SOA and Snowball Calculators at lemonfool.co.uk and stoozing.com

euronorris

Oh hang on. Just realised you did lemonfool one. Sorry, not awake. Let me take a look.

ETA: same issue with the one on lemonfool. Its either a % OR a fixed amount, so the actual min payment terms for many credit cards can't be entered at the moment.

It also can't have multiple different interest rates. It can do an introductory amount that switches to xx% at xx date, but I have a friend who's credit card balance is made up of a transfer, purchases and a money transfer and they all have different rates attached to them. She asked me to help her with a snowball plan, but I'm struggling because of the various different rates she has on each of her cards.

Clariman

Delighted to say that we have removed all the Ads on the SOA Calculator https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/financecalculators/soa.php

and the Snowball Calculator https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/financecalculators/snowball-calculator.php

This should reduce the clutter on the screens and make them easier to use.

Clariman

euronorris said:

Oh hang on. Just realised you did lemonfool one. Sorry, not awake. Let me take a look.

ETA: same issue with the one on lemonfool. Its either a % OR a fixed amount, so the actual min payment terms for many credit cards can't be entered at the moment.

It also can't have multiple different interest rates. It can do an introductory amount that switches to xx% at xx date, but I have a friend who's credit card balance is made up of a transfer, purchases and a money transfer and they all have different rates attached to them. She asked me to help her with a snowball plan, but I'm struggling because of the various different rates she has on each of her cards.

You mentioned "interest plus 1% of the balance" in your last post as being a type of minimum payment option these days. Could that not be expressed as a straight percentage? So the amount of interest payable that month would be based on the card's monthly interest rate and the outstanding balance, then you would add on another 1% of the balance. So surely that could be expressed as a single interest rate and entered into the calculator? Sure it would be easier if the calculator worked it out for you.

If the APR is 15% APR that equates to 1.1715% per month. So your "interest plus 1% of balance" could be represented as 2.1715% in the Min Payment % box couldn't it? We have an APR to monthly conversion tool and vice versa here to help working out the monthly rate from the APR - https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/financecalculators/apr-rate-converter.php . Am I missing something or would that not solve the problem?

The second issue about different rates, might be trickier. What is the payment order when you have different rates - or can you choose which you are paying off first? Depending on how you pay them off it might be better to enter them as 2 different cards - even though they are 2 rates on the same card but that depends how the card company allocate your repayments.

mark55man

Thank you @Clariman - I have used Motley Fool and Lemon Fool and MSE and saved me a fortune and earned me a smaller one.  I now only use MSE as it matches my needs a bit better, but I still check in now and again and TLF under a similar but different name

euronorris

Clariman said:

euronorris said:

Oh hang on. Just realised you did lemonfool one. Sorry, not awake. Let me take a look.

ETA: same issue with the one on lemonfool. Its either a % OR a fixed amount, so the actual min payment terms for many credit cards can't be entered at the moment.

It also can't have multiple different interest rates. It can do an introductory amount that switches to xx% at xx date, but I have a friend who's credit card balance is made up of a transfer, purchases and a money transfer and they all have different rates attached to them. She asked me to help her with a snowball plan, but I'm struggling because of the various different rates she has on each of her cards.

You mentioned "interest plus 1% of the balance" in your last post as being a type of minimum payment option these days. Could that not be expressed as a straight percentage? So the amount of interest payable that month would be based on the card's monthly interest rate and the outstanding balance, then you would add on another 1% of the balance. So surely that could be expressed as a single interest rate and entered into the calculator? Sure it would be easier if the calculator worked it out for you.

If the APR is 15% APR that equates to 1.1715% per month. So your "interest plus 1% of balance" could be represented as 2.1715% in the Min Payment % box couldn't it? We have an APR to monthly conversion tool and vice versa here to help working out the monthly rate from the APR - https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/financecalculators/apr-rate-converter.php . Am I missing something or would that not solve the problem?

The second issue about different rates, might be trickier. What is the payment order when you have different rates - or can you choose which you are paying off first? Depending on how you pay them off it might be better to enter them as 2 different cards - even though they are 2 rates on the same card but that depends how the card company allocate your repayments.

That percentage conversion would only work if everything is charged at the same rate, wouldn't it? Having £2k at 0%, £1k at 19.7% and £500 at 24.9% (for example), makes it much more difficult to work out. Particularly as the balances with the interest change monthly, due to the repayments, meaning that the overall percentage each month would be different. I don't know if it would be better to treat each of those balances as though they are separate cards? But then repayments would get allocated to some balances that, in reality, wouldn't reduce each month.

Re repayment order, there is no choice offered. It is broadly pay off the one with the highest interest first.

EssexHebridean

On the issue with one card, multiple rates, from our perspective I'd think the best thing would be to suggest people use the current highest rate, and then re-do the SOA when that is cleared and change to the (then) current rate. At least that way it will be showing a "worst case scenario" that can likely be improved on. 

euronorris

EssexHebridean said:

On the issue with one card, multiple rates, from our perspective I'd think the best thing would be to suggest people use the current highest rate, and then re-do the SOA when that is cleared and change to the (then) current rate. At least that way it will be showing a "worst case scenario" that can likely be improved on. 

Unfortunately that then doesn't show the true picture of their monthly commitments, and makes it hard for them to know how much extra they can put towards the debt, if you see what I mean.  As the 1% would still be applied to any balance at 0% on the card, and still need repaying.

It seems a lot more complicated now, than when I was in debt about 10 years ago.

Clariman

euronorris said:

EssexHebridean said:

On the issue with one card, multiple rates, from our perspective I'd think the best thing would be to suggest people use the current highest rate, and then re-do the SOA when that is cleared and change to the (then) current rate. At least that way it will be showing a "worst case scenario" that can likely be improved on. 

Unfortunately that then doesn't show the true picture of their monthly commitments, and makes it hard for them to know how much extra they can put towards the debt, if you see what I mean.  As the 1% would still be applied to any balance at 0% on the card, and still need repaying.

It seems a lot more complicated now, than when I was in debt about 10 years ago.

Are we talking about Snowball or SOA - I think the former? I think there is merit in EssexHebridean's suggestion - for 2 reasons. Firstly, the overall picture and debt free day the initial calculation gives will be a worst case scenario and you know it will improve when the rate drops down. Secondly, if the payment order is always that the highest rate gets paid off first, then the Snowball Calculator will be correct in which card it asks you to pay off first. As EH says, when you have paid off the higher rate part of the debt, just update the Snowball interest rate for that card and re-calculate the snowball. I think that would work.

The other way to handle it in a more automated way would be to define them as 2 separate cards (give them a similar name but mark one A and the other and set the minimum payment to 0 on the cheaper one. Ah but you'd still need to update the minimum payment amount when the higher rate part was paid off. I'll see what is possible, but it won't be soon.