Mortgage Repayment Holiday Calculator NZ
This calculator shows the real long-term cost of taking a mortgage repayment holiday in New Zealand, so you can weigh short-term relief against what it adds to your loan. A repayment holiday, sometimes called a payment deferral, lets you pause or reduce your repayments for a set period, usually during redundancy, illness or another temporary financial squeeze. It feels like breathing room, but the lender does not waive the interest. It keeps accruing on your balance and is added to what you owe, so you pay interest on that extra interest for the rest of the term. You enter your current mortgage balance, your interest rate, how many months the holiday runs for, and the years remaining on your loan. The calculator returns the interest added during the holiday, your new, higher balance once it ends, and the extra cost over the remaining term once that bigger balance is repaid at your normal rate. Use it before applying for a holiday to see whether a shorter break, or reduced repayments instead of none at all, would leave you better off. The longer the holiday and the higher your rate, the more the pause costs, and the extra cost is usually well above the interest added during the holiday itself. This is an estimate based on the figures you enter, not a loan offer or advice from your lender.
Assumes interest accrues and compounds onto the balance during the holiday, then the loan is repaid over the remaining term. A holiday can prevent missed payments in hardship, but adds to the lifetime cost. Estimate only, not a loan offer.
How it works
The calculator grows your balance by the monthly interest over the holiday months (when you make no repayments), giving the interest added and the new, higher balance. It then compares the total you would repay over the remaining term on the higher balance against the original, to show the extra lifetime cost of the holiday. The longer the pause and the higher the rate, the more it costs.
Worked example
On a $500,000 balance at 6.5%, a 6-month holiday adds about $16,400 of interest to the loan. Repaid over the remaining 25 years, that extra balance costs roughly $33,000 in total over the term, well above the interest added during the pause itself.
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