Snowball calculator usability question

Clariman

I am working on a Snowball calculator that is integrated with the SOA Calculator on MSOC. I'd appreciate some responses to a usability question. The new calculator will allow you to work out a snowball plan for your unsecured and, optionally, your secured & HP debts. It will also take into account introductory offers on credit cards.

So, amongst other things, the 2 items of information below will need to be entered by the user:

* When does any credit card introductory rate end
* When do the monthly payments on a secured/HP debt end

I could collect this information in one of two ways: either get you to enter the remaining number of months for each of the above or ask you to enter the month and year when the payment (or intro rate) will end. Which would you find easier?

In addition I could design it so that you type the information in or so that you select it from a list (drop-down box). This gives 4 possible choices in the poll below. I'd appreciate your feedback on which you would prefer.

Not in the poll, but I'd appreciate any comments on the following design decision which I plan to make ....
... if a user saves their snowball plan in one month, then loads it again for changes the following month, I plan to reduce the number of months remaining on payments and intro offers by 1 month. Is that how you would like it to work?

Clariman

Clariman

Bumping up

claireabelle_2

re-bump!!!

Numpty_Monkey

Sorry I've nothing usefull to add

What aboutfor the Credit Cards if they have a "heirachical" (or however you spell it) payments
on mine i get charged at x.xxx% per month purchace and x.xxx% per month cash

Clariman

Numpty_Monkey wrote: »

Sorry I've nothing usefull to add

What aboutfor the Credit Cards if they have a "heirachical" (or however you spell it) payments
on mine i get charged at x.xxx% per month purchace and x.xxx% per month cash

Yes that's a good point. However, if I think the law of diminishing returns applies to a Snowball calculator. If the input form requested every single bit of detail to make it 100% accurate, it would become unusable. The form would become very complicated and the amount of information needed would put users off using it. So the best thing to do is for each user to put the interest rate that would apply to most of their credit card charges. The calculator would then be able to produce a pretty accurate snowball plan and debt-free date but it won't be 100% accurate.

Clariman

GeorgeUK

The only reason i don't think an end date would be appropriate is that if you have a payment holday at some point then the numbers will be off. When i got my information through for my loan i had already arranged 2 months grace before payments were required, but the documentation they sent with the agreement was just the basic x months. Not sure if that would/could be incorporated into it.

Clariman

Thanks George. Another good point, but I think that adding in payment holidays would make the calculator overly complex for the user I'm afraid. Having the number of months wouldn't cater for it either because the calculator would have to assume that the monthly payments started from this month (or next month).

Clariman