New snowball calculator

Tondella

Dear All

There have been some changes to the snowball calculator at http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx. As many of you will know this nifty little tool allows you to enter in your existing debts and works out the most efficient payment reschedule for you, by prioritising the debts highest APR first, giving you your debt free date. It has now been amended so that you can enter in any introductory APR offer that you may have on the debt. This means that the total interest calculation is now more accurate.


I've copied text from Mr Snowball Calculator himself to explain the rationale behind the way in which introductory offers are treated when snowballing (below).


Happy snowballing!!


>> I gave the snowballing order when 0% cards are involved some thought,but it turns out to be quite complex. It depends on how long until your DFD (debt free day), and the term of the 0% (or low interest rate)offer.


For example, if your DFD was 24 months away, and you somehow got hold of a card which gives you 24 months at 0% (not that I know of any!), then obviously that should be the last card to snowball regardless of it's "true" APR, but I think that's unlikely to happen in most people's cases. Usually it's somewhere in between... You may have 3 or 4 years to your DFD, and only 3 or 4 months left on a 0% card, in which case it makes less of a difference, so should probably still be ordered by "standard" APR rate.


Also of course, if your credit rating is good enough to allow you to move debt onto a 0% card, then the chances are you'd be able to get another 0% card once the current one expires, so that greatly increases the speed at which you can become debt free.

homersimpson_3

Is this calculator accurate or I am doing something wrong?
Flexible mortgage & use credit card to stooze. Used stoozing pot to reduce interest on mortgage. so debts are
a) debt 1 (mortgage)- x at y% interest
b) debt 2 (credit card)- a at b% interest. i put introductory rate of 0% for 6 months.
calculator just told me to repay all credit card debt from day 1 and only then overpay on mortgage.
can you please clarify if it includes introductory rate of 0% and if not why- what's the point of introductory rate if it takes no notice of it!

moneyLost_2

homersimpson wrote:

can you please clarify if it includes introductory rate of 0% and if not why- what's the point of introductory rate if it takes no notice of it!

It doesn't show you the breakdown of interest per debt per month, only the total interest per month.

I suspect if you look down the "interest" column, you'll see that the monthly interest charges jump after your 6 month 0% period is up. So yes, it does take that into consideration.

However, if you're using it to calculate stoozing returns, you might be better off using the stoozing calculator rather than the snowballing calculator.

HTH,
A.

funkymonkey

fantastic have been waiting for this for a while - you are purely brilliant!

nabowla

This is fantastic - thanks. I've had a play around already and can't wait to get home this evening to put in the exact figures. I never thought that I'd get excited about debt repayment but that's what reading MSE does for you!!!

Is there any way to include the Egg 0% anniversary offer? My anniversary doesn't start for a couple of months so I can't put it in as an introductory offer because I won't be paying 0% until Nov/Dec.

moneyLost_2

nabowla wrote:

Is there any way to include the Egg 0% anniversary offer? My anniversary doesn't start for a couple of months so I can't put it in as an introductory offer because I won't be paying 0% until Nov/Dec.

Unfortunately, no, you won't be able to put in an anniversary offer until it actually starts. I know that is slightly annoying, but I really want to keep it as simple as possible to use, and unfortunately, that means it can’t have all possible options!

However, I’m currently working on a whole (free to use) on-line financial system (Kinda like a cut-down version of MS-Money, or Quicken, but on-line, and with an emphasis towards debt reduction). I’ll look at including future 0% offers in that. However, it’s a lot of work, so it won’t be ready for quite a while yet! (it also depends on how much paid work I have on, that has to come first!) - I will be looking for people to help me test some areas in a week or so, so drop me an email off-board if anyone is interested.

A.

Oberon_2

not sure if I've done it right, but I have 2 0% loans (1 from a friend, and on repaying arrears to the council, in case you're wondering) and 1 personal loan for £10k from the bank at 15.9%, that has only just started. To see what it would say I input these into the calculator, and it told me to pay off the 0% ones frist, leaving the 15.9% loan til last!