Calculate APR for under 1 year loan
Is the pay cycle every 2 weeks? So 30% each two week period is 1.3^26 = 917.33 or an APR of 91633%.  Loansharks charge less, I believe standard vig was 2%/week for good customers. Only 180% per year.
"To expand on @JoeTaxpayer's answer, the devil is actually in the fine print. All  the ""credit-card checks"" that I have ever received in the mail explicitly says that the checks cannot be used to pay off  (or pay down) the balance on any other credit card issued by the same bank, whether the card is branded with the bank logo or is branded with a department-store or airline logo etc. The checks can be used to pay utilities, or even taxes, without paying the ""service fee"" that is charged for using a credit card for such payments. The payee is paid the face amount of the check, in contrast to charges on a credit card from a merchant who gets to collect only about 95%-98% of the amount on the  ""charge slip"". Generally speaking, balance transfer offers are a bad deal regardless   of whether you pay only the minimum amount due each month or whether   you pay each month's statement balance in full by the due date or   anything in between. The rest of this answer is an explanation in support of the above assertion. Feel free to TL;DR it if you like. If you make only the minimum payment due each month and some parts of the balance that you are carrying has different interest rates applicable than other parts, then your payment can be applied to any part of the balance at the bank's discretion. It need hardly be said that the bank invariably chooses to apply it to pay off the lowest-rate portion. By law (CARD Act of 2009), anything above the minimum payment due must be applied to pay off the highest-rate part (and then the next highest rate part, etc), but minimum payment or less is at the bank's discretion. As an illustration, suppose that you are not using your credit cards any more and are conscientiously paying down the balances due by making the minimum payment due each month. Suppose also that you have a balance of $1000 carrying 12% APR on Card A, and pay off the entire balance of $500 on Card B, transferring the amount at 0% APR to Card A for which you are billed a 2% fee. Your next minimum payment  will be likely be $35; computed as $10 (interest on $1000) + $10 transfer fee + $15 (1% of balance of $1500). If you make only the minimum payment due, that payment will go towards paying off the $500, and so for next month, your balance will be $1500 of which $1035 will be charged 1% interest, and $465 will be charged 0% interest.  In the months  that follow, the balance on which you owe 1% interest per month will grow and the 0% balance will shrink.  You have to pay more than the minimum amount due to reduce the amount that you owe. In this example, in the absence of the balance transfer, the minimum payment would have been $20 = $10 (interest on $1000 at 1% per month) + $10 (1% of balance) and would have left you with $990 due for next month.  To be at the same point with the balance transfer offer, you would need to pay $30 more than the minimum payment of $35 due. This extra $30 will pay off the interest and transfer fee ($20) and the rest will be applied to the $1000 balance to reduce it to $990. There would be no balance transfer fee in future months and so the extra that you need to pay will be a little bit smaller etc. If you avoid paying interest charges on credit cards by never taking any cash advances and by paying off the monthly balance  (consisting only of purchases made within the past month) in full by the due date, then the only way to avoid paying interest on the purchases made during the month of the balance transfer offer is to pay off that month's statement in full (including the balance just transferred over and the balance transfer fee) by the due date.  So, depending on when in the billing cycle the transfer occurs, you are getting a loan of the balance transfer amount for 25 to 55 days and being charged 2% or 3% for the privilege. If you are getting offers of 2% balance transfer fees instead of 3%, you are probably among those who pay their balances in full each month, and the bank is trying to tempt you into doing a balance transfer by offering a lower fee. (It is unlikely that they will make a no-transfer-fee offer.) They would prefer laughing all the way to themselves by collecting a 2% transfer fee from you (and possibly interest too if you fail to read the fine print) than having you decline such offers at 3% as being too expensive. Can you make a balance transfer offer work in your favor? Sure.  Don't make any purchases on the card in the month of the balance transfer or during the entire time that the 0% APR is being offered. In the month of the transfer, pay the minimum balance due plus the balance transfer fee. In succeeding months, pay the minimum balance due (typically 1% of the balance owed) each month. All of it will go to reducing the 0% APR balance because that is the only amount owing. Just before the 0% APR expires (anywhere from 6 to 24 months), pay off the remaining balance in full.  But remember that you are losing the use of this card for this whole period of time. Put it away in a locked trunk in the attic because using the card to make a purchase will mean paying interest on charges from the day they post, something that might be totally alien to you." "No one has addressed the fact that your loan interest and property taxes are ""deductible"" on  your taxes? So, for the first 2/3 years of your loan, you will should be able to deduct each year's mortgage payment off your gross income. This in turn reduces the income bracket for your tax calculation.... I have saved 1000's a year this way, while seeing my home value climb, and have never lost a down payment.  I would consider trying to use 1/2 your savings to buy a property that is desirable to live in and being able to take the yearly deduction off your taxes. As far as home insurance, most people I know have renter's insurance, and homeowner's insurance is not that steep.  Chances are a year from now if you change your mind and wish to sell, unless you're in a severely deflated area, you will reclaim at minimum your down payment." "I would actually disagree with MrChrister on this. You can afford yourself the car in this price range paid cash. I don't know how exactly you spend your income, but from my experience, in expensive California, saving $20K a year from $70K income with $800/mo rent is feasible. Having a loan on your credit report which is paid on time and in full will definitely help you rebuilding your credit. Your calculations re the costs of the loan are based on the assumption that you're going to keep the loan for the whole period. Don't do that. See #1 - you can repay this loan much quicker than the 3 years it should originally have been. 6 months of the loan which is then paid off will do marvels to your credit report and credit score. Yes, it is going to cost you some, but in your particular case I would argue that its worth it. You're an adult now, you need credit cards, you'll need a mortgage at some point, you need to rent a place to live - all these require a good credit report. Just waiting, as MrChrister suggests, will help, but much much slower.  Having said that, a seller that ""cannot discuss the terms over the phone"" is most likely a dishonest person. Once you're there and in front of him it is harder for you to verify information, resist signing papers, and negotiating." There are a few things you should keep in mind when getting another vehicle: DON'T use dealership financing. Get an idea of the price range you're looking for, and go to your local bank or find a local credit union and get a pre-approval for a loan amount (that will also let you know what kind of interest rates you'll get). Your credit score is high enough that you shouldn't have any problems securing a decent APR. Check your financing institution's rules on financing beyond the vehicle's value. The CU that refinanced my car noted that between 100% and 120% of the vehicle's value means an additional 2% APR for the life of the loan. Value between 120% and 130% incurred an additional 3% APR. Your goal here is to have the total amount of the loan less than or equal to the value of the car through the sale / trade-in of your current vehicle, and paying off whatever's left out of pocket (either as a down-payment, or simply paying off the existing loan).  If you can't manage that, then you're looking at immediately being upside-down on the new vehicle, with a potential APR penalty. Since the compounding period and payment period differs (Compounded Daily vs Paid Monthly), you need to find the effective interest rate for one payment period (month).   This means that each month you pay 0.33387092772% of the outstanding principal as interest.  Then use this formula to find the number of months:  Where PV = 21750, Pmt = 220, i = 0.0033387092772  That gives 120 Months.  Depending on the day count convention, (30/360 or 30.416/365 or Actual/Actual), the answer may differ slightly. Using Financial Calculator gives extremely similar answer.  The total cash paid in the entire course of the loan is 120 x $220 = $26,400 RD Interest Calculator - Use the advanced Recurring Deposit Calculator from HDFC Bank to calculate the maturity amount earned on your investment. Simply key in your initial amount, at a desired rate of interest for a specific term for which you wish to invest. Find out how much do you earn through a Recurring Deposit! The equation for the payment is  This board does not support Latex (the number formatting code) so the above is an image, the code is M is the payment calculated, n is the number of months or periods to pay off, and i is the rate per period. You can see that with i appearing 3 times in this equation, it's not possible to isolate to the form i=....  so a calculator will 'guess,' and use, say, 10%. It then raises or lowers the rate until the result is within the calculator's tolerance. I've observed that unlike other calculations, when you hit the button to calculate, a noticeable time lag occurs. I hope I haven't read too much into your question, it seemed to me this was what you asked. I think they're compounding the interest daily. That means you have to look at the number of days between payments to judge how much the interest charge is. From February 3 to March 2 is 28 days (2012 was a leap year). From March 2 to April 3 is 32 days. That's an increase of about 14% in number of days between payments, which accounts reasonably well to the ~$18 difference in interest charge.  Daily compounding also explains the minor fluctuations in the other interest charges. I think if you compute interest/day for each month, you'll find that it is, indeed, decreasing over time.