Debt payoff planner

Record loans and credit cards, choose between Avalanche and Snowball, track your debt effort rate, and see how much you save by paying more than the minimum.

1. 1

   Add your first debt

   Press Add debt — on the plan's starting screen, or from the New button in the side menu on any page — and enter the institution, type, outstanding balance, interest rate, and minimum payment. The minimum payment can be a fixed amount or a percentage of the balance — credit cards usually work that way. As you fill it in, the window shows the payoff time, estimated interest, and a chart of the projected balance.

   • Credit Card — revolving balance, minimum usually a percentage.
   • Personal Loan — a loan with a fixed instalment.
   • Auto Loan — vehicle financing.
   • Mortgage — your home loan.
   • Other — any debt that does not fit the above.

   Tip · Fill in the payment day so the debt shows up in the month's payment card. Without it, the debt still counts in the maths but never warns you when it is due.

2. 2

   Choose your strategy

   Both strategies always pay every minimum. The difference is where the extra money goes.

   • Avalanche — targets the highest interest rates first. This one pays the least interest overall.
   • Snowball — targets the smallest balances first. It closes debts sooner and keeps motivation up.

   Tip · Do not guess: the Comparison tab runs both against your actual numbers and tells you how much interest and how many months one saves over the other.

3. 3

   Pay more than the minimum

   The Monthly extra field is what you can pay each month on top of the minimums. This is the number that does the work: the strategy applies it to the target debt, and when that one closes, the freed-up amount rolls onto the next.

   Tip · If the minimums do not even cover the interest, the page warns you in red — the debt then grows every month and the extra stops being optional.

4. 4

   Read the projection

   The projection card sums the plan up in four numbers: total time, projected payoff date, estimated interest, and the required monthly budget. These are projections from your own data, not settled figures — they change whenever you edit a balance, a rate, or the monthly extra.

5. 5

   Explore the six tabs

   Each tab answers a different question about the same plan:

   • Overview — how each balance falls and how interest builds up over time.
   • Savings — what you gain in interest and time versus paying only minimums, with a button to simulate 10% more.
   • Payoff Timeline — the month each debt is cleared.
   • Comparison — Avalanche and Snowball side by side, with the better one highlighted.
   • Effort Rate — how much of your income goes to instalments.
   • Year over Year — what you paid this year against last year.
6. 6

   Check your debt effort rate

   The effort rate divides your monthly minimum payments by your take-home income and tells you whether the load is sustainable. Below 30% it reads Comfortable, above that Attention, and above the reference High.

   Tip · Income is detected from your income transactions in the current cycle, but you can type it in by hand if yours is irregular. The reference defaults to 45%, the figure the Bank of Portugal uses when assessing new credit, and you can adjust it too.

7. 7

   Record the month's payments

   Debts with a payment day appear under This month's payments, ordered by urgency. On each row you can record the payment, create a reminder, or, if you marked it by mistake, undo it. If the list has more than 5 debts, pagination appears at the bottom of the card.

   Tip · When you record a payment, iowii also creates the matching transaction by default, so your debts and your accounts never tell different stories. You can choose to record it against the debt only. If a debt builds up several missed months, the row shows "N overdue payments" instead of a single date — tap it to see a summary of each missing month and record each one.

8. 8

   Reconcile payments you already made

   If you paid through the bank and the transaction is already linked to the debt, but the month is still unmarked, the reconcile icon at the top lists those matches with a counter. Confirm and iowii marks them all at once.

9. 9

   Put your surplus to work

   The Repayment Capacity panel takes your balance, subtracts the minimums still due this cycle, and shows what is left available for repayment. The attack order names the next debt to hit under your chosen strategy, badging the target.

   Tip · If the remaining minimums exceed your balance, the panel warns you — that is a cash-flow squeeze, not a mistake.

10. 10

    Manage each debt

    The ⋯ menu on each debt lets you edit its details, open the history with the full amortization table, record a credit increase, hide the debt from the projection, add a reminder, or delete it.

    • History — every instalment with principal, interest, and balance, plus its paid or pending state.
    • Credit increase — adds to both the balance and the original capital, so progress stays accurate.
    • Hide — drops the debt from the maths without deleting it, useful for testing scenarios.