Debt Management Calculators
Get on the Path to Financial Freedom
Each year, many Americans resolve to pay down their debt in the upcoming year as part of their New Year’s resolutions—and perhaps this rings true for you. When there isn’t a solid plan in place, it’s easy to fall short—and then you may find yourself making the same resolution next year. Fortunately, our debt management calculators can help you transform your debt management plan into reality.
About Debt Management Calculators
As you know, you can get from “Point A” to “Point B” in a number of ways. The same holds true with paying off debt, such as making a loan payment every other week, taking out a loan for consolidation, or increasing your monthly payment, to name a couple of strategies. Our calculators can help you find the strategy that best suits you.
Debt Consolidation
Consolidating debt offers a variety of potential benefits, such as possibly saving more in the long run or making just one monthly payment instead of handling multiple loan due dates. With the debt consolidation calculator, you can compare how long it’d take to pay off your current debt versus a consolidation loan.
Simply enter relevant info—credit card balances, interest rates, and payments along with installment debt balances, interest rates, and payments. Then, enter the consolidation loan term and interest rate—and whether or not you’d like to keep paying the same amount or not—and the calculator provides the information you need.
Note that, with a bigger payment, you’ll pay the debt off more quickly; with a lower one, you’ll have a longer term, which may give you the breathing room you need in your budget. Learn more about debt consolidation and when it might be right for you here.
Make Bi-Weekly Payments
Are you looking for another way to reduce your debt more quickly? With this calculator, you can explore the impact of making bi-weekly payments (payments every other week). This debt management plan would involve some budgeting; by going this route, you’ll reduce your principal more quickly, which will lower the amount of interest owed, overall. This calculator will show you how much you’ll save in interest charges and how much more quickly you’ll pay off your loan by using the bi-weekly payment strategy.
Meet a Debt Payoff Goal
Do you have a date in mind when you’d like to pay off a debt? Having one can certainly help! With this calculator, you’ll enter the loan balance, interest rate, current monthly payment, and payoff goal in months. You’ll then see the monthly payment you’d need to make so that you can meet your goal and how much interest you’d save over the payoff period.
How Long Will it Take to Pay Off a Credit Card?
With credit cards often having such high interest rates, it’s easy for their balances to get out of hand. To take back control, input your credit card balance, interest rate, the amount of your monthly charges, and your monthly payment in this calculator to see how long it would take. You can also experiment with options. What impact, for example, would there be if you stopped using your credit card and focused solely on paying it off? Or what would happen if you increased your monthly payment by $50? $100? See SCCU’s credit card rates.
Use a Lump Sum to Pay Down Debt
Have you received a mini windfall—for example, a tax refund, a bonus, or another lump sum of money? With this calculator, you can see the impact of putting that money toward paying off debt. This calculator needs these pieces of information: loan balance, interest rate, monthly payment, and lump sum payment. You’ll then see how much interest you’d save on the loan, overall, and how much more quickly it would be paid off. Paying off debt sooner often means freeing up more money in the future for other things!
Are Credit Card Balance Transfers Worth It?
Many credit card companies offer special introductory promotions with introductory rates, such as 0% APR* for 6 months. Transferring your balances from one credit card with a high interest rate to another credit card with 0% APR* gives you the opportunity to pay off your debt faster. But, you need to keep in mind the balance transfer fees. To find out if it’d be worth it to make the switch, enter the current credit card’s information and the new credit card’s introductory information in this calculator. You’ll then see how much you’d save in interest and how much more quickly you could pay off the credit card.
Increase Your Monthly Payment
This calculator will help you to see how much paying more each month can help you in your debt management plan. Enter your loan balance, interest rate, and monthly payment along with the additional amount you intend to make in your debt management plan. The result? You’ll see how much you’d save in interest, overall, and how much faster the loan would be paid off. Pro tip: Make sure your loan or credit card doesn’t charge pre-payment penalties.
Calculate a Loan Payment
Curious what your monthly payment would be for a loan? With this calculator, enter the loan amount, interest rate, and loan term in years to get the monthly payment and to see amortization results. This calculator doesn’t take into account taxes or insurance costs.
Loans at SCCU
SCCU offers a range of loan types with low interest rates, including:
- Auto loans: Get pre-approved for a car loan to know how much car you can afford and to shop with confidence; refinance a car from another lender and save at SCCU; or get SCCU financing at the dealership.
- Personal loans: With share loans and CD secured loans, you can put your money to work as collateral for your loans or obtain a signature personal loan to conveniently get quick cash for a flexible range of purposes.
- Recreational vehicle loans: Live the Florida lifestyle by getting boat or RV financing or motorcycle or scooter loans.
Learn more about SCCU here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Hard credit checks, which are performed when you apply for a consolidation loan, can lower the scores by a small amount. Plus, when you take out a new loan to pay off debt that you’ve had for a longer period of time, the average age of your credit accounts go down, which may cause the credit scores to go down for a short time. However, a debt consolidation loan can help you to improve your payment history, which is the biggest factor in how your credit is scored. This means that even with the initial drop in your score from taking out a debt consolidation loan, it will likely rise even higher than before if you keep your payments on time.
For success, set SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time sensitive. Instead of saying that you want to reduce debt, perhaps decide to consolidate your debt; our “Debt Consolidation” calculator can help. You’ll want a goal that is achievable; that’s relevant to your overall goal—in this case, of reducing debt—and one where you can set a specific timeframe. SMART goals can work especially well with financial aspirations, including debt management and saving money.
The answer depends on the current balance, interest rate, monthly payments, and continuing usage. In general, consider setting a goal of thirty-six months to pay off a credit card; for more specific information, use our “How Long Will it Take to Pay Off a Credit Card?” calculator. This debt payoff calculator is specific to credit card debt and will allow you to experiment with various monthly payments and usages to craft your unique payoff strategy. Perhaps, for example, you’ll start off with a lower monthly payment and, later on, increase the amount to accelerate the payoff.
You’ll need three pieces of information: the loan amount, interest rate, and term. Our “Calculate a Loan Payment” calculator makes it simple to enter the three pieces of information and receive the payment amount. Plus, the calculator provides an amortization schedule in various formats so that you can see how much of each payment will go towards principal and how much to interest over the life of the loan. At first, more will go to the interest; as the balance goes down, more goes to the principal until it gets paid off at the end of the term. To pay the loan off more quickly, you can increase the amount you pay each month, and our “Increase Your Monthly Payment” calculator will seamlessly demonstrate how that will work.
The information provided by these calculators is intended for illustrative purposes only and is not intended to represent actual user-defined parameters. The default figures shown are hypothetical and may not be applicable to your individual situation. Be sure to consult a financial professional prior to relying on the results.