Julia Kagan is a financial/consumer journalist and former senior editor, personal finance, of Investopedia. Dr. Melody Bell is a personal finance expert, entrepreneur, educator, and researcher. Melody ...

Investopedia contributors come from a range of backgrounds, and over 25 years there have been thousands of expert writers and editors who have contributed. Investopedia / Hilary Allison The present ...

An annuity is an insurance contract you purchase to receive payments for a specific period, such as 30 years, or for the rest of your life. By applying a mathematical formula consisting of variables ...

Image source: Flickr user Ken Funakoshi. A perpetual annuity, also called a perpetuity, promises to pay a certain amount of money to its owner forever. A classic example would be that of a perpetual ...

Because annuities offer advantages like regular lifetime payments, premium protection, tax-deferred growth, unlimited contributions, and various investment options, they should be a part of your ...

Calculating the present value of an annuity using Microsoft Excel is a fairly straightforward process if you know the annuity's interest rate, payment amount, and duration. Calculating this value is ...

An even cash flow of regularly scheduled payments defines an annuity. If you borrow money to start your business, the monthly payments are calculated using an annuity formula. Two basic annuity ...

The PMT function is an Excel Financial function that returns the periodic payment for an annuity. The formula for the PMT function is PMT(rate,nper,pv, [fv], [type]). The NPV function returns the net ...