Question

you are billed $300 at 5% simple interest for 2 years but given an opportunity to pay only 3% compound interest for 2 years. Which is better and why?

Answer 1

This question is a bit tricky to answer because it does not state how often interest rate is applied so lets say for the simple 5% interest rate the rate of interest was calculated after 2 years you would pay a total interest of $15 since interest was only calculated once but for the 3% calculating every year with compound it would be a total of 18.27 dollars in interest but then you would have to calculate the 5% simple interest the same way which would total to $30 if calculated once a year being more than the 3% compound. But lets say interest is calculated once a month your total for the 5% simple interest would be $360 dollars interest for those 2 years and the 3% compound would be $406.97 dollars in interest. So over all the less amount of times interest compounds the less interest there is making it more worth than the simple but if the compounding occurs more frequently the simple 5% interest is more worth it. In this situation I think it might just be yearly interest which makes the 3% compound more worth taking for this short amount of time.