DebtGoal.com is a new site that offers debt payment tracking, and suggestions on ways to reduce your payment for free. The sites suggest that it can help you save $1000.00s in interest. This is a unique service that may help you with your debt payment plan.
Pros
- Tracks your debt payments
- Debt payment calculator
- Easy to Navigate
Cons
- Program hung up several times
- Doesn’t set up a smart plan
- Accelerator Action advice not always the best
DebtGoal.com was designed specifically to help people get out of debt without pushing products and services. It is also in its alpha stage of programming, so hopefully the few bugs and hang ups will be worked out over time. The program is easy to sign up and the service is free. It has a graph that shows how your debt will be reduced over time. You can enter different payment amounts to see how quickly you can reduce your debt and a graph will show the different line comparison.
It is easy to click in and record your monthly payments. You can also see how much you would save by continuing to pay the same amount towards your debt, even though your monthly minimum payments may decrease. This is a good tool to help people who need a visual chart.
One major con to this site is that it does not create a set payment snowball plan that you can see. So it doesn’t show what your monthly payment will be on each card after you have paid off the previous card on the plan. It also doesn’t order the cards for you, so that you can easily see which card should have the extra payments made on the card.
Another thing to be wary of is the advice offered in the Accelerator Actions section. Specifically the advice regarding borrowing from your 401(k) plan to pay off your credit cards is bad. Although it does state the cons, this really should not be considered as a viable option since you are gambling your future, and not addressing the real problem of what caused your credit card debt in the first place.
There are forums available on the site, but there is not a lot of activity in the forums at the moment. This should increase as the site continues to operate. The support system would be a big plus, especially since it can be embarrassing to discuss your debt with people you interact with in real life.
Overall the concept for the site is a good one. However you can find the same debt calculator concept in most money management software, which can save you the extra hassle of recording your payments online. You can also create your own plan and chart to hang on your wall if you need a visual input. This might be a good tool to use, but you need to find the motivation and determination to get out of debt as well.
