| When the typical debt-consolidation
company advertises that they can "save you money,"
what they are most often referring to is simply
a reduction in your total monthly debt payments
-- not a savings in the cost of paying off your
debt (interest charges). Sure, by consolidating
your payments into a single loan, you might be
paying one monthly payment that is smaller than
the sum of your current monthly payments, but
if they stretch your loan out for a longer period
of time you could actually end up paying more
interest by consolidating. This calculator will
help you to determine whether or not consolidating
will actually reduce the cost of retiring your
debts.
Instructions: Starting with the first
line of entry fields, enter each one of your
debts, along with their corresponding principal
balances, interest rates and monthly payment
amounts (the last two columns will be filled
in by the calculator). Once you have entered
all of the debts you wish to consolidate, click
on the "Compute Current Debt Cost" button. Next,
enter the consolidating loan's interest rate,
term and any origination fees that might apply
and click the "Compute Consolidation Loan Costs"
button.
IMPORTANT: In order for the this calculator
to work, each debt must have the four left-hand
fields filled in (for interest-free debts enter
.001 just to satisfy the required interest-rate
entry). Also, be sure to enter only numbers
and decimal points in the numeric entry fields.
Dollar signs, percent signs, commas and spaces
will cause a JavaScript error.
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