Workbook — Debt · Created October 5, 2026 · 1 min read
Debt Reduction Planner
The minimum-payment path and the snowball path, priced side by side.
Every debt payoff argument is really one question: what does waiting cost? List the debts, and this prices the standard approach against the accumulation method that rolls each finished payment into the next balance.
What This Workbook Does
- One row per debt with balance, required payment and APR.
- An interest-cost column and a payment-percent-interest column, which together show which debts are actually expensive.
- An accumulated-payments column showing how the payment grows as earlier debts clear.
- A Summary tab comparing total cost under both approaches.
How to Use It
- Enter the date of the snapshot, so you know what the numbers describe.
- List debts in the order you plan to attack them, with your chosen first target near the top.
- Enter current balance, required monthly payment and APR for each.
- Read the interest columns to sanity-check the order you chose.
- Compare the two total-cost columns before committing to a plan.
What It Will Not Do
This uses simplified monthly-interest estimates based on the current balance and listed APR. It is not a lender amortization schedule, and it will not match a payoff quote to the cent.
Where to go next: Debt Payoff Strategies — snowball against avalanche, and when each one wins; Managing Debt — the wider picture this sheet sits inside; Credit Scores & Building Credit — what paying these down does to the score.