Review your repayment budget and minimums

A repayment forecast needs both an allocation rule and enough money to cover minimums. Use actual account documents to check the inputs before comparing debt-free dates.

Separate the total budget from extra money

The planner’s monthly budget is the total amount available across all five accounts, including minimums. It is not extra money on top of them. First-month minimums in the invented example total $303, so a $500 total budget leaves $197 extra. Entering $197 as the total budget would cause a shortfall.

After one account is paid, the default budget remains the same. Its released minimum becomes part of the extra pool for remaining accounts. Change the overall budget only when available money actually changes; a paid account does not automatically mean your household can spend less on debt without delaying the plan.

Check the minimum-payment formula

The model uses the greater of a fixed floor or balance-share plus monthly interest, capped at the total owed. That is a transparent generic convention. Your creditor might use a different percentage, include fees, apply a minimum interest charge or specify a fixed instalment. A plausible-looking number does not establish that it matches a statement.

Use the fixed-floor and percentage inputs only when the simplified rule reasonably represents the account. The loan schedule may better describe a fixed-rate instalment loan. Accounts with daily interest, multiple rate categories or changing promotional terms need additional modelling beyond these files.

Use monthly overrides deliberately

Inputs in the Excel planner offers one budget override for each of 360 months. A blank override uses the default budget. A numeric zero means no available money that month. The browser uses one month,amount line per override and rejects duplicate month entries. It does not silently keep the last conflicting value.

Model a known lower-income month before relying on the final date. If that month’s budget cannot cover minimums, the projection stops there. Increasing a later budget does not repair the earlier missing payment in this model, because the resulting delinquency and fees have not been modelled.

Reconcile forecasts with records

Record actual balances separately and investigate differences between a planned closing balance and a statement. New borrowing, interest timing and fees can explain a change. Do not overwrite an actual observation with the forecast merely to make the chart agree. Keep account documents alongside dated working files.

Download the actual balance tracker · Review the repayment model

Sources and calculation basis

The CFPB description of debt reduction strategies explains paying minimums across debts and directing extra money to a selected priority. Its explanation of credit-card interest describes why real statements may use daily balances and different rates. These sources support the concepts. All workbook layouts, monthly model conventions and invented USD examples here are AllMarkets material.