The day you are debt-free

There are two well-known ways to pay down several debts at once, and a great deal of writing about which is right. Forecast Commander shows you both, with the date each one makes you debt-free and the interest each one costs, and lets you pick.

Two strategies, one question

Avalanche puts every extra dollar on the debt with the highest interest rate first, then the next. It costs the least interest. Snowball puts every extra dollar on the smallest balance first, then the next. It clears whole accounts sooner, which some people find easier to keep doing. Minimums only is the third card, there so the other two have something to be compared against.

The date each plan gives you

Each strategy is a card with the month you're done and the interest paid in total, and the chart below them draws the balances along the way. Change the extra amount you can put toward debt each month and all three cards move. So you can see what an extra hundred dollars a month buys, and the answer is a date.

Strategy Comparison with an Extra Per Month field set to 100. Three cards: Minimums Only, debt-free in 5 months, with the month named, Horizon Visa at a 640 dollar balance and 37 dollars 58 interest; Avalanche, 3 months, two months sooner, 25 dollars 10; and Snowball, the same 3 months and the same month, 25 dollars 10. Avalanche and Snowball each add a green line reading 12 dollars 48 less interest than paying minimums only. Below them the Debt Balance Over Time chart, with a Zoom to Differences button. Every line starts today at the 640 dollars owed: Avalanche and Snowball are drawn as one solid line that reaches zero three months out, and the dotted Minimums Only line reaches it two months later. — An extra hundred a month on the demo account: an earlier debt-free month, and less interest. Live capture, demo data.

Why it lives beside the forecast

A payoff plan is a set of payments, and payments land on days. Each debt's payment rule is on the calendar with everything else, so the low point already includes it. An extra you try in the planner stays a what-if until you add it to the payment rule, and then it lands on its day like the rest. When the last card reads zero, the money it was taking is on the forecast as room, and a goal can take it over on the same schedule.

What to enter

Each debt is an account: its balance today, its interest rate, and the monthly payment you make on it, which becomes the rule that pays it. That's all the comparison needs. The extra amount is one field, and it's meant to be changed: try a hundred, try fifty, try what's left after the low point, and read the three dates each time. Once an extra is in the payment rule, the forecast shows whether the money is really there, because the payment lands on a day and the day has a balance.

Where the planner stops

It doesn't tell you which strategy to choose, and it doesn't negotiate, consolidate, or move money. It shows the arithmetic of the two plans and leaves the decision with you. Some people pick the cheaper plan. Some pick the one they'll keep. Both are right answers to different questions, and the page shows the cost of each.

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