Take Control of Your Debt With These Free Tools

Apps for budgeting and personal finance do a good job of tracking your money as you earn and spend it. Some also have excellent debt calculators that help you figure out how to pay off your debts.

Each debt calculator is a little different. Some suggest a specific method for paying down debt, while others are simulators that let you see how your total amount paid will decrease if you increase your monthly payment.

Here are a few useful calculators and some guidance about what makes them different.

A Straightforward Plan: Bankrate

Bankrate's free debt payoff calculator gives you a timetable for paying off each of your debts. You enter as many debts as you want to include, their interest rates, total loan amounts, and other details. You also enter any new income you expect to receive, such as an annual salary increase or windfall, and the amount that you can put toward your debts. The calculator then generates one payment table for each debt showing how much to pay each month until the debt is cleared.

Bankrate prioritizes paying off the debt with the highest interest rate first. Once your first debt is paid off, the money you would have put toward it is diverted to your other monthly payments. In other words, as you eliminate debts, the monthly payments on your other debts increase until they, too, are paid off.

Who should use it? Bankrate's calculator works for people who have multiple debts, and the total monthly minimum payments are within their financial reach. If that's you, then you'll get a crystal clear plan—with a timeline—for getting rid of all your debts.

Where it comes up short. This calculator assumes that paying off your debts by clearing the one with the highest interest rate first is in your best interest. That's not true for everyone. You might have other options, such as consolidating credit card debt to a new card with a 0 percent introductory rate or filing for bankruptcy. Bankrate also doesn't take into account other personal finance concerns, like other uses of monthly funds that free up once you pay off your first debt—Bankrate tells you to put that money toward your next-highest-interest debt. You might be better off putting it toward retirement savings or an emergency fund.

Big-Picture Guidance: NerdWallet

NerdWallet's free debt load calculator determines your debt load as a percentage of your income. The resulting debt load is classified as smaller (less than 36 percent), larger (37–42), or overwhelming (43 percent or more). Based on the outcome, NerdWallet suggests a method for eliminating your debt, which you read about in an educational article below the results.

Who should use it? This calculator helps you get a big-picture sense of your debt. If you have a lot of debt, it's useful for ruling out (or ruling in) the option of declaring bankruptcy.

Where it comes up short. It's not great at analyzing the finer details of your debt. For example, in the setup, there's no line item for student loans or a mortgage, much less the exact interest rate you pay on loans. The results are a rough guide rather than a personalized strategy.

Automated Inputs: WalletHub

When you sign up for WalletHub (free) and connect your financial accounts, the app pulls real information about how much money you owe and your payment history. Its debt payoff plan is a calculator that lets you play with the numbers to see what would happen if you increased your monthly payment. How much faster can you clear the debt? How much will you save in interest? You can quickly see the difference between increasing your monthly payment by, say, $50 versus $150.

Who should use it? This calculator is for WalletHub users who have connected their financial accounts. It's most useful for people who can afford to pay more than the monthly minimum on their debts.

Where it comes up short. Although WalletHub pulls real information about your actual loans, it can miss some detail. I use it to track my mortgage, for example, and it doesn't know that the total bill I pay each month includes homeowner's insurance. The calculations regarding the principal and interest are still correct, but the amount that comes out of my pocket is higher than what WalletHub assumes. Other considerations are missing, too, like what to do when the rate of inflation is higher than the interest rate on a long-term loan. Overall, this debt calculator is very good, and these shortcomings are nitpicks, not deal-breakers.

Credit Card Transfers: WalletHub and NerdWallet

If you're carrying credit card debt, WalletHub and NerdWallet both have a calculator that shows how much money you could save by transferring the balance to a new card with an introductory rate. (CreditKarma has a balance transfer calculator, too, though I was unable to test it; it had no recommendations for me.) You need to know the details of your current card as well as those of the new card, including the introductory rate, how long that rate is active, and the interest rate after that.

All these free personal-finance tools—CreditKarma, NerdWallet, WalletHub—make money when you click through to apply for a financial product that they recommend. Here, targeted advertising is very much in your interest. These sites and apps recommend credit cards with 0 percent or very low introductory rates for balance transfers, right on the same page as the calculator. The sites have user reviews for the advertised cards as well, which may help steer you clear of one with bad hidden terms or poor customer service.

Who should use it? Most anyone with credit card debt could benefit from transferring the balance to a new card with a lower interest rate. You might want to use a credit score simulator (another interactive tool in these apps) to determine how applying for a new credit card might affect your credit score.

Where it comes up short. These calculators only deal with credit card debt and not other loans. Be sure to compare the rates of interest not only during the introductory period but also after.

Other Financial Calculators: Intuit

Inuit, a mega company that owns a laundry list of software (CreditKarma, Quickbooks, TurboTax, Mailchimp, and more) hosts a ton of free educational resources for personal finance. Among them are a flurry of calculators. They are simple and straightforward, helping you with basic math rather than a strategy for your financial future. Still, they’re useful for punching in the numbers before taking out an auto loan or a mortgage, or before investing in a savings account (where you'll earn compound interest) or retirement account. The site even has three different calculators for student loans, depending on your situation.

Who should use them? While there is a debt repayment calculator, most of Intuit's other calculators are useful before you take on new debt. They show you how much a loan will cost over its lifetime.

Where it comes up short. Basic calculators are good for getting basic information, not making complex financial decisions.