Practical guide / Debt Payoff Scenarios Workbook 1.0
Compare a repayment plan with what really happened.
Compare snowball, avalanche and your own priority in a fixed monthly model. Keep the projection, real payments and statement balances separate and check its assumptions before using the result.
Your first useful result: Confirm debts and minimums Follow the first task
Confirm debts and minimums
Enter one dated confirmed balance, fixed APR, confirmed monthly minimum and a distinct custom priority per included debt.
The linked records and input checks use the same stable IDs and your chosen dates.
Review: Review the labelled results and correct source warnings before acting.
Choose one scenario
Settings selects scenario 1, 2 or 3. Each scenario defines a monthly budget, strategy and horizon of at most 120 months.
The linked records and input checks use the same stable IDs and your chosen dates.
Review: Review the labelled results and correct source warnings before acting.
Keep projections and actuals separate
Payments and Statements hold real records. Projection estimates full calendar months after the review month and shows when the horizon or budget is insufficient.
The linked records and input checks use the same stable IDs and your chosen dates.
Review: Review the labelled results and correct source warnings before acting.
Check the assumptions.
- Save a working copy. Manual entry, with no automatic sync or external connections.
- Supplied tables have fixed capacities. Extend formulas, tables and validation together before using extra rows.
- Use one currency. Blank means unknown; enter 0 when the amount is known to be zero.
- Resolve the highlighted input rows before relying on the summary.
- Uses exact-mode XMATCH. Requires Excel 2021, Excel 2024 or Microsoft 365; older Excel editions are not supported. Native Excel, Google Sheets and Numbers have not been verified.
- An illustrative fixed-APR monthly model, not financial or credit advice. No daily interest, variable rates, new purchases, fees in forecasts or lender payoff quote.
- Three editable scenarios share one monthly model. Select one to recalculate; scenario results are not three simultaneous forecasts.
- Snowball orders starting balances, Avalanche orders fixed APR, and Custom uses the entered priority. Minimums are paid before remaining budget is assigned in order.
- Confirm starting balances as of the review date. Actual payments after the latest balance confirmation require a fresh statement before relying on the projection.
Keep a copy you can return to.
Keep the supplied clean and example files unchanged. Save your own working file with a useful name, such as debt-payoff-2027-home.xlsx, and keep a dated backup before a large edit. A purchased ZIP is the blank source, not a backup of your entries.
If an input or formula is replaced
Undo the edit while it is still available, or return to a known good backup. If you need a fresh clean file, transfer only your records into its marked input cells and follow the setup guide again. Do not paste whole sheets over the supplied formulas, validations or reference lists. Check IDs, units, dates and linked results against the example before relying on the copy.
When the supplied rows are full
12 debts · 3 scenarios · 1,000 payments · 300 statements. Calculation ranges and validations have fixed capacities. A new row below a table does not prove that every linked result includes it.
For a separate period, project or volume, preserve the old workbook and start a named clean copy. If records must carry forward, record exactly which inputs you transfer, preserve their references and compare the opening and closing figures. Avoid copying historical activity as both an opening amount and a new movement. There is no automatic migration between files.
Inspect the workbook before you choose.
View its real sheets and a fictional calculation example.
Explore Debt Payoff Scenarios WorkbookWritten for version 1.0. Examples describe the supplied workflow; they are not customer results.