This FREE Debt Tracker Printable Worksheet is crucial to help your household take control of finances and pay off your debt. This tool is such a huge money maker! WHAT? MONEY MAKER? How can that be?
This is the next installment of the Mini Financial Binder. We are kicking off this year with a series of free printables to help you take control of your budget. Included is the Daily Spending Log, Expense Tracker, Debt Payoff Tracker (this one), Monthly Bill Worksheet and as a bonus, you can get the Monthly Goals and Yearly Goals Trackers!
Tracking your balances and paying off the high interest debts first is a powerful tool in your personal finance plans. Spend a few minutes and look at how much interest you are paying each month. Now look at what our country is at under the US Debt Clock. Scary, right?
I realized that focusing on paying down the debts with the highest interest will make you money. You avoid paying super high interest by focusing on those debts first.
📎 Why You’ll Love
Helps Pay Down Debt | This seems basic but until you start seeing the amount you OWE go down on the sheet, you won’t realize the impact that you are going to have on your family’s household budget.
Pay Less Interest Charges on What You Owe | Using the sheet as it is, you will start paying off the debt with the HIGHEST interest, which means you are paying the most on this debt per month. Once you pay that down, you have more money to pay off the remaining debt.
Visual Makes You Angry at Interest Charges | Granted, that sounds bad but you want to be mad and change your behavior to NOT having interest charging or rolling debt because it is costing you so much money.
📒 How to Use
This free printable debt payoff pdf is arguably the single-most important sheet in all of the Mini Binder! If you have outstanding debt (and who doesn’t?), then record the key details on this worksheet and use it as a tool to get ahead with your budgeting.
Let’s take this one step by step. Decide on an “admin day” each week and stick to it by using a 2024 Yearly Calendar or similar of your choice.
Step One: Collect all of your current outstanding debt that charges interest. I usually don’t count the mortgage, but you certainly can. Usually, the interest on the mortgage is much less than other consumer debt or student loan debt.
Step Two: Fill in each section of the Debt Payoff Printable. There is room for two Payees for each sheet. Print off as many as you need. Now is not the time to overthink how many you SHOULD have. It is what it is. Print what you need and just move forward.
Step Three: There are two different trains of thought here and you should do which one will work best for your personality.
- Option One: Look for the bill that has the highest interest (Avalanche Method) and work at paying that one off first. This means that you work at paying more than the minimum due each month to knock it out the fastest. The idea here is that you should eliminate the highest interest charges first. After you paid off the highest rate debt, move on to the next one.
- Option Two: Look at the debt that has the lowest balance. It doesn’t matter what the interest rate is, but the smaller balance will be paid off more quickly. Dave Ramsey suggests you use this Snowball Method once you have $1000 in emergency funds. That will be a huge victory and you’ll feel like you are stronger to crush the next one even faster. This isn’t the smartest financial move, but it does help you feel like this is not an unwinnable task! (I like the feeling of victory when I paid off a balance)
You need to decide which one works best for your personality. Traditionally, it is best to work off the highest interest rate first but I also like to encourage people to get out of debt in anyway possible.
The great thing is, the numbers don’t lie.
📱 Monitoring
Paying down debt can take time. It isn’t an overnight effort. After a couple of months of tracking, start really analyzing how you are doing.
Did you take a credit card and continue to charge? Seeing your progress is why this printable is so crucial to your budgeting success!!
Are you seeing the balance go down a little, but not as much as you hoped? Ok, so that is the time to make decisions in your life. The Daily Spending Log will help you see where you are spending money. I had an eye opening experience when I saw how much I spent each month on expensive coffees. SCARY!
The key to this is to keep working – and keep working – and keep working! Don’t give up until it is all paid off.
💰 Mini Budget Binder
In the Mini Budget Binder, you are going to be collecting into one planner:
- Binder Cover Sheet <– Free PDF!
- Expense Tracker
- Daily Spending Log
- Debt Payoff Log Tracker (this one)
- Monthly Bill Worksheet
- $1000 Emergency Fund Savings Challenge
- Yearly Financial Goals (newsletter sign up here)
- Monthly Financial Goals (newsletter sign up here)
Please only use this for personal use.
💵 Key Budgeting Tools
52 Week Challenge – I love turning saving into a game. It brings out some good-natured competition in my home and do some more research on it. It is a tried and true method that has been successful for many years!
Penny Challenge – Will saving a single penny help you meet your goals? You betcha! You will be amazed at how fast pennies add up and how it is a fun challenge (especially if you involve kids!) I love to encourage beginners to start here. Everyone can find one penny to start this, right?
Money Envelope Template – If you haven’t heard of the Cash Envelope System, stick around as it’s a really popular and effective budgeting technique! It helped me when I realized how much money I was spending on things that weren’t that important.
Grocery Comparison Sheet – This is so helpful, it should be illegal. We all know groceries are cheaper at one store than another, right? When I spent the time to write down my typical grocery list, I found that there were big price differences. It felt like I was counting cards in Vegas! 😁 It totally changed the way I shopped for my staple groceries.
20 Free Budget Printables – I consolidated my favorite free printables into one spot. Check them out and see which ones will help you!
Monthly Calendars
March Calendar
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THANK YOU SO MUCH..I AM A MOM WORKING FROM HOME AND JUGGLING HOW TO MANAGE MY FAMILY FINANCIAL AND TAKING CARE OF THE HOUSELHOLD..
Best of luck using it! I know it helped with us and I hope it does the same for you and your family. Cheers!