How to Calculate Bank Account Interest
As long as you have the basic information about your bank's interest policies, calculating bank account interest is possible and useful.
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Instructions
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Find your bank's account policies concerning interest bearing accounts. In addition to the interest rates, you need to know if and when interest is compounded, and when interest rates are recalculated in reaction to fluctuations in the prime rate. Many banks have different policies for different types of accounts, so be sure to read the fine print.
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Lay out your account balances on a sheet of scratch paper. You may want to label each balance for ease of reference.
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Write down the interest rate earned by each account. Be sure to include interest terms, compounding information and other details that may affect the final total.
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Multiply the balance of your account by the interest rate for that account. This gives you the annual interest yield for the account, assuming that the interest rate and the balance do not change. To find the interest yield for smaller amounts of time, divide the amount by twelve for monthly yields, or by 365 for daily yields.
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Multiply the annual interest yield by the amount of time you intend on leaving the money in the account.
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Tips & Warnings
Compound interest complicates the calculation of bank account interest because the interest earnings are added to the principal periodically, and thus increase the amount of interest earned over time. There is a special math formula used to calculate compound interest, which you can find in any high school mathematics text.
