Friday, June 22, 2007

Debt Snowball Calculator at WhatsTheCost.com

If you are working towards getting out of debt, you have probably heard of a Debt Snowball. If you want to see how long it will take you to pay off all of your debts using this method, check out this great on line Debt Snowball Calculator at whatsthecost.com.

I really love this debt snowball calculator as it charts out all of your payments, including interest, and shows you exactly when you will have your debts paid off. It is fun to play with the payment amounts and see how a little extra money can move your pay off date up by quite a bit.

There are also several other financial calculators on this site that could be helpful.

If you are fortunate enough (or smart enough!) to not be in debt, or you just haven't heard of a Debt Snowball, this is what it is. It is when you make a list of all of your debts and their minimum payments in order from the smallest debt to the largest debt. Add up all of the minimum payments. You will pay at least this amount towards your debts even as some get paid off. So, you pay the minimum on all of your debts except the smallest one. This one you pay the minimum amount plus any extra money you can get your hands on. You continue in this manner until this debt is paid off. Then you take focus on the next smallest debt taking the amount you were paying on the last debt and adding it to the minimum payment for this debt, along with any other money you can get your hands on. As each debt is paid off and you add the payment you were paying on that one to the next one, your snowball grows. After a while you are hitting your largest debts with very large payments and thus paying them off very quickly.