Amortization Calculator
Monthly payment plus the full year-by-year schedule of principal, interest and balance.
Reading the schedule
Every payment is the same size, but its composition shifts. In year one of a 30-year loan at 6.5%, roughly three quarters of each payment is interest. The crossover point where you pay more principal than interest arrives around year 19. That asymmetry is why extra payments early in the loan save so much: every dollar of early principal removes decades of interest on that dollar.
Amortization in one sentence
Each month you pay interest on whatever balance remains, and whatever is left of your fixed payment reduces that balance, so interest shrinks and principal accelerates until the loan hits zero on the final payment.