Everything You Want to Know About Interest Rates

On this page, we go through everything that has to do with interest rates. We will go through everything you are required to know about interest rates and what it is that affects interest rates.

They are essential to know if you want to make an estimate or predict the future, at least financially. It is valuable information if you, for example, are taking out a loan or investing in something.

After reading the article, I hope you feel that you could not possibly learn any more about interest rates and how they work. But to understand the interest rates and how these are affected, you need to know different concepts and terms; therefore, we go through these as well, what you should keep in mind when it comes to interest rates, and how to act when interest rates move.

Interest rates are a large part of the total economy. Interest rates govern much, and many different societal factors govern interest rates. To make wise financial choices in the future, it is a good idea to familiarize yourself with how interest rates affect your finances.

We will start by looking more closely at interest rates. Then we will go deeper into what the interest rate is governed by and how they govern your finances in different ways. Interest rates are not as complicated as they seem, at least not once you have familiarised yourself with how everything with interest rates works in practice.

What does Interest mean?

Interest means different things depending on the type of interest you are referring to. Deposit interest is the money you get back when you save in a savings account if the account has an interest rate. On the other hand, borrowing interest is the cost of a loan you take out. You can say that the interest rate is an expense when you borrow and an income when you deposit money that you save.

How do Interest rates affect your Finances?

Interest rates affect your finances by making it more expensive to borrow money if the interest rate is high. The interest rate can be explained as the cost of borrowing money. If you want to calculate how much a loan costs, you must also include repayments, i.e., the amount you pay off on the loan itself per month. But interest is also what you get from the bank when you make so-called deposits, i.e., deposit money in a savings account.

In this way, your finances are affected by the current interest rate. Because the interest rate is variable, you may be able to take out a loan at a time with a low-interest rate and then must pay more if the interest rate rises. The deposit rate works similarly, governed by the so-called repo rate.

How do you calculate Interest per month?

The current interest rate is calculated by taking the debt you have left to pay and multiplying it by the interest rate. If you want to calculate how much you must pay per month, you must divide the amount by twelve and get the amount you must pay per month. You then get the amount in kronor that you pay in interest per year, and it is also the answer to the effective interest rate minus other fees that can add in case of delay.

What types of current Interest rates are there?

There are, among other things, the following types of interest:

Fixed interest rate

A type of interest rate that is fixed and does not move after the repo rate as variable interest rates do. For illustrate, if you take out a loan with a fixed interest rate, this means that the interest rate will be the same all the time regardless of how the repo rate moves.

Effective interest rate

To know what effective interest means, you should take all the costs that a loan entails, not just the actual interest on the loan. It means that you must also include fees, interest on arrears, and late fees in the costs, which provides effective interest.

Deposit rate

When you bankroll money in a savings account, you often get interest on your money, albeit very low. The interest rate will then benefit you. Different deposit institutions have different deposit interest rates, meaning you get different amounts of money for good depending on where you choose to invest your savings.

Interest on arrears

This type of interest occurs when a bill is not paid on time, and it can be explained as a late fee that is variable depending on how large the bill is. The default interest is thus a fee in parallel with the amounts you owe.

Borrowing rate

The loan interest rate is the most common in Sweden. It refers to the interest you pay or the cost, in other words, when you take out a loan from a bank or a credit institution. The best loan is with a low-interest rate, but the interest rate is usually variable.