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Creating scenarios

Scenarios FAQ

This is where the magic is.

Before you can generate a scenario, you've got to have at least some data in the system. Refer to the Quickstart Guide to get up and running quickly.

Scenarios are where you can play "what if". What if I paid only the minimum fees? What if I only sent an extra $20 to one of my credit cards? What if I followed Debtinator's advice and paid things down in Highest Interest Order? What if I paid things down by DOLP Score?

Run a scenario

  1. Go the Scenarios pane (second from the right in the toolbar). Choose the payment plan you want, and hit Go.
  2. You might need to go get a cup of coffee at this point. The calculations involved can be pretty intense, depending upon how your finances are structured. Some people can have their report finish in seconds, others may take hours. Realistically? Most reports take less than 5 minutes to complete. But if you have a lot of complicated information or a slow computer, it may take a while.
  3. Once it's complete, you can see the report of how to pay down your debts. It'll tell you the date an event occurs, what it was, which bank account it impacts, any interest accrued, the payment you're expected to send, how much you're paying towards the principal of your debts, your outstanding debt, and on and on.

    By default, only the 12 most frequently needed columns are visible, but if you hit the little gear button in the upper right of the table, you can customize what you see. So add in as much or as little information as you need.

  4. You can customize further by hitting the filtering gear in the lower right by the "Go" button. This will allow you to only see certain events. For example, you might just want to pay attention to a single credit card. You can filter down to just that one. Or you might want to only look at times when you're making overpayments. You can filter to that, too.
  5. There are a couple of options for running the reports, too:
    • You can specify a "Run until" date. This will end the report at the given point in time. Be careful! If you stop a report before all debts are paid off, then Debtinator may not properly set aside funds for later bills. If you always run until it's complete, then it'll be sure that it can always pay everything.
    • Pay off out of order when possible - Sometimes, you just don't want to stick quite to the plan. It's nice to knock out that credit card that's only got a $100 balance on it, even though it has a lower interest rate on it. So you can check to pay off a debt when it can, even if it varies from the specified report.

      This will usually cost you a little bit of extra money, but gives you satisfaction of paying something off quicker.

  6. map all events to recent paydays - you can specify on the Debts and Expenses panes to map bills to recent paydays. Say your credit card is due on the 15th of the month, but you get paid on the 10th. You might as well just pay the bill on the 10th, otherwise you've just got money sitting around in your account doing nothing. Plus, that way you won't accidentally spend it later.

    You can bind specific events to paydays by editing them directly, or override it for all events and bind them all here. Use whichever works for you, or a combination of both.

  7. When a scenario is done running, it'll show you in the lower right how much interest was paid, as well as the date you're out of debt. To compare a lot of scenarios at once, it's usually easier to go to the Graphs Pane. By plotting out multiple scenarios at once, it will also tell you which one will save you the most money.

    On the bottom left is a stacked barchart that shows you how much debt you have at that point in time. If you select a row in the report, the barchart will adjust to show how much debt was left by then. Mouseover the barchart to see how much is left on each debt.

  8. Once you've figured out the scenario you like the most, you can save it as a payment plan. That will move it over to the Ledger Pane so you can just click on things to apply them to your transaction ledger. See Working with Transactions for more info.

Available scenarios

You have a number of scenarios to consider. The minimum fee plan is always your worst case scenario - all of the other plans will always get you out of debt more quickly. But from there, it's up to you. If you want to save the most money? Try the Highest Interest Payment Plan. Want to reduce the number of debts you have the fastest? Try the Lowest Balance Payment Plan? Want to finely control exactly how much you send to a debt? The User Defined Overpayment plan it is. Use a scenario that not only saves you money, but fits in with how you would like to accomplish your financial goals.

Underlined scenarios tend to perform very well

  • Scenario FAQ
  • Sceario Troubleshooting

    It's not uncommon to run a report and get an error like the following:

    Out of Money

    You ran out of money
    Electricity is short by $80

    Is this a bug in Debtinator? No! At some point, your expenses will exceed your income, and despite the program's best efforts, it couldn't figure out how to keep you afloat. Sure, it's upsetting and a concern that you're going to be short on paying your bills at some point, but at least you know about it now, so you can take steps to correct the situation.

    So...now what do you do? Well, everyone's financial picture is different, but here are some general tidbits to help troubleshoot and track down what's going on.