XIRR Explained – The real meaning of XIRR

Imagine Harry, an investor, who made the following investments and withdrawals in a certain project:

  1. On January 1, 2020, she invested $10,000.
  2. On July 1, 2020, she added another $4,000.
  3. On December 31, 2020, she invested an additional $2,000.
  4. On June 30, 2021, she withdrew $5,000.
  5. Finally, on December 31, 2021, the value of her investment was $15,000.

In the end, Harry needs to know how much he has gained annually. He don’t know how to calculate annualized rate of returns considering his irregular investment and withdrawal schedule. This is where XIRR helps.

XIRR, also known as Extended Internal Rate of Return, is a financial function that calculates the internal rate of return for a series of cash flows occurring at irregular intervals. . It doesn’t just look at how much money went in and out, but also when these transactions happened and It finally answers the question, “What’s my yearly interest rate from all these money exchanges?”

Use this Calculator to find XIRR in the above mentioned case, which comes out to be 14.68%.

Check out IRR vs XIRR vs CAGR for comparisons of these measures.