How do UK Gilts interest rates and repayments work?
"A title such as ""5% Treasury Gilt 2020"" expresses the nominal yield.  In other words, 5% is the yield you will receive if you are able to buy the Gilt at the nominal (issue) price of GBP100. Of course, you will not be able to buy such a Gilt in today's market for the nominal price of GBP100.  It will be trading at a considerable premium and therefore, if you hold it until maturity you will realise a capital loss to offset the relatively high income you have received. Here is an example.  The ""8% June 2021 Gilt"" has a coupon of 8%.  To purchase a GBP100 nominal Gilt in today's market will cost you GBP135.89.  Thus, you will pay 135.89 to receive GBP8.00 income annually.  This represents a 5.88% yield (8/135.89 = 5.88%).  That sounds pretty good.  However, if you hold the Gilt until maturity you will only receive GBP100 on redemption and therefore you will experience a capital loss GBP35.89 on each Gilt purchased.  When this capital loss is taken into account it means that the 5.88% yield you are receiving as income will be offset by the capital loss so that you have earned the equivalent of 0.757% annually.  You can of course sell the Gilt before its 2021 maturity date, however as the maturity date gets closer the market price will get closer to the GBP100 nominal value and you will again face a capital loss.  There's no free ride in the markets.  5 year Gilts currently have a redemption yield of about 0.75%, while 10 year Gilts currently have a redemption yield of about 1.15%. You may also wish to note that buying Gilts in the open market requires a minimum purchase of GBP10,000 nominal value.  However, you can purchase small Gilt holdings through the post office." "The name of the Gilt states the redemption date, but not the original issue date. A gilt with 8.75% yield and close to its redemption date may have been issued at a time when interest rates were indeed close to 8.75%. For example in the early 1990s, the UK inflation rate was about 8%. One reason for preferring high or low coupon gilts is the trade off between capital gains and income, and the different taxation rules for each. If you buy a gilt and hold it to its maturity date, you know in advance the exact price that it will be redeemed for (i.e. £100). You may prefer to take a high level of income now, knowing you will make a capital loss in future (which might offset some other predictable capital gain for tax purposes) or you may prefer not to take income that you don't need right now, and instead get a guaranteed capital gain in future (for example, when you plan to retire from work). Also, you can use the change in the market value of gilts as a gamble or a hedge against your expectation of interest rate changes in future, with the ""government guaranteed"" fallback position that if your predictions are wrong, you know exactly what return you will get if you hold the gilts to maturity. The same idea applies to other bond investments - but without the government guarantee, of course."
Your calc is spot on, the output is small because it's just 5 days worth of interest, and at today's low rates that's practically 0. Also the rate you would want to use is money market rates as that's typically where companies will park cash to earn interest since its a highly liquid market. There are quite a few advantages to credit cards in the uk. But don't borrow on them past the grace period. Set up a direct debit to pay amount in full. "Lots of loans that are shady to say the least are advertised currently on TV in the UK. I'm happily in a situation where I don't need a loan but might be asked to be a guarantor. If anyone asked me to be a guarantor for a loan, I'd either be capable and willing to loan that money to the person myself, or I wouldn't guarantee. I'd never, ever in a million years be a guarantor.  There is one company in particular offering loans ""the good old-fashioned way"" asking for 49.9% interest with a guarantor. That is an interest rate that can bankrupt the guarantor. If you take the loan with me as the guarantor, and you decide that you are not interested in paying back the loan, I'm stuck with this loan. So since the guarantor must trust you, if he or she is established in the UK, the best thing to do would be for them to take a loan from a bank (or any supermarket nowadays will give you a loan at a decent rate) in their own name, give the money to you, and hope that you pay back the money. I'm equally responsible for repayment whether I'm guarantor or whether the loan is in my name, so I'd get that loan at a decent rate from a reputable bank." Yes, the interest rate on a Treasury does change as market rates change, through changes in the price. But once you purchase the instrument, the rate you get is locked in. The cashflows on a treasury are fixed. So if the market rate increase, the present value of those future cashflows decreases, so the price of the treasury decreases. If you buy the bond after this happens, you would pay a lower price for the same fixed cashflows, hence you will receive a higher rate. Note that once you purchase the treasury instrument, your returns are locked in and guaranteed, as others have mentioned. Also note that you should distinguish between Treasury Bills and Treasury Bonds, which you seem to use interchangeably. Straight from the horse's mouth, http://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/products/products.htm: Treasury Bills are short term securities with maturity up to a year, Treasury Notes are medium term securities with maturity between 1 and 10 years, and Treasury Bonds are anything over 10 years. "What you are looking for is the ""debt maturity profile"" (to make it easier to google. Most countries continuously roll over their debt, in effect just paying interest forever. So when your debt is due, you issue another loan for the same amount and use the new loan to pay off the old one." "Taking the last case first, this works out exactly. (Note the Bank of England interest rate has nothing to do with the calculation.) The standard loan formula for an ordinary annuity can be used (as described by BobbyScon), but the periodic interest rate has to be calculated from an effective APR, not a nominal rate.  For details, see APR in the EU and UK, where the definition is only valid for effective APR, as shown below. 2003 BMW 325i £7477 TYPICAL APR 12.9% 60 monthly payments £167.05 How does this work? See the section Calculating the Present Value of an Ordinary Annuity.  The payment formula is derived from the sum of the payments, each discounted to present value. I.e. The example relates to the EU APR definition like so.  Next, the second case doesn't make much sense (unless there is a downpayment). 2004 HONDA CIVIC 1.6 i-VTEC SE 5 door Hatchback £6,999 £113.15 per month ""At APR 9.9% [as quoted in advert], 58 monthly payments"" 58 monthly payments at 9.9% only amount to £5248.75 which is £1750.25 less than the price of the car. Finally, the first case is approximate. 2005 TOYOTA COROLLA 1.4 VVTi 5 door hatchback £7195 From £38 per week ""16.1% APR typical, a 60 month payment, 260 weekly payments"" A weekly payment of £38 would imply an APR of 14.3%." I'm pretty sure you are don't actually plan to put £120,000 into a zero interest account, because when you take inflation into account, in 20 years, then £120,000 won't be worth anywhere near that amount.  For its value to grow you need the interest rate to exceed the rate of inflation and so paying 20% (or even 40%) tax on the interest can make the difference between whether being richer and getting poorer. This is more of an interesting question then it looks on first sight. In the USA there are some tax reliefs for mortgage payments, which we don’t have in the UK unless you are renting out the property with the mortgage.  So firstly work out the interest rate on each loan taking into account any tax reliefs, etc. Then you need to consider the charges for paying off a loan, for example often there is a charge if you pay off a mortgage.   These days in the UK, most mortgagees allow you to pay off at least 10% a year without hitting such a charge – but check your mortgage offer document. How interest is calculated when you make an early payment may be different between your loans – so check. Then you need to consider what will happen if you need another loan.   Some mortgages allow you to take back any overpayments, most don’t.  Re-mortgaging to increase the size of your mortgage often has high charges. Then there is the effect on your credit rating: paying more of a loan each month then you need to, often improves your credit rating. You also need to consider how interest rates may change, for example if you mortgage is a fixed rate but your car loan is not and you expect interest rates to rise, do the calculations based on what you expect interest rates to be over the length of the loans. However, normally it is best to pay off the loan with the highest interest rate first.  Reasons for penalties for paying of some loans in the UK. In the UK some short term loans (normally under 3 years) add on all the interest at the start of the loan, so you don’t save any interest if you pay of the loan quicker.    This is due to the banks having to cover their admin costs, and there being no admin charge to take out the loan. Fixed rate loans/mortgagees have penalties for overpayment, as otherwise when interest rates go down, people will change to other lenders, so making it a “one way bet” that the banks will always loose.   (I believe in the USA, the central bank will under right such loans, so the banks don’t take the risk.) The idea is correct; the details are a little off. You need to apply it to the actual cash flow the bond would create. The best advice I can give you is to draw a time-line diagram. Then you would see that you receive £35 in 6 months, £35 in 12 months, £35 in 18 months, and £1035 in 24 months.  Use  the method you've presented in your question and the interest rate you've calculated, 3% per 6 months, to discount each payment the specified amount, and you're done. PS:  If there were more coupons, say a 20 year quarterly bond, it would speed things up to use the Present Value of an Annuity formula to discount all the coupons in one step... Unless you are getting the loan from a loan shark, it is the most common case that each payment is applied to the interest accrued to date and the rest is applied towards reducing the principal.  So, assuming that fortnightly means 26 equally-spaced payments during the year, the interest accrued at the end of the first fortnight is $660,000 x (0.0575/26) = $1459.62 and so the principal is reduced by $2299.61 - $1459.62 = $839.99 For the next payment, the principal still owing at the beginning of that fortnight will be $660,000-$839.99 = $659,160.01 and the interest accrued will be $659,160.01 x (0.0575/26) = $1457.76 and so slightly more of the principal will be reduced than the $839.99 of the previous payment.  Lather, rinse, repeat until the loan is paid off which should occur at the end of 17.5 years (or after 455 biweekly payments). If the loan rate changes during this time (since you say that this is a variable-rate loan), the numbers quoted above will change too. And no, it is not the case that just %5.75 of the $2300 is interest, and the rest comes off the principle (sic)? Interest is computed on the principal amount still owed ($660,000 for starters and then decreasing fortnightly). not the loan payment amount. Edit  After playing around with a spreadsheet a bit, I found that if  payments are made every two weeks (14 days apart) rather than 26 equally spaced payments in one year as I used above, interest accrues at the rate of 5.75 x (14/365)% for the 14 days rather than at the rate of (5.75/26)% for the time between payments as I used above each 14 days, $2299.56 is paid as the biweekly mortgage payment instead of the $2299.61 stated by the OP, then 455 payments (slightly less than 17.5 calendar years when leap years are taken into account) will pay off the loan.  In fact, that 455-th payment should be reduced by 65 cents.  In view of rounding of fractional cents and the like, I doubt that it would be possible to have the last equal payment reduce the balance to exactly 0. Different rates. What the BoE is conducting is known as Quantitative Easing, which is a form of monetary policy avalable to central banks whenever interest rates are already too close to zero or at zero (just like in the UK). In this case, the central banks hopes to influence longer-term rates, rather than just short-term rates. It is useful to remember that the rate central banks announce is a short-term rate used for interbank lending. Your plan will probably work. I speak from past experience approx 5-10 years ago, when Lloyds used to offer tiered interest of up to 4% on £5000 in their Vantage accounts. It was allowed for an individual person to have up to three Vantage accounts. The criteria for obtaining the headline interest rates were simply: What I, and many others, did was to set up three Vantage accounts, call them A, B, and C, and a standing order on each to transfer minimum amount + £1 on the same day each month in this manner: This satisfied the letter of conditions, though perhaps not the spirit. Most importantly it satisfied the bank, and all three accounts received that headline interest rate. These days banks have got a little wiser to this and have started including the 'set up n direct debits' condition, which makes this a more time-consuming system to arrange - you must assign your various bills across your accounts - but I believe that the overall plan still works. They don't care where the money comes from, or whether it stays - just that it comes in. Enough people get it wrong that they don't have to worry about the few who get it perfectly right (see also: how 0% balance transfer offers can be profitable...) If it's number of years and the interest is per-annum the formula is the same as the normal one.  this should work on most hand-held calculators. You definitely used to be able to (see this BBC article from 2006), and I would imagine that you still can, although I also imagine that it would be more difficult than it used to be, as with all mortgages. EDIT: And here's an article from last year about Chinese banks targeting the UK mortgage market. As no one has mentioned them I will...  The US  Treasury issues at least two forms of bonds that tend to always pay some interest even when prevailing rates are zero or negative.  The two that I know of are TIPS and I series bonds. Below are links to the descriptions of these bonds: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/indepth/tips/res_tips.htm http://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/indepth/ibonds/res_ibonds.htm