Cash flow in Excel is negative if it goes away from you and positive if it
comes to you. You have to invest 500,000 thus that is going out of your
pocket and is negative. The 250,000 at the end is coming to you and thus is
positive. Another example: if you compute monthly payments on a loan of
10,000 at 10% annual interest for 10 years, you use =PMT(10%/12,10*12,10000)
and this produces the negative result of -132.15. The 10,000 is income to
you and is postitive, and the 132.15 is outgo from you and is therefore
negative.


Tyro

"Steve" wrote in message
...
On Feb 19, 12:18 pm, "Niek Otten" wrote:
Hi Steve,

=PMT(5%,15,500000,-250000)

Will give you a yearly amount of

36,585.57

--
Kind regards,

Niek Otten
Microsoft MVP - Excel

"Steve" wrote in
...

|I am looking for the right formula to use for the following
| scenario. If I had $500,000 in an account at 5% interest per year
| over a 15 year period and wanted the ending balance to be $250,000,
| how much can I draw out per month and meet the criteria of still
| having $250,000 at the end. I used PPMT but the results don't look
| correct to me.
|
| Thanks, Steve

Thanks Niek, I didn't know to list the future value as negative for
whatever reason that requires ?