Creating reports
Reports are the payment schedules you use to allocate funds to pay down your debts more effectively. There are several options you can choose from to compare approaches or choose the one that best suits your need. Normally, a report runs until either (a) all debts are paid off or (b) 50 years passes (if you're not out of debt after 50 years, you should to do some additional re-organizing now). Alternatively, you can specify how long you want to run a report, either to plan things out for the next few months, or compare how much money you'll have saved in 30 years with a better plan.
Several reports are available:
- Lowest interest payment plan - excess funds pay off the debt with the lowest interest rate first. This is usually pretty bad.
- Highest interest payment plan - excess funds pay off the debt with the highest interest rate first. This is almost always the best approach.
- Lowest possible interest payment plan - excess funds pay off the debt with the lowest possible interest rate first. This is usually pretty bad.
- Highest possible interest payment plan - excess funds pay off the debt with the highest possible interest rate first. This is frequently the best approach. Note that if interest rates don't vary over time, this will match the highest interest payment plan.
- Lowest balance payment plan - excess funds pay off the debt with the lowest balance first. This is a good way to knock out smaller debts quickly so you don't need to worry about them, but overall savings are mixed.
- Highest balance payment plan - excess funds pay off the debt with the highest balance first. Quality varies, it's usually only for comparison purposes.
- Lowest fees payment plan - excess funds pay off the debt with the lowest monthly fees first. This is usually pretty bad.
- Highest fees payment plan - excess funds pay off the debt with the highest monthly fees first. This is usually a very good approach, but tends to lose out to the highest interest approach.
- Lowest possible fees payment plan - excess funds pay off the debt with the lowest possible monthly fees first. This is usually pretty bad.
- Highest possible fees payment plan - excess funds pay off the debt with the highest possible monthly fees first. This is usually a very good approach, but tends to lose out to the highest interest approach.
- Lowest minimum payments payment plan - excess funds pay off the debt with the lowest required payments first. This varies in quality.
- Highest minimum payments payment plan - excess funds pay off the debt with the highest required payments first. This varies in quality.
- Lowest possible minimum payments payment plan - excess funds pay off the debt with the lowest possible required payments first. This varies in quality.
- Highest possible minimum payments payment plan - excess funds pay off the debt with the highest possible required payments first. This varies in quality.
- Even split payment plan - Excess funds are divvied up and extra money is sent evenly to all debts. This report can have good results, but it varies wildly.
- All cash on hand payment plan - However much money you can spare goes to whatever debt comes due first. This report can have good results, but is highly variable depending upon the data. It's a good bet to get as much money as possible out of your bank account, if you're afraid you'll spend it.
- User defined payment plan - Debts are paid off in the order they are listed in the debts screen. Drag and drop debts on that screen to re-order them. This can be a very good report - for example, your mortgage payment may be your highest interest rate, but it still make more sense to pay off a lower rate credit card first, to reach the point where your debt is only the house. Ordering the debts from highest to lowest interest rate, with the mortgage on the bottom may be cost effective.
- Lowest Minimum Fee/balance ratio plan - Debts are paid off based upon which debt has the highest balance/minimum fee ratio. The rationale is that the debts with the highest ratio tend to be farthest from being paid off, so they should be targeted first. This approach varies in quality.
- Lowest DOLP score payment plan - Debts are paid off in the same order they would be paid off if you only sent the minimum payments. That is, they are ordered by the number of minimum payments required to pay off the debt. This can have decent results if all of your cards have comparable interest rates. Regardless, it will usually be the quickest at freeing up money.
- Lowest DOLP score payment plan - Debts are paid off in the reverse order they would be paid off if you only sent the minimum payments.
- Minimum fee only payment plan - Excess funds are banked instead of paying your debts, and only the minimums are paid. This is an utter disaster. Any of the other approaches will save you hundreds or thousands of dollars over this approach.
Highest interest? Highest possible interest? What's the difference?
There are some variations on a few of the reports, such as "highest interest payment plan" vs. "highest possible interest payment plan", they sure sound similar and they are pretty close a lot of the time. The variation is that the "regular" version looks at the current value, whereas the "possible" version looks at the highest one that could hit in the future, assuming the current balance hasn't decreased.
Examples help. Let's say you have two debts, a credit card at a 5% interest rate, and a second credit card with a 3% teaser rate that lasts for the next 6 months but then escalates to 20%. The highest interest payment plan will pay credit card #1 because it's currently at 5%, whereas the second card is at 3%. 6 months from now, it will re-allocate its funds to pay down the second card when the rate shoots up to 20%.
If you run the highest interest possible report, Debtinator will realize that the second card will go up to 20% in the future, so it will start paying it off immediately and keep the 5% card at the minimum.
On a related note, say that the first card is 5% forever, and the second is 5% but increases to 20% in 6 months. Starting with v2.2.1, Debtinator is smart enough to realize that even though both cards have the same rate right now, it should focus its money towards the second card to cut it down as much as possible before the higher rate hits.
If your interest rates are fixed, that is if you have two cards that are both at 5% forever, then there will be no difference between the "regular" and "possible" plans.
As always, your mileage may vary, so we recommend trying both out and seeing which one's more useful to you.
Next to the 'Go' button, is a gearbox. Click on the gear to filter what activity you want to display. By default, all activity is included. It may be useful to view only debts to see all the payments you'll need to make, and skip viewing income and other expenses. You can also filter down to particular debts. Further, if you choose the minimum payment plan and only a single debt, you print out an amortization table.
You can click on the little gear in the upper right hand side of the report view to customize which columns you would like to see.
On the bottom of the report window is a stacked barchart, displaying progress of paying down your debts as you're going along. Click on individual report rows to see your debt shrink visually. In the case of our screenshot here, you can see at a glance that the bulk of the debt is the mortgage, another good amount is the student loan, and the mastercard, visa, and car loan make up smaller portions of the rest.
Optionally, you may choose to pay off debts out of order when possible. This is usually a bad thing. But say you're running the highest interest report and your credit card with the 3rd highest interest rate is due with a balance of $500 and a minimum payment of $25. You have $1,000 in the bank, so you can pay it off and stop worrying about it. That's what this checkbox does. Please note, most of the time, this will cost you money. But sometimes, depending upon the report, it's a smart thing to do. It can really come in handy with the minimum payment report.
2.3.6 adds an option to color code report rows. When this is enabled, you'll see a barchart embedded within the report table. The bar starts off completely colored (100% of the debt is outstanding) and gradually shrinks as it gets paid off.
To run a report:
- Click on the reports tool button (the scales, since you're weighing your options).
- Select the report you want to run.
- Press the 'Go' button.
To print out a payment report:
- Run a report as above.
- Choose Print from the File menu.
To export a report:
- Run a report as above.
- Choose Export from the File Menu.
- This will generate a tab delimited text file with all the rows and columns you have chosen to view. You can specify either an ASCII or a UTF-8 file
Export to iCal
- Run a report as above.
- Choose Export from the File Menu.
- Choose iCal as the file type, and save the file. We recommend "Debtinator.ics" or "Highest Interest.ics" or the like.
- Launch iCal and drag the new file into it.
- You will be prompted to add to an existing calendar or create a new one, we recommend creating a new one, so you can easily generate new reports in the future and replace all data.
- All events will show up on the date they'll occur. Click on them to see the amount involve.
It's not uncommon to run a report and get an error like the following:
Out of Money
You ran out of money
Electricity is short by $80
Is this a bug in Debtinator? No! At some point, your expenses will exceed your income, and despite the program's best efforts, it couldn't figure out how to keep you afloat. Sure, it's upsetting and a concern that you're going to be short on paying your bills at some point, but at least you know about it now, so you can take steps to correct the situation.
So...now what do you do? Well, everyone's financial picture is different, but here are some general tidbits to help troubleshoot and track down what's going on.
- Look at the report. It'll run up until you run out of money and display everything up until then. Now's the time to look at your expenses and see if you can cut back. Yes, yes, we don't like to lecture about budgeting and living your life and all, but in this case, we make an exception. Without changes in your lifestyle, you'll run out of cash. Now's the time to go back and really evaluate things. Do you really need to spend $100/month going to the movies? Is food really going to cost you $200/week? Does your clothing budget really need to be $500/month? Cut back on those fungible expenses, even a little bit, and re-run the report. Maybe spending $80/month on movies is all you need to do.
- Check other accounts. Debtinator won't try to move funds around to cover things. So if your checking account runs out of money, but you have thousands in savings, Debtinator won't try to use it. If you have money in your savings account to cover it, then transfer it over. You can even set up a transfer to run the day before you run out of cash to move the funds into place automatically at the last moment.
- If you run out of cash immediately at the start, you probably haven't been paid yet. This is the most common issue. Let's say that you download and set up the program on April 26th, telling it that your next payday is April 27th, and you're paid weekly.. You run your reports, all is peachy. You come back the next day and try to run a report, and you'll immediately run out of money. That's because the app has advance your next payday to May 4th, assuming you've already been paid. You'll need to manually go fill in those funds to your bank account balance to get them to show up. Then you can re-run.