Let It Snow!

Eliminating debt can happen a lot faster than you may think. One way to pay down your debt quickly is by making a debt snowball plan! This is where you write down all your debts and start to pay them down from lowest to highest. Once you pay off the smallest debt, you carry that amount you paid for the smallest debt over to the next smallest debt. For example, if you had a doctors bill you paid $100 a month and paid it off in 4 months, you carry that $100 the 5th month to the next smallest bill which might be a credit card you pay $100 a month, but now you pay $200. Let me show you another example;
This is the Jones Family and their debt snowball plan:

Creditor	Balance	Rate	Payment
Card #1	4,400.00	13.00%	50.00
Auto Loan #1	3,200.00	9.81%	125.00
Auto Loan #2	5,000.00	12.00%	125.00
Card #2	9,000.00	13.50%	110.00
Student Loan #1	4,900.00	4.00%	80.00
Mortgage	180,000.00	6.00%	1,170.00
Signature Loan	1,000.00	10.00%	80.00
Doctors	900.00	0.00%	100.00
	208,400.00		1,840.00

The Jones have $208, 400 of debt and are paying $1,840 a month to finance all that debt and they started their plan Feb 2009. Now if the Jones were to just pay the minimum on all of their debt with no extra payments which a majority of americans do with debt they be in, debt for a total of 24 years and pay$192,153.34 in total interest.

Creditors in	Original	Total Interest	Month Paid
Pay-Off Order	Balance	Paid	Off
Card #1	4,400.00	9,821.96	Oct-32
Auto Loan #1	3,200.00	405.12	Jun-11
Auto Loan #2	5,000.00	1,417.33	May-13
Card #2	9,000.00	15,890.42	Dec-27
Student Loan #1	4,900.00	589.94	Oct-14
Mortgage	180,000.00	163,980.00	Jul-33
Signature Loan	1,000.00	48.57	Dec-09
Doctors	900.00	-	Oct-09

Now with the same situation and a debt snowball plan, the Jones will be able to be debt free in 10 years and only pay $76,506.75 in total interest.

Creditors in	Original	Total Interest	Month Paid
Pay-Off Order	Balance	Paid	Off
Doctors	900.00	-	Mar-09
Signature Loan	1,000.00	23.47	May-09
Auto Loan #1	3,200.00	142.74	Sep-09
Card #1	4,400.00	516.74	Mar-10
Student Loan #1	4,900.00	238.92	Aug-10
Auto Loan #2	5,000.00	866.98	Nov-10
Card #2	9,000.00	2,726.72	Aug-11
Mortgage	180,000.00	71,991.18	Sep-19

THE JONES JUST SAVED THEMSELVES 14 YEARS AND $115,646.59 IN INTEREST.

To put together your own debt snowball plan you can download your own spreadsheet at:

http://www.vertex42.com/Calculators/debt-reduction-calculator.html . Feel free to contact me by e-mail or phone for any questions or help putting together your own plan.