“I was using that calculator you released yesterday and, while I think it’s a great tool, I’m wondering if I might offer a suggestion. On the amortization schedules, having some kind of debt name would be a great help because it’s kind of confusing what debt exactly is being shown on each line. It looks like they’re being reshuffled, is that right?-Ron Guzmann”

Well Ron, we took a look and agree with you, it is a bit confusing, because, as you stated, the debts are reshuffled, and here’s an explanation of how and why:

When you enter your debts in the calculator, you may enter them in any order you wish, but in order to see the maximum benefit from the “rollover” method of debt reduction that the calculator uses, you need to pay off the debt with the smallest number of payments remaining first. That frees up extra money as soon as possible to be rolled over into your other debts. In order to accomplish this, the calculator first sorts your debts from smallest number of payments remaining to largest, and then performs its calculations. As a result, the amortization table output is sorted in this way, as opposed to being listed in the same order you listed the debts when you entered them into the calculator.

We see that this causes some confusion, so we’ve added an extra field where you can enter a name of each debt into the calculator so that you can better reference those debts in the amortization tables. Keep in mind, the debt names are optional, so if you don’t enter a name, the first debt will be called, “Debt 1,” the second, “Debt 2,” and so on. This is just so that you can match up the debts in the amortization tables with the debts you entered into the calculator.

We hope this helps, and if anyone has any other suggestions on how we can make this particular calculator better, we’d love to hear them. You can make suggestions via our contact form.

“I have something I’m a little confused on. Your article today, mentioned rates are in the low 4%’s, but the interest rates you have displayed on the left side of your site says those same rates are actually in the low 5%’s. What’s up with that?

Thanks,
Todd Riemer”

Well thanks for your question Todd and there are two answers to that question. First, the rates shown on in the table on this site’s left sidebar are from Freddie Mac’s National Primary Mortgage Market Survey, which means they are average rates throughout the nation…rates in your locale may be a bit different.

The second, and biggest reason for the discrepancy, is that Freddie Mac conducts that survey weekly, and the rates represent the data collected from the week prior. If any big drop in rates occurs over the course of a few days, like we saw this week, it won’t be reported until the following week’s survey results have been released. Freddie Mac releases its results on Thursdays, so you should expect to see the changes reflected in that chart next week.

Thanks again, Todd, for your question.