Anyone with debt wants to get it paid off as soon as possible and that’s the idea behind DebtGoal. According to the DebtGoal website, a staggering two-thirds of people who are aiming to become debt free don’t ever create a plan to help them do this. If you’re one of those who fall into this category, DebtGoal can help you to draw up a debt elimination plan that is personalized to you.
Everyone has a different financial situation, that is why you need a personalized plan to get out of debt. Having the desire to get out of debt is the first step, and making a plan to achieve this goal is the next step. Let’s take a look at DebtGoal and how it works:
How It Works
There’s nothing particularly complicated about how DebtGoal works. It goes without saying that if you can throw more money at your debts, you’ll get them paid off quicker and pay less interest in the process, and this is the basic thinking behind DebtGoal.
Getting started is simple:
- Enter the balance of your debts in the calculator on the homepage to see how much you can save in interest.
- If you’re happy with what comes up, fill in your details to start your free trial (name, password, username, address details and credit card details).
- Enter the details of the debts that you want to track, such as credit cards, loans, mortgages and student loans.
- Enter your monthly income (or an estimate if your income tends to be irregular) and follow the step-by-step guide to create your own personalized debt plan.
- View your progress using the visuals (pie charts and graphs).
Key Features
Personalization
As the DebtGoal calculator takes your monthly budget into account when telling you how much you can save and suggesting how much to repay each month, everything is personalized to your situation.
Accelerator Actions
These can help you to get out of debt more quickly on top of the basic personalized repayment plan with advice such as trying to negotiate on your credit repayments.
Debt-free Progress Charts
Once you’ve told DebtGoal how much you plan to allocate for repayments, it can create a motivating chart to demonstrate when you can expect to be debt-free. If you decide to up your repayments further down the line, the charts will change to reflect the fact that your debt-free date will be that much closer.
Advantages
Manage multiple debts in one place
If you’ve got several debts to keep track of, you can track them all using DebtGoal once you’ve entered the relevant information about them.
Receive an easy-to-create personalized debt repayment plan
The debt plan that is created for you is unique to you because it takes your budget into account and uses this to suggest how much you can afford to throw at your debts each month.
Cut interest by being smarter with your payments
Your debt plan is optimized to make your repayments as efficient and smart as possible to reduce how much interest you’ll ultimately be paying.
Use the Progress Tracker to quickly gauge how you’re doing
Whenever a payment is made, you can enter details about it and use the Progress Tracker tool to check that you’re still on target for your debt-free date.
Disadvantages
It’s not free
DebtGoal costs $14.95 per month after the initial 7-day free trial comes to an end, which seems a bit expensive. Assuming that you don’t let your subscription lapse, that’s nearly $180 a year. Still, that’s a worthwhile investment and money well spent if the tool helps you to get out of debt faster.
Final Thoughts
At first, I looked at DebtGoal as a tool primarily for people who aren’t all that savvy when it comes to getting out of debt. Having played around with it for a while, I’ve come to see it as a useful tool for anyone who’s in debt, primarily because it’s actively advising you on ways to get your debt paid off more quickly without going over budget.
My debts are on the low side so I wasn’t expecting to be advised that I could save much on my payments. However, even on a credit card debt of roughly $500, DebtGoal set up plan that would save me $80, which is pretty substantial in my book. I can see how some would argue that saving $80 doesn’t warrant the monthly fee, so you need to take a couple things into consideration in these circumstances: 1) How many months will it take you to save that money (that weigh you can weigh the total cost of the service against the amount it will save you) and 2) You need to give some value to the fact that it is setting up a program that, if you follow closely, will get you out of debt. You might be the person who never would have got out of debt (big or small) and would have ended up paying many months or years of interest, in which case this type of program is a necessity for you!
As I was curious to see how much could be saved on bigger debts, I entered data for a hypothetical credit card debt of $5,000. The verdict here was that I could save $2,000 in interest. For me, this is acase where it’s a no-brainer to use the DebtGoal tool, because this amount would more than likely outweigh the monthly costs.
If DebtGoal sounds like the right tool for managing your debt, sign up for a free 7-day trial and give it a try. Have you had any experience with the product? Any feedback?
