America’s rural landscape is dotted by over 2 million farms, majority of which are family-owned and operated. This collective contributes an estimate of over $130 billion worth of Agricultural produce that are exported globally on a yearly basis. One farm feeds 168 Americans annually.
These numbers alone sufficiently tell just how important agriculture is to the American people, not only in keeping our economy afloat, but also in making our food available and affordable.
These farms vary, depending on their produce, but one of the most common farming practice is raising grazing livestock, enclosed in acres of land known to many as ranches. Here, you can find familiar farm animals as sheep and cattle, hogs, and poultry, among others.
Thinking of Starting Your Own Ranch?
Owning a ranch and running a small animal farm isn’t exactly a career choice available to everyone, but for those who do have the opportunity, running one isn’t also as simple as it may sound.
Starting your own ranch operation requires raising the most important questions: What types of livestock to raise? How much land to use? How much loan is “affordable”? In which case, it is always handy to use a loan calculator.
A loan calculator can help you gauge how much money you should borrow, using existing pieces of information such as interest rates and intended loan term. The resulting figures can aid you in configuring your finances to prepare for your business plan.
How to use a loan calculator?
There are readily available calculators that you can find online. You simply input the numbers and it will calculate for you automatically. The tricky part in using a calculator, however, is in determining the appropriate numbers to input so that you arrive with the most precise estimation.
Typically, these inputs include:
- Principal. This is the amount of money that you will ask to borrow from your lender.
- Interest rate. This is money that the lender will charge you for borrowing capital. It may or may not be fixed, and could highly vary from lender to lender.
- Loan term. This is the period of time within which you intend to pay off the loan. It can be set in months or years using the calculator.
- Schedule of payments. This calculates how much you will be paying if you prefer monthly, quarterly, or yearly payments.
Why use a calculator?
Being able to crunch the numbers and get an estimate of your affordability range will aid you in determining if the proposed plan is plausible for you financially. If so, it will then take you to the secondary considerations such as:
- the size of the ranch that fits within the identified budget
- its location
- your credit score
- the cost of medical care and reproduction
- the type of livestock to raise
Getting your plan up
Before you take out a loan, it helps to formulate a business plan first. This does not only appease lender concerns as to the responsible and appropriate utilization of the fund but also help you strategize to get your project off the ground as soon as possible.
A loan calculator is a handy tool that gets you there fast by letting you set up different lending scenarios so you can arrive at the best financing decisions for your business.