Mr_Peanut's Debt Snowball Calculator

Welcome to my debt snowball calculator webpage. This spreadsheet is written to help motivate those wishing to reduce their debt burden and (hopefully) keep it gone for good. This is the latest version of my Excel sheet. This version [DebtSnowball-Ver3] has been updated from the previous version in the following ways:

* Due to the the many requests, there is NO PASSWORD PROTECTION.

* The calculations per cell have been simplified and therefore, there are more cells in hidden columns. If you need to see some of the other calculations, unhide the columns.

* Interest calculation seems to be a little more accurate (still not exact, but close enough for me).

* I've added some 'Validation' features just to pop up and let you know what's going on with the sheet. Try a 0% interest rate or enter a smaller debt below a larger one. These are just information "pop-ups" you do not have to follow their advice.

* Please note, certain text has been removed from this page by request of a Trademark holder. The spreadsheet itself has not been updated or revised.

Previous Versions:

Links:

How to use my Debt Snowball Spreadsheet:

Now, although I'm not here to teach you how to use Excel (I feel that's what the help files are for), I will try to show some of the basics while explaining my sheet.

Basically, everything you need to input is outlined by a heavy box and shaded gray on the top left of the sheet. Start inputting your debts, just like many financial advisors suggest; smallest balance to largest balance. If you want to experiment and see what happens when you try to pay off the largest interest to lowest intereset, the spreadsheet will handle it. The snowball is always rolled downward. So, if you have a debt paying off before one above it, the additional payment will be rolled DOWN the sheet. I still recommend having them pay off in the correct order just to keep things clean, but this is your snowball, do what is comfortable for you.

The payment you put in for DEBT 1 needs to be minimum payment + any extra 'snow'. In my case, I think the minimum payment was $20 and we came up with $480 extra 'snow', so that is why we have $500 in the first box. The spreadshet will automatically roll the snow down to the next bill each month. (e.g. we had $500 to pay on the first month, but the first balance was only ~$290. The spreadsheet takes the $210 extra and increased the payment on the next debt by the same amount.)

Change the first date listed to your start date. The spreadsheet will title the rest of the months out for you.

Now that you have the input in correctly, I suggest coloring your entire projected debt free month in a particular color. That way, if you have to do any of the editing I describe later on, you can easily see how it affects your debt free date. (It really hurts to see the payoff date go past that highlighted month, but it is really encouraging to see your payoff more closer than initially expected!). To color in the cells, highlight all the cells you want to color in then either click on the little paint can in the toolbars (the little down arrow next to the can will give you more colors to choose from), or after highlighting the cells, right click inside those cells and go FORMAT CELLS -> PATTERN and pick a color.

If you have to rob/add to your snowball one month for whatever reason (have extra $$ one month to use for 'snow', emergency comes up and you can only pay minimums, whatever) simply change the payment value for the appropriate debt in the appropriate month. This new value will be used to calculate your new debt free date. By doing this, you are eliminating the calculations that normally take place. This is OK unless you want the cells to do their normal calculation at some point in the future. If this is the case, you need to do a little Excel work and save out those calculations somewhere. Or you can just do a "Save As..." and have another spreadsheet. If in a particular month you need to 'steal some snow' from the snowball, in the cell below all the payments for that month, you will see '!!!'. That is only to remind you that you are not fully utilizing the snowball for that month. If you add snow to a particular month, the '!!!' will not show up as this is not detrimental to the snowball!

As I've said before, this sheet is not password protected so you can do any maniplation to the sheet you would like. I believe adding lines for debts is as simple as adding the lines and dragging down the equations. If you need help with this, please refer to the help files. You can hide rows in this version.

You can change your print area. There are two ways to do this, 1 - go VIEW -> PAGE BREAK PREVIEW and move the blue bars around until you get what you want, or 2- highlight all the cells you want to print, and go FILE -> PRINT AREA -> SET PRINT AREA. A word of caution, making more print on one page that I have designated will result in very small text and it may not be readable.

This spreadsheet was written using Excel 2002. I don't know how it looks or works on Open Office or lower versions of Excel or any other program that can open a .xls. Sorry, Excel's all I've got and I like it.

Since I went through the trouble of writing this, (if you feel so inclined) any donations that you might be able to come up with would be greatly appreciated. You can send me a donation through PayPal at the link below or direct through paypal at chrislsnider [at] gmail [dot] com or email me at the same address and I can give you an address to use if you would like to send a check or something.

Thanks, hope this helps you out

-- Chris

Thank you everyone who has donated!