Debt Payoff Calculator
Which debt dies first, what it costs you to get it wrong, and the actual month this ends.
There are two ways out of debt
One of them is sold to you on the radio. It is worth understanding what it actually involves before anyone takes your money for it.
The one that gets advertised
Settle it for less than you owe
- It starts by having you stop paying on purpose. The damage is not a side effect of the strategy — it is the strategy. Creditors do not negotiate with people who are current.1
- The debt keeps growing while you wait. Late fees and interest are added every month you are not paying.2
- Your credit takes the hit, and it stays. Most negative information can be reported for seven years.3
- No creditor is obligated to play along. Some refuse to work with the company at all. Some sue you instead.4
- A forgiven balance can come back as a tax bill. Cancelled debt is generally taxable income, and $600 or more gets reported to the IRS on a 1099-C.5
- The rule that protects you has a hole in it. Companies selling over the phone cannot charge a fee until they have actually settled a debt and you have made a payment on it. Companies that meet you face to face are exempt from that rule.6
The one this tool is built for
Pay what you owe, in the right order
- Nothing goes delinquent. Your credit is not the price of admission. No missed payments, no seven-year mark, nothing to explain to a lender in 2033.
- The balance actually shrinks. Every month you keep paying, less of what you send is interest and more of it is gone for good.
- No forgiven balance means no tax surprise. Nothing arrives in January for money you never saw.
- Nobody takes a cut to write letters. You are not paying a percentage of your own debt to a middleman for the privilege of being in it.
- The order is where the money is. Same income, same balances, same minimums — a different sequence changes both the date you finish and what the whole thing costs you.
- You come out with more than a zero balance. What you learn on the way there is the part that keeps you from coming back.
Settlement is a legal option, and there are situations where someone genuinely has no better one. Nothing here is legal or tax advice — if you are weighing it, talk to a tax professional about the consequences before you commit to anything.
Getting out of debt and getting out of paying your debts are not the same thing.
When it’s over, the habit is still yours.
Settlement wipes out a balance. It does not teach you anything. The next card fills up the same way the last one did.
Paying it off takes longer. But somebody who clears $22,000 on purpose knows how they did it, and knows they can do it again.
Nobody can sell you that.
Three strategies, run side by side
Not a single answer handed down. The same numbers, played three ways, so you can see what the choice actually costs.
Method one
Smallest balance first
Every spare dollar goes at the smallest debt until it is gone, then rolls into the next one.
Best for: people who have started and quit before. Killing an entire account in month three is fuel, and fuel is not nothing.
Method two
Highest rate first
Every spare dollar goes at the most expensive interest rate, regardless of the balance.
Best for: people who will hold the line without a scoreboard. On paper this is almost always the cheapest route.
Method three
Spread it evenly
The extra gets split across everything, which is what most people do without deciding to.
Shown because: it is the honest baseline. Seeing what it costs against the other two is usually the moment the whole thing clicks.
Sample data. The same numbers run three ways, and the payoff order behind the one you pick.
The math almost always favors the highest rate. Human beings almost always favor the quick win. The tool shows you the gap between the two so you can make that trade with your eyes open instead of picking the one a stranger on the internet swears by.
What it needs from you
Every balance
Cards, the auto loan, the student loans, the buy-now-pay-later thing you forgot about, the money you owe your brother-in-law. All of it, or the answer is fiction.
The interest rate on each
The real one, off the statement — not the promotional rate that expired, and not what you assume it is.
The minimum payment on each
This is the floor everything else is built on top of.
What you can add above the minimums
One number. It is the only one you actually control, and it decides everything.
That last number decides everything
Picking the right order helps. Finding more money to throw at it helps more.
The other three numbers come off a statement. This one comes out of how you spend, so it is the only one you can actually change. Add $100 to it and the payoff date moves.
What you get back
A month-by-month schedule with a real date on the end of it — and the thing most people have never actually seen.
Your payment never goes up
You send $680 in month 1 and $680 in month 16. Same money the whole way through.
What changes is where it goes. The Visa clears in month 7, and that $534 doesn’t go back into the budget — it gets added to the store card, which jumps from $42 a month to $576. Store card is gone three months later. After that the full $680 goes at the personal loan.
Every payoff speeds up the next one. By the end you are putting the whole budget on one debt.
Sample data. A fictional household, shown to illustrate how the tool works.
A payoff date is worthless if you reload the card
This is the part every free calculator leaves out, and it is the part that decides whether any of it works.
Every calculator online hands you a schedule and leaves.
The problem shows up around month four, when the card has room on it again and the water heater goes out. Put $600 back on it and the schedule is fiction.
That is why this is not a standalone tool. The budget finds the money before the month starts. Envelope buckets keep it where you put it. The daily check-in takes five minutes, and it works because you are looking at your money every day instead of once a month.
It is uncomfortable at first. That is intended. After a few weeks you stop making purchases you would not have questioned before.
We are reshaping the habits in totality, not in bits and pieces.
Where this sits in the bigger picture
Debt is the second thing we deal with, not the first, and not the last.
First
Define the risks
You are here
Kill the consumer debt
Then
Build the budget
Then
Invest on purpose
A portfolio earning eight percent while a card charges twenty-four is not a portfolio. It is a rounding error on the interest. This step comes before the investing step for a reason.
What you do with the answer
A number on a screen is not the point. These are the decisions it actually settles.
Whether to consolidate
Run it both ways. If moving the balances does not beat the sequence you already have, you have your answer without paying anyone a fee to find out.
What the raise is worth
Put an extra two hundred a month into it and watch the date move. That is what a raise is worth in months of your life, which is a more useful figure than the annual number.
Whether to invest yet
Seeing the interest you are paying next to the return you are hoping for tends to end that debate quickly.
When you can stop
A date. Not “someday.” A month and a year you can put on the calendar and count backwards from.
Debt-free is not a daydream. It is a date, and the date is a math problem.
Questions people ask
Is it really free?
Thirty days of everything, no card, using the code at signup. After that there is a free tier that keeps working, and paid tiers if you want the rest of the workspace.
Do I have to connect my bank?
No. There is no bank login and no connection to your accounts. You type in the balances, or import a spreadsheet. That is on purpose.
Should I include my mortgage?
Generally this tool is pointed at consumer debt — cards, auto loans, personal loans, the expensive things. You can include a mortgage to see the whole picture, but a low-rate mortgage usually does not belong in the same fight as a twenty-four percent card.
Is this financial advice?
No. It is software that does arithmetic on numbers you enter. It does not know your situation, and using it does not make you a client or create an advisory relationship. If you want someone to look at your actual circumstances, that is a different conversation and we are happy to have it.
Find out when this ends.
Thirty days free, no card, and you will have a payoff date before you finish your coffee.
Run Your Numbers FreeThe Paraclete Studio is a product of Paraclete Life Planning LLC. Software, not advice. Using it does not create an advisory relationship.
Where those facts come from
Every claim in the comparison above, with the language the source actually uses.
- “Debt settlement companies typically encourage you to stop paying your credit card bills.” — Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- “If you stop making payments on a credit card, late fees and interest will be added to the debt each month.” — Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- “A credit reporting company generally can report most negative information for seven years.” — Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- “Some of your creditors may refuse to work with the company you choose… Working with a debt settlement company may lead to a creditor filing a debt collection lawsuit against you.” — Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- Cancelled debt is generally includible in gross income; a lender files Form 1099-C for each debtor whose debt of $600 or more is cancelled. — IRS Topic 432 and IRS Form 1099-C
- Under the Telemarketing Sales Rule a debt relief provider may not collect a fee until it has renegotiated or settled at least one debt, the customer has agreed to it, and the customer has made at least one payment under it. Businesses that meet customers face to face before signing them up are exempt from the rule. — Federal Trade Commission
Work with us
The Paraclete Studio
The firm
Registered adviser
Paraclete Life Planning LLC
Pensacola, Florida
Firm CRD #325341
John C. Hendry III · IAR CRD #7699097
Verify us at adviserinfo.sec.govParaclete Life Planning LLC is a registered investment adviser. Nothing on this site is individualized investment, tax, or legal advice. The Paraclete Studio is software, not advice, and using it does not create an advisory relationship. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal.
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