A plaintiff in a successful lawsuit was awarded a judgment of $4800 per month for 5 years. The plaintiff has the need of a fairl
y large sum of money immediately for an investment of his own, and has offered the defendant the opportunity to pay off the award in a lump-sum amount of $110,000. If the defendant accepts the offer and pays the $110,000 now, what rate of return will the defendant have made by not paying the 60 monthly amounts?
Using a financial calculator, we can determine the internal rate of return of this investment. The initial outlay is -$110,000, and the 60 $4,800 cash flows follow. The IRR is 3.93 per month. In order to determine the effective annual rate, we can use the following formula:
