Help & Guide
Set up a payoff plan, choose avalanche or snowball, pay extra toward a balance, and understand exactly what moves your debt-free date.
Open a bill filed under Loans or Credit and use its “Payoff plan” card to add debt details — current balance, interest rate (APR), and minimum monthly payment. Right after you save a new loan or credit bill, the app also offers to add these so you don't have to reopen it.
The debt links to that bill, so the payments you mark paid on the bill are what draw the balance down.
On a debt they're the same figure. A Loan or Credit bill's amount is its minimum payment — the field is labelled “Minimum payment” in the editor, and saving it sets the bill and the linked debt together. Set it to the least your lender requires.
It's a floor: nothing the app does automatically will ever take that debt's payment below it, and it's the yardstick for the “at minimum” what-if and your debt-to-income ratio. Changing it changes the plan from that month forward, so don't raise it just because you paid extra once.
To pay more in a single month, leave this field alone. Either record what really went out under “Actual paid” on that month's bill — that's what draws the balance down — or tick “Put it toward…” on a paycheck's Left over, which adds its own dated extra payment and leaves the minimum where it is.
The app re-derives it every time from the balance you last entered plus the payments you've made since. Each payment first covers that month's interest, and only the remainder reduces what you owe.
Because it's recalculated live from your bills, it self-corrects — un-mark a payment or change an amount and the balance updates. If it drifts from your statement, edit the balance and it re-anchors to today.
Your debt-free date moves out, but your monthly payment does not automatically rise. The app is payment-fixed: you pay a set amount and the timeline is the result.
Your original starting point stays frozen, so on the dashboard curve new debt shows up as a step-up — the “new debt landed” moment. To clear it sooner, pay more than the minimum.
Several ways, all of which shorten payoff. The quickest is the “Left over” box on a paycheck card: tick “Put it toward…” and that paycheck's spare cash becomes a real, dated extra payment on your focus debt — and unticking takes it back while it's still unposted. You can also raise the recurring minimum on the linked bill (a permanent change to the baseline), record a bigger figure under “Actual paid” for a single month (just this once), or raise “You put $X a month at debt” in Debt Studio, which lifts every projection.
Paying more sends more of each payment to principal instead of interest, so you reach $0 sooner and pay less interest. To see the size of it before you commit, More → Shortcuts → What-if scenarios has “Extra to debt” and “One-time lump sum”, and shows your new date beside today's with “X sooner · $Y less interest”.
Debt Studio pays all your debts together with rollover: each debt keeps its payment, and when one clears its freed-up money rolls onto the next — your total stays the same, so everything finishes faster. This isn't just a projection: when a loan actually clears (or you remove a debt), the app pins your monthly debt total at what you were already paying, so the freed money stays in the plan and keeps working on your next debt instead of the total quietly shrinking.
You pick the order: Avalanche hits the highest interest rate first (saves the most, the default); Snowball hits the smallest balance first (quick wins); Custom lets you drag your debts (or use the up/down arrows) into any order you want. The list is in attack order, not finish order — a debt with a big payment can clear before a higher-priority one.
Your choice is saved and used everywhere — the attack order, your debt-free date on the dashboard, and which debt a paycheck's leftover actually lands on when you send it.
Both — they answer different questions from the same plan. The numbered list in Debt Studio is attack order: #1 is where a spare dollar goes first (smallest balance under Snowball, highest rate under Avalanche, your pick under Custom). The dashboard's “Next up” names the debt that reaches $0 soonest.
They're often different debts, and that's not a mistake: a mid-sized balance carrying a big payment clears before a small balance carrying a small one. Debt Studio marks the soonest one “Finishes first” so you can see both facts on the same screen.
Only when a debt actually clears does the attack order matter for the freed money: that payment rolls onto whatever sits highest in your list and is still owed — which is why “Next up” tells you what comes back and where it goes.
Yes — it decides which debt your money above the minimums lands on. When you tick “Put it toward…” on a paycheck's Left over, the app fills your #1 debt first and spills anything past its balance onto the next: highest APR first under Avalanche, smallest balance first under Snowball, or your own order under Custom. The box names the debts and the split before you tap it. That becomes a real, dated extra payment, while your other debts sit at their minimums.
Your minimums are the floor and never change — the strategy only decides where anything above them lands. Modelling it instead (More → Shortcuts → What-if scenarios, “Extra to debt” or “One-time lump sum”) stays a projection and writes nothing.
Yes. Switching moves this month's surplus onto the new focus debt right away — it clears the extra off the old one (back to its minimum) and adds it to the new one. Nothing is charged twice.
The one exception is a debt you've already marked paid this month: that payment is done, so it keeps the amount it was paid at, and the new strategy takes full effect from your next unpaid payment. Each new month always starts fresh on your chosen strategy.
Loans auto-archive once the balance reaches $0 — the app records the month it cleared, retires its payment (so you stop paying a debt that's gone) and moves it to your “Paid off” history.
Its monthly payment doesn't just disappear. Before retiring it, the app pins your monthly debt total at what you were already sustaining — the “You put $X a month at debt” figure in Debt Studio — so every date is still worked out from that same total instead of shrinking with the payment, and the freed money keeps working on your next debt. You'll get a heads-up when it happens. If you'd already set that total yourself it's left alone, because it's your figure: “Change” in Debt Studio is where to raise it.
Credit cards don't auto-archive because they revolve; a $0 balance just means “paid in full for now,” so the card stays and updates the next time you spend on it. But if you've actually closed the account, tap “Close” next to it in the Paid-in-full list — that retires its payment and rolls it onto your next debt, exactly like a loan paying off.
The app notices the payment ended and treats it as $0 rather than pretending you're still paying — so it won't keep projecting a payoff that isn't happening.
Because removing that bill would strand the debt, you get a prompt: if it's paid off you can archive the debt, or keep tracking it (it'll show no scheduled payment until you add one); if it was a mistake, you can remove the debt too or keep it.
Either way, the money that bill freed up automatically rolls onto your next focus debt (your total toward debt stays constant) — or boosts this month's spending if you have no debts left to attack.
Your payment isn't even covering the monthly interest, so the balance never falls. Raise the payment (or the minimum) above the interest and a real payoff date appears.
They answer slightly different questions. The dashboard's Debt card includes the extra payments you've actually lined up but not yet sent, each on the date you committed it. Debt Studio shows the payoff at your minimum payments alone — the more conservative of the two, and the same thing as the dashed line on the dashboard.
When you have no extra payments waiting to go out, the two match exactly. Line one up and the dashboard's date pulls ahead by what that payment buys — once, not every month. Nothing is assumed past the last payment you've actually committed.