One Money Design » Debt Pay Off Plan http://www.onemoneydesign.com Christian Stewardship and Personal Finance Blog Wed, 23 May 2012 15:33:04 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Tools to Live Debt Free http://www.onemoneydesign.com/tools-to-live-debt-free/ http://www.onemoneydesign.com/tools-to-live-debt-free/#comments Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:08:33 +0000 Jason http://onemoneydesign.com/blog/?p=916 If you’re just joining, I’m writing a 5 article series entitled, Live Debt Free.  In this series, I’ve discussed four reasons why our family is pursing the debt free goal.  This is the fifth and final article that includes some practical tools to help you live debt free.  

To quickly recap, our family is pursing the debt free goal for the following reasons:

Tools to live debt free

Hopefully, you’ re now more motivated to live debt free and pursue a plan to get out of debt.  I think the proper way to end this series is to provide you some great practical steps and tools you can use to apply to your situation today.

1. Organize Your Debt 

Collect your debt information before building a debt plan.  This is typically the information you’ll need to collect in order to set up a payment plan:  whom owed, contact name/phone number, pay off amount, payments left, monthly payment, due date and interest.  Here is a good debt list template to print and fill out which was created by Crown Financial Ministries.

2. Measure Your Debt

A high debt ratio may indicate that your monthly expenses are becoming unmanageable.  Here is a good debt ratio tool to use from MSN Money. 

3. Create a Debt Pay Off Plan 

You will find a lot of debt pay off calculators and spreadsheets on the internet today.  I like the DebtGoal application I recently learned about.

DebtGoal includes the following features:

  • Consolidated debt balances and tracking over time
  • Dynamic, flexible debt pay-down plan with optimized payment schedule
  • Goal setting and progress tracking
  • Recommendations to accelerate debt pay-down
  • A support community of like-minded people working to pay off debt
  • Ask an Expert DebtGoal forum

4. Learn More 

If you’re looking for some good books about debt and managing your finances, I recommend the below resources to get started.  Both of these books helped motivate me to take initial steps in creating a plan to get out of debt and conduct wise personal money management.

What other tools and resources have you found helpful to live debt free?

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