Bond ladder planner
Rungs, average yield, annual income.
Interactive: bond ladder plannerEasy
A ladder spreads maturities evenly so something matures every year — reinvestment risk diversified across time instead of concentrated in one date.
- Per rung
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- Average yield
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- Annual income
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- Average maturity
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Yields interpolated linearly along the curve. The ladder's real feature isn't the yield — it's that each year one rung matures at par and reinvests at whatever rates then are, so you are never forced to guess the top or bottom of the cycle.
The idea behind it
This calculator belongs to Fixed Income, where the mechanism it computes is explained step by step, with the formula, what each input means and where the simple model stops being right. Everything is computed in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Instruments it applies to
- Government Bond — A loan to a state, and the reference price of money itself — the yardstick every other asset is measured against.
- Corporate Bond — Lending to companies for a spread: the extra yield is the price of the chance they don't pay you back.
- Zero-Coupon Bond — No coupons, one payment: buy at a discount, collect face value at maturity. The purest interest-rate instrument.
- Floating Rate Note — A bond whose coupon resets with the market — interest-rate risk engineered out, credit risk left in.
- Inflation-Linked Bond — A bond that grows with the price level — real purchasing power, contractually guaranteed.
- Covered Bond — Bank debt with a safety net: backed by the bank AND a ring-fenced pool of mortgages. Zero defaults in two centuries of Pfandbriefe.
- Mortgage-Backed Security — Thousands of home loans bundled into a bond — with the homeowners' right to refinance baked into your risk.
- Asset-Backed Security — Any cash-flowing asset — car loans, credit cards, royalties — sliced into bonds of graded risk.
More calculators from Fixed Income
- Bond price, duration & convexity — the full price–yield toolkit.
- Yield-to-maturity solver — from price to yield by bisection.
- Tax-equivalent yield — comparing tax-exempt and taxable bonds.
- Loan & mortgage amortisation — payment, total interest, the first-payment split.
- Accrued interest & dirty price — what you actually pay.
- Real return after inflation — Fisher's equation, exactly.