Add up what the month is really costing
Add every monthly payment and see the yearly total. The result is an estimate you type yourself, not an offer.
Add up your monthly payments
What to type
List the payments that leave your account because of debt. The mortgage. The home equity line. Cards, even the ones you pay in full if you want a true picture, or only the ones that carry a balance if you want the painful picture. The car loan or lease. A second mortgage or a private loan. Anything else with a monthly demand, such as a buy-now plan that has become a fixture.
Use the amount you actually send, not the minimum printed in small type if you send more, and not a hope. Round to the nearest dollar if you like. The page will add them. It will not judge them and it will not store them.
Leave a box blank when that payment does not exist. A blank is zero. Do not invent a payment to see a dramatic result. The useful number is the boring true one.
What the yearly line means
The year is the month times twelve. That is the cash those payments demand over a year if nothing changes. It is not the interest. It is not the balance. It is the rhythm of money leaving.
People are often calm about $400 on a card and startled when the year shows several thousand dollars that never reduced the balance. The calculator is there to make that visible before we talk about moving the debt.
Label it as an estimate, because a payment can change next statement, a car loan can end, and a line of credit can ask for more if you draw again. The sentence under your result says it is not an offer. Believe that sentence.
An example you can type
If you want to see the chart from the home page in this tool, type an example mortgage of 1900, a line of 600, cards of 750, and a car of 550. Leave second and other blank. The month is about $3,800. The year is about $45,600. Those are example keystrokes, not a client and not a quote.
Now imagine, only as an example, that a refinance replaced that set with one mortgage payment of 2500. The year becomes about $30,000. The gap looks like relief. It can be relief in the month and a larger interest bill over the life of the loan. Both facts can be true. The calculator will not warn you unless you read this page.
Do not email those example numbers to yourself as if they were approved. If you want your own numbers judged, use the quiz and then the free debt assessment.
What this tool refuses to do
It will not tell you a payment on a new mortgage. It will not name a lender. It will not say you are approved. It will not ask for your birthday, your address, or your income. Those questions belong in the quiz and in the assessment, where they are protected and not placed in the page address.
It will not suggest a consumer proposal, a settlement, or a bankruptcy. I am not the person who delivers those. If your yearly total is large and the home has little equity, the honest next step may be a non-profit credit counsellor or a Licensed Insolvency Trustee. The quiz is how we sort that.
It will not keep a history. Refresh the page and the boxes are empty. That is on purpose. Debt amounts are not marketing data.
After you see the year
If the year makes you angry or tired, that reaction is information. Write down which payment feels most unfair. Cards that never drop are a different problem from a car loan that ends on a known date. A line of credit that only gets the interest is a third problem. The quiz asks those apart so the starting point is not a blur.
Bring the same figures to the assessment if you continue. You do not need perfect statements on day one. A recent mortgage statement and the latest card bills are enough to correct the guesses.
Then start the BC Debt Payment Check. The calculator is a mirror. The quiz is the door.
One more caution. A yearly total that looks manageable can still be a problem if the balances never fall. Add a note for yourself beside the cards box: is this payment reducing what you owe, or only keeping the account open? The quiz asks how payments are going for that reason. Comfortable, tight, late once, or behind are different files, even when the yearly dollar figure is similar.
If you share a household, do this twice. Once with only the debts in your name, once with the debts you both pay. The assessment can look at either picture. Mixing them in one box without saying so makes the written plan fuzzy. Clarity here saves a week later. When you are done, write the two yearly figures on paper if you want to keep them. The page will forget them on purpose.
A second pass, a week later
The first total is often wrong in a useful way. You forget the buy-now plan, the small loan from a store, or the line of credit you only pay when you remember. Run the calculator again after you pull the last three statements. The gap between the two totals is the money you were not planning. That gap is what I want in the assessment, because a plan built on the remembered number fails on the forgotten one.
Keep the mortgage in its own box even if you hope a new mortgage will replace everything. Mixing today's mortgage with the cards makes the year look like one blob. The quiz splits them so we can see which payment is the house and which payments are the pressure. If you only remember one habit from this tool, remember that split.
Debt payment calculator questions
Does this calculator check if I qualify?
Should I include the mortgage?
Why show the year?
Will my typing be saved or sent to an ad network?
Is a lower yearly number always better?
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