About What's My Payment?
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Origin of What's My Payment?
For years I was the guy on the other end when you completed an online mortgage application. One of them anyway. If your application indicated an FHA, VA, or USDA loan might be right for you, your lead might have landed on my desk.
It became apparent early on that clients were having difficulties planning for their home purchase using traditional online mortgage calculators. A conventional loan payment is not the same as an FHA, VA, or USDA payment.
At the time, as far as I know or can remember, there were no online mortgage calculators that featured the nuances of the various government loan programs. So, I bought a how-to-build-a-website book and built them.
whatsmypayment.com was registered in 2012. Much has changed in the mortgage world in the 12 years since. What hasn't is the need for accurate, efficient, easy-to-use mortgage tools.
Core Mortgage Calculators
It started with our core mortgage calculators. First was an FHA loan calculator with taxes and insurance that used your down payment and loan term to properly include FHA mortgage insurance.
Next was a VA loan calculator that considered your down payment, in any, and VA entitlement to produce an accurate VA loan payment.
Finally, a USDA loan calculator that included the USDA guarantee and annual mortgage insurance.
More calculators have followed, including our refinance and debt consolidation calculators.
All of our calculators are thoroughly tested and verified using lending software and/or matched against actual FHA, VA, and USDA loans that have closed. Use our calculators with confidence, knowing our formulas are the same ones used by the respective government agencies that manage these loan programs.
What's My Payment? has served millions of potential FHA, VA, USDA, and conventional homebuyers, both first-time and experienced. We provide the payment information you need to purchase your new home.
Our Commitment to Accuracy
Aren't all payments basically the same?
At first glance, sure. Monthly payments are simply the amount needed to be paid to the principal of a mortgage loan each month to bring the balance to zero over a predetermined amount of time PLUS interest accrued at a predetermined interest rate.
However, if you've spent any amount of time playing around with the calculators on our website, you no doubt know that an FHA payment is vastly different than a VA or USDA payment. There are funding fees or upfront mortgage insurance that might be added to your loan amount. That amount might change depending on how large your down payment is. There's also monthly mortgage insurance (MIP) that might be added to your principal and interest payment. And that amount might vary depending on down payment, loan term, or a combination of both.
So, sure, the fundamental formula for calculating a monthly mortgage payment is pretty standard. However, getting the other pieces of the monthly payment to properly fall into place is not as straightforward. We are literally obsessed with getting this right. Quite frankly, we appear to be the only ones. We routinely test competitor sites and regularly find errors. They may be small, but it demonstrates the motives behind the calculators' purpose.
You'll notice we don't blast you with ads or beg you to do a loan with us. We don't do loans. We provide tools to help you budget and plan. Yes, we need to make money, so we show sponsored rates and advertisements where appropriate. If you feel our ads are intrusive, contact us via our email form.
Attention to Detail
We'd like to demonstrate our process and commitment to providing you the best payment calculators anywhere.
Our FHA loan calculator, the one that started it all. I was a government mortgage specialist for a large online lender. We worked on leads provided from various online sources, including the big one. My team was primarily dedicated to VA loans, with FHA loans sprinkled in. It was the FHA loan payments that most of my clients had trouble with.
FHA loan payments include two mortgage insurance premiums. The first is an upfront “fee” that is typically added to the base FHA loan amount (purchase price minus down payment). That's easy enough to calculate using basic multiplication and/or addition. The second mortgage insurance premium is not so simple.
Annual FHA mortgage insurance is actually paid monthly as part of your mortgage payment. The amount is fixed each year and is calculated using the average principal balance for the upcoming 12-month period. This isn't something you can just whip up with a pen and paper. Our FHA loan calculator takes the extras steps and uses the same MIP formula as HUD/FHA. The FHA payment we provide will match the payment of an FHA approved lender using loan origination software to originate real FHA loans.
Our VA and USDA calculators are just as precise. This care is given to all our calculators. We do not release them until they're ready.
Thank you for using What's My Payment?. If you have ideas for us, have found an area upon which we can improve, or simply want to connect, please contact us us or find us on social media via the links below.