We often talk on this site about tackling debt being one of the cornerstones when it comes to fixing your finances. Being burdened with debt is a real handicap to reaching your future goals.
To make your life easier there is a really useful app called Debt Manager which will do a lot of the leg work in trying to make yourself debt free.
Debt Manager helps you to organize, track and pay off all your debts in the cheapest and fastest way possible. It is very easy to set up and can be downloaded for 69p, it is currently available for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
Getting started
When you first open the app you will be prompted to enter details of all your current loans. You will need to have to hand the current balance, interest rate and monthly payment for each loan entered. Once you have entered all your loan details you can switch between three different views - Summary, Chart and Table. I particularly like the table view as it provides a detailed spreadsheet for each loan showing how the balance is reducing over the term of the loan.
Deciding your debt free strategy
Once you have entered all your loans you can then hit the 'strategy button' and decide how you want to reduce your debt quicker. Once in the strategy section there a two features you will need to understand - 'Snowball' and 'Snowflake'. 'Snowball is the amount of extra money you can commit to on a regular monthly basis, over and above your current monthly payments. 'Snowflake' is the amount of 'one off' payments, over above your current monthly payments, these may be from a bonus or an unexpected windfall. These payments are entered, as and when, they occur in the loan input screen.
Reports
Once you have entered all the information regarding your current loans and your debt free strategy this app will calculate how quickly you will become debt free including your interest savings and years saved. This is really motivational and allows you to play around with figures and see how putting just a little more aside can save you a lot of money.
Other stuff
In the Calculators section there are four calculators - Monthly Payments, Overpayments, Payoff Date and Refinance which are really useful to have a play around with. If you currently have an interest only mortgage then you really ought to use the Monthly Payment calculator as it has the ability to calculate Interest Only and Repayment options.
Conclusion
I really like this app because for a small outlay (although it would be better if it were free) it can really change your approach to debt. One of the issues with trying to become debt free is that the current pain can sometimes cloud the long term gain. This app is so graphic and easy to use and allows you to play around with different scenarios that it almost makes becoming debt free fun.
I challenge anyone to use this and see how motivated you become about you debt free future.
