You input loan amount and your interest rate. You then pick a loan term and information comes back about the monthly payment amount, total amount paid over life of the loan, total interest and total tax paid over the life of the loan.

A mortgage calculator is valuable because you can experiment with different loan terms to find the best loan for you.

The mortgage calculator can do a number of things.You can either ;-

1)Put the amount you wish to borrow,and how long you want to pay it back over and it will give you the amount you will pay back er month,and how much interest over the life of your mortgage.

2)Put in how much you want to borrow and what you want your monthly payments to be.It will tell you how long you will take to pay it all off.

I like to use them along side an overpayment calculator.It shows you how much you save in interest if you pay extra each month.You simply put in how much you would overpay each month.Shows how much quicker you will pay off also.

Your main bank's internet site usually has free mortgage calculators.

Thankyou for your question Ddraig x

Some just show calculations of the principal borrowed based on the length of the loan and interest rate, others will allow you to input additional items to show your monthly PMI amounts, property tax and insurance, to get a better idea of your total housing cost per month.

None of them will tell you you should be setting aside additional amounts to pay for future maintenance, upkeep and replacement of things like heating/cooling systems, roof, driveways/fencing/landscaping.