A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to take a look at Jackie at Money Crush's awesome iPhone app called Pay Off Debt.
If you are serious about getting out of debt and you have an iPhone, you want to look into this app. One thing I thought was great about it is you have everything with you, right there, on your phone. When you're out shopping and trying to convince yourself to leave those shoes on the rack, or put down that power tool, it would be nice to be able to open up your Pay Off Debt App and see how much sooner you'd be out of debt if you applied that money toward your debt.
Here are a few of the many features available with the Pay Off Debt App:
- You can choose how to pay off your debt snowball: lowest balance to highest, highest interest rate to lowest, or you can customize the order.
- The Debt screen allows you to see progress bars on each debt to motivate and encourage.
- You'll be able to see the beginning and current balance for each debt individually, as well as the total of your debt at the beginning and the total current balance.
- See the estimated time left to pay off each individual debt.
- Turn the snowball off to see how long it would take to pay down your debt if you weren't using it.
- Email the snowball information to up to four different email addresses.
- Password protection is included, if desired.
- The Debts screen lets you record payments, or you can record all payment at one time with the Record All Payments button.
- It is possible to temporarily change your payment by using the Record Custom Payment button.
- You can set up payment reminders which will appear when the app is running.
- Select English, French or Spanish and one of four different currency types (Dollars, Euros, Pounds, or Yen.)
The first thing you need to do once you get your app downloaded is to configure your snowball(s) by adding your debts. So if you want to do what Dave Ramsey suggests and pay off your debt with the lowest balance, select that option.
Once you get into the Configure Snowball screen, proceed through with the easy to navigate selections until all your debts are included in the lineup. You're going to mow them down snowball-style!
It is simple to edit any of your debts, if necessary, at the Edit Debt screen.
The Debt screen shows your starting debt, your current balance, the month and year you will be debt free, the estimated time left and the percentage that has been paid to date.
Pay Off Debt also has a reminder feature, which will let you know when a bill is due.
At the Payment history screen you can see the amounts you have paid so far, including the date, amount you recorded paid, the estimated interest, the estimated principal and the current balance.
You can also delete payments, if necessary.
A helpful tutorial is available with step by step instructions at the Pay Off Debt App website.
If I had an iPhone, I would definitely use this application to help track our credit card debt. Sometimes all we need is one little program to help us stay on track, and I think this is the one that will do it. Thank you Jackie for coming up with this sweet little app Pay Off Debt!
The Fine Print: Pay Off Debt is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. It requires iOS 3.0 or later
This app looks great! Of course, I don’t have an iPhone yet, but this might prompt me to look into one. Then I could obsess over my money when I’m out of the house as well. 😉
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Thanks for the review 🙂
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Uhmmmm…. If you’re serious about getting out of debt, would you own an iPhone?
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
April 8th, 2011 at 7:30 pm
@Funny about Money, well, that’s a rough question. Some of us don’t have cell phones, and don’t really need one, and I will probably never own an iPhone. But I know several IT people who have iPhones and one guy is actually blind, he says iToys are very blind user friendly. My son tries to talk me into upgrading my slide cell phone to a “smart” phone almost daily. He is another tech person who has to have a phone that can connect to the server at his job. Thanks for your question!
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Jackie Reply:
April 16th, 2011 at 3:46 pm
@Funny about Money, you know, I had the same question before I created the app. But after thinking about it more, I realized that many people get in over their heads and then get serious about getting out of debt. (Debt isn’t logical, after all.) But by then they’ve got all the gadgets and their two-year contract already…
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I don’t own an iphone either, but if I did i would totally be all over this. It looks very people friendly.
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I had the same thought as Funny. If I had lots of debt, I’d get a cheaper phone. Although some companies help out with phone costs…. in that case, go for the phone and the ap 🙂
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