Actual Cash Value Calculator

How do you Calculate Actual Cash Value?

Calculating actual cash value, or ACV for short, can be done with a few variables:

• Purchase price


• Expected life of item


• Current life of item

• ACV = Actual cash value


• P = Price


• Y = Years of life expectancy


• CY = Current years of life

Understanding Your Results

Your result will be the actual cash value of an item that you are describing. This means that it is the value in the eyes of certain entities of an item. This is often used in insurance and other similar fields to assess values of items. The actual cash value ignores the going-rate of the item in the resale market or retail market, it will also never be greater than the purchase amount you entered.

How to Use the Actual Cash Value Tool

Our actual cash value tool is very easy to use. The steps involved include:

1. Enter the purchase price of the item.


2. Enter the number of years the item has in life expectancy.


3. Enter the current age of the item in years (not how many years since you bought it, the number of years since it was manufactured).


4. Hit calculate and get your result instantly!

Example Calculation

Let's say you recently got into a car accident, your insurance will need to assess the worth of your car by finding its ACV. Your car was made 10 years ago and you purchased it for $10,000. Your car is given an expected life of 25 years. We can use this tool to now find the ACV by entering 10,000 into the purchase price, 25 for the life expectancy and then 10 for the current age of the item.

We can now hit calculate to get an ACV of $6,000. This means the car has depreciated in value down to $6,000 and they will now be using that number to carry on with their investigation and processing of your case. The car may be highly sought after and selling for $40,000 in the aftermarket, but it does not matter. ACV ignores other markets and is based on your purchase price solely.