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In my first payment on 06-17-2016, the principal applied to my balance was $186.76 and the interest was $107.50. As I kept making the payment on-time, the second payment on 07-25-2016 was a bit of a shock to me as the principle went down to $93.97 and the interest went up to $200.29.

I thought as I kept making payments on-time, the applied interest should decrease every time and the applied principal should increase. Am I wrong?

This is how my loan payment history statement looks like:enter image description here

1337joe
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Tenzin
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2 Answers2

58

Interest is calculated daily.

Doing the math:
Between 6-17 and 7-25 are 38 days, 200.29 / 38 = 5.27 interest per day.
Between 7-25 and 8-17 are 23 days. 120.02 / 23 = 5.22 interest per day.
The minimal difference is because the principal has already gone down a little bit.

So you should expect ~5.20 x number of days for the next interest number coming up; slowly decreasing as the remaining principal debt decreases.

Note that this is equivalent of an annual interest rate of over 20 %, which is beyond acceptable. In the current economy, this is ridiculously high. I recommend trying to get a refinancing with another provider; you should be able to get it for a third of that.

Aganju
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The interest probably accrues daily, regardless of whether your payments are on time.

Jim Fell
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