most common scenario when we do these sorts of calculations. Although if there was a payment at the start of the year we would input 1. So I'm just gonna type 0 here because we want to know how much we've got at the end of each year and then when I hit the close bracket and just press tab to tab across, we can see that we get the same answer but it's a negative, negative 115.76. And that's because Excel is just assuming that the present value cash flow is moving in the opposite direction to the future value cash flow. We either borrow 100 today so we receive 100 and then we repay 115.76 in 3 years time so there we have the cash flow moving in the opposite direction. So there is a couple of things that we could do to fix this up, we can just activate the cell by pressing F2 and we can just go to the start of the function and we can just put a little negative sign in front there and that'll just change our answer to be a positive number. And so there we have, we've proven the future value of 115.76. So what about working back the other way? What about when we know the future value and we want to find the present value, in other words we want to do some discounting? Well we know, let's use the same numbers that we can see on the screen there. So 115.76 is our future value. So in other words when we discount that at 5% annual compounding for 3 years, we should get a present value of 100 because it's just doing the opposite to what we've just looked at. We've got the formula written handily there in cell H46, the present value equals the future value times 1 divided by 1 plus I, close[all raised to the power N]. So there's a couple of brackets there that we have to make sure we put in the right place. So the future value is 115 times, open bracket, 1 divided by, and then there's another open bracket, 1 plus the compound interest rate, the annual compound interest rate of 5%, all raised to the power of 3, because it's 3 years, and we want to make sure that we close the bracket there. So hopefully having that formula written just underneath where you're inputting that formula, having the equation written out there, just helps you remember a little bit. And if I enter, you can see that yep, we get 100, so that's spot on. Now unsurprisingly, Excel has a future value function, it also has a present value function. So I can start typing that in. This time I'm gonna put my negative in at the start so I don't have to go back and do that, and I'll type PV and open bracket. So very similar inputs, we have our rate of 5%, we have our number of periods of 3, there's no payments being made or received along the way so again I'm gonna input 0, we know the future value, 115.76, and the type is 0 again. And if we end up closing the bracket, and just hitting tab to tab along, we can see that we get a present value of 100.

2. Let's practice!