Debt Reduction Snowball Calculator
- Eliminate Your Credit Card Debt

Note: This spreadsheet and the information on this page is for illustrative and educational purposes only. Your situation is unique, and we do not guarantee the results or the applicability of this calculator to your situation. You should seek the advice of qualified professionals regarding financial decisions.

This is how the spreadsheet works:

First, enter abbreviated names for your the credit card or lending institution, the current balances, and the interest rate information for all of your current debts (including home equity lines of credit or second mortgages).

Next, enter the minimum payment you will make each month for each debt. You may need to verify with your lending institutions what your current minimum payments are. Also, keep in mind that your minimum payment may change over time, depending on interest rates or other issues.

Then, choose the maximum monthly payment that you can pay each month towards your debts, based on your home budget. The difference between the total minimum payments and your total monthly payment is your initial snowball. This initial snowball, or "extra payment", will be applied to the first debt, depending on your chosen strategy.

When your first debt is completely paid, the remainder of your snowball is then applied to the NEXT debt, and so on, until all the debts are paid.

This section describes the different strategies that you can choose within the debt reduction spreadsheet. You may also want to see our Credit Card Payoff Calculator for more information.

Unless you choose the "No Snowball" option, ALL of these strategies make use of the snowball "effect" where after you pay off your first debt you roll that payment into helping pay off the next one. For more information, see Dave Ramsey's article on the debt snowball effect, or read his book, "The Total Money Makeover".

1. Debt Snowball (Lowest Balance First): This method is the official debt snowball strategy. The benefit of this method is the psychological effect of seeing the number of debts disappear quickly. According to Dave Ramsey, it's important to build momentum and see success early on. After all, if it was easy to pay off debt, you probably wouldn't need this calculator. :)
   
   
2. Highest Interest First: This strategy results in the lowest total interest, but depending on the balance of your higher interest loans, it may take you longer to see your first loan/debt completely paid off. If the difference in the total interest is not significant, than you may get more satisfaction and success from the Lowest Balance First method.
   
   
3. No Snowball: Select this option if you want to see how long it will take to pay off the debts based solely on the individual payments you specify (i.e. no snowball effect). In some cases, you may find it will take more than 30 years to pay off some debts.
   
   
4. User-Specified Order: There are three options for choosing the order that you want to pay your debts. You can choose "Order Entered in Table", which is self-explanatory. You can also use the Custom column to enter your own formulas or your own ranking and choose "Custom-Highest First" or "Custom-Lowest First". I'd suggest ranking each row using values "10, 20, 30, 40, etc." . The reason to enter the order by 10's or 100's is so that you can easily switch the order. For example, you can move the one marked "30" ahead of "20" by changing the 30 to 19. If you are comfortable using Excel, you can also use Excel's built-in SORT command via the Data menu.
   
   

If you choose the "Lowest Balance First" method, and two of your balances are roughly the same amount, but have very different rates, you might want to switch the order that you pay them off so that you pay the higher rate first. It might not make much difference in how long it takes to pay them off, but it could make a difference in how much interest you end up paying.

To use this approach in the worksheet, you'll need to choose the "User-Specified Order" methods described above.