Want to pay your debts quicker? This calculator leverages the snowball methhod to pay off the smallest debts first & then rollover the additional savings to pay off the next smallest debt. As each debt is paid off more money is freed up to pay on the next debt.
For your convenience we publish current personal loan rates, HELOC & home equity loan rates & mortgage refinance rates which you can use to estimate your payments and find a local lender.
The following table shows current 30-year mortgage rates. You can use the menus to select other loan durations, alter the loan amount, change your down payment, or change your location. More features are available in the advanced drop down.
Our rate table lists current home equity offers in your area, which you can use to find a local lender or compare against other loan options. From the [loan type] select box you can choose between HELOCs and home equity loans of a 5, 10, 15, 20 or 30 year duration.
Sometimes we get dealt a bad hand, have bad luck, or have a health issue which leaves us in debt. Sometimes debt is caused by a series of small decisions and bad money habits.
No matter the reason a mountain of debt appears in front of us, if we are going to conquere it, we have to develop good money habits.
If the path to success seems nearly impossible then it is easy to give up along the way and slide into our old habits.
When we pay off the smallest debts first, we get to see the reward that a debt has been conquered. This in turn can help give us motivation to keep fighting and pay off the next one. Along the way, as each debt is repaid we get a boost of motivation as we are reinforcing our habits.
Many of us need this sort of reinforcement to develop good money habits to offset marketing which promises to aleviate the pain & suffering of life if we buy this one more thing.
“I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables - slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war... Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.” - Tyler Durden, Fight Club
Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit is an excellent book offering advice on how to build positive life habits.
The above calculator also has a second tab which shows the current interest rates on savings accounts. This further shows how expensive debt is because most forms of consumer debt charge a far higher rate of interest than banks pay savers AND savers get taxed on interest income they earn at their ordinary tax rates. The table below shows the full cost of $10,000 of debt at various rates of interest. While different consumer debt types typically have different amounts, we kept the amount column constant to show the absolute difference in cost per Dollar earned or borrowed. We also presumed interest-only payments on the debt & a 25% tax rate on income.
| Account Type | Amount | Rate | Annual Interest | After Tax Income | Required Income to Cover Interest Expense |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Big Bank Savings | $10,000 | 0.01% | $1 | $0.75 | - |
| High-yield Savings | $10,000 | 1.00% | $100 | $75.00 | - |
| Certificate of Deposit | $10,000 | 1.40% | $140 | $105.00 | - |
| New Car, Good Credit | $10,000 | 3.65% | $365 | - | $486.67 |
| Used Car, Bad Credit | $10,000 | 8.90% | $890 | - | $1,186.67 |
| Credit Card | $10,000 | 13.76% | $1,376 | - | $1,834.67 |
| Personal Loan, Good Credit | $10,000 | 14.5% | $1,450 | - | $1,933.33 |
| Personal Loan, Bad Credit | $10,000 | 30.0% | $3,000 | - | $4,000 |
| Payday Loan | $10,000 | 400% | $40,000 | - | $53,333.33 |
Explore conventional mortgages, FHA loans, USDA loans, and VA loans to find out which option is right for you.
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