Discounted Payback Period Calculator
Years for discounted cash flows to recoup initial investment. Time-value-aware variant of payback.
Result
Discounted payback
3.96 years
- Initial$100,000.00
- Rate10.00%
- Sum of discounted CFs$132,183.28
- StatusRecouped at year 3.96
Step-by-step
- Discounted cumulative reaches $100,000 during year 4.
- Interpolated payback: 3.96 years.
How to use this calculator
- Enter initial investment, discount rate, and cash flows.
- Read discounted payback in years.
About this calculator
Discounted payback first discounts each future cash flow back to present, then computes payback. Always longer than plain payback (because discounting shrinks future flows). Better than plain payback because it respects time value, but still ignores cash flows after the payback point.
Frequently asked
Plain payback treats $1 in year 5 as worth $1 today — wrong. Discounting respects the time value of money.
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