Nowadays most banks calculate your mortgage interest on daily rest basis. Years ago, monthly rest interest is a norm.
You are advised to get a home loan which the interest is calculated on daily rest basis. But most people don’t really understand what is the advantage. This post is to explain the difference to you in simple terms.
Example:
You are serving RM1000/month for a home loan. The outstanding loan amount on 1st of April is RM100k. On April 20, you make a capital repayment of RM30k, and reduce the outstanding loan to RM70k.

Daily Rest
Your loan interest will be calculated based on the previous day’s outstanding balance.
If based on daily rest interest calculation, you will pay lower interest charge on 20th April onwards.
Monthly Rest
Your loan interest for the current month will be calculated based on the previous month’s outstanding balance (which consists of principal and interest not paid, if any).
If based on monthly rest interest calculation, you will still pay interest for RM100k loan until 30th April.
More references:
Differences between monthly and daily rest
Daily vs Month rest – forum on Lowyat.
16 replies to "Monthly Rest Vs. Daily Rest Interest Calculation"
Hi, is it possible that based on below info , the interest of 3.89% is monthly rest or yearly rest ?
Loan amount: $757,455 and the Repayments: $3,569 per month at 3.89%* (variable rate) for 30 yrs.
Thanx.
I think all mortgage now is daily-rest interest calculation
hi kc,
if had the option of the loan types offers.
which to choose?
1. monthly rest 4.9%
2. daily rest 5.0%
Excellent schematic! Easy to understand and straightforward explanation.
Very straight forward. love the diagram.
very helpful indeed. thanks KC. 🙂
For daily rest, should the “interest on 100K” for the first 20 days be added to the 100K first before minusing the 30K to get the outstanding balance for the next 10 days?
First 20 days -> 100K + interest on 100K – 30K = Balance A
Next 10 days -> Balance A + interest on Balance A = Balance B
This balance (B) will be different from simply taking 100K + Interest on 100K + Interest on 70K.
Thanks for the explaination.
I guess it goes the same way for savings account on monthly / daily rest.
What I don’t understand is that, the interest rate calculation, some need to divide by 12 and some by 365. (The normal formula that I use is :
Total = Capital + Interest
= Capital + (Capital * Interest * Period) /100
Hi KC, thank you for the post. I don’t suppose you have a Microsoft Excel spread sheet to calculate the difference in actual monthly repayments (daily rest vs monthly rest).
No, I don’t.
Thanks for commenting.
kc, may i know how bank calculate monthly repayment based on Loan Amount, tenure, and BLR? what is the formula?
you will need a financial calculator.
see this tutorial: http://www.fonerbooks.com/interest.htm
Thank you for sharing this. It really helpful. Really easy for me to understand. 🙂
Nice 🙂 That kind of cleared up the whole daily rest and monthly rest idea.
Excellent article. Thanks.
Simple guide to understanding the benefits.
simple explanation and very easy to understand..i loike..:-)