Introducing the New Tiller Debt Payoff Planner Spreadsheet

[heather]

We pushed a fix for the bug related to using the Ranked method and it not prioritizing those correctly. You can use the Tiller Money Feeds add-on to update the Debt Payoff Planner if you were using the Ranked Method and experiencing this issue. Just be sure to choose Archive Existing so you don’t lose your configured accounts, min monthly payments, etc. Then you’ll need to copy that data from the archive to the new version that’s installed.

You can also just re-format the cells in the Rank column as a number and it will also correct the issue if you don’t want to go through the update process, which is slow and will require you to copy/paste your data from the archive into the new version.

[amorousarray]

I don’t see the Debt Payoff Planner Spreadsheet in my Tiller Community Sidebar. I see other templates but not this one.

[MarcC]

The debt planner is in the Tiller Money Feeds → Templates.

[Clint.C]

@amorousarray

Here is a direct link for how to install the planner for both Sheets and Excel:

How to use Tiller to get out of Debt | Tiller Help Center

Cint

[joshm]

I am having an issue where I put in all my balances either manually or through the feed through 12/16/24. The debt planner is set to with the starting month as December 2024 and my first payoff is a $1700 Affirm loan which is telling me to make $2251 payment in January which is way too much interest and would be more like $1746 or something. So this is affecting the entire avalanche process down. Not sure how to fix that.

[joshm]

Now that I look at the recommended payments, the interest is just overestimated in general. Not sure what to do because I would have to manually just calculate the remainder of cash to the next debt on the payoff list in this case. It seems to overestimate in both avalanche and snowball.

[heather]

@joshm that’s for sharing. I see what’s happening here. The recommended payment is taking the remainder of the balance for that highest interest rate account and adding the Est Total Interest rather than the Est Monthly Interest.

I’ll log this as a bug for the team to fix.

[richardpeng]

Would it be possible to add a user-defined column for “Lump Sum Payment” to calculate the effect a lump sum payment would have on interest and timeline? I tried to add one myself, but the formulas were way too intertwined for me to figure out where to add that parameter.

[twalane]

Hi @richardpeng do you need both the lump sum field as well as the min monthly payment? Otherwise try use that “min monthly payment”

[richardpeng]

I figured out how to add a Lump Sum Payment field so I can model the effect of a single non-recurring payment to one of my loans.

1. Add a new column for Lump Sum Payment to the right of Min Monthly Payment. This will be the new column F
2. Modify the formula in the first row of Current Balance

New:

=BYROW($B16:$B40,LAMBDA(account,iferror(if(isblank(account),1/0,value(xlookup(account,$P$9:$P,$R$9:$R)-xlookup(account,$B$16:$B,$F$16:$F))))))

Original:

=BYROW($B16:$B40,LAMBDA(account,iferror(if(isblank(account),1/0,value(xlookup(account,$P$9:$P,$R$9:$R))))))

The part I added was -xlookup(account,$B$16:$B,$F$16:$F) to subtract the Lump Sum Payment in column F from the Current Balance.

3. Unhide the hidden columns to the right.
4. In the Balance Modeler, modify the first cell for the monthly row just under Account Name
   
   

New:

=BYCOL($V$4:$AT$4,LAMBDA(account_name,IFERROR(value(XLOOKUP(account_name,$P$9:$P,$R$9:$R)-XLOOKUP(account_name,$B$16:$B,$F$16:$F)))))

Original:

=BYCOL($V$4:$AT$4,LAMBDA(account_name,IFERROR(value(XLOOKUP(account_name,$P$9:$P,$R$9:$R)))))

Again, we’re subtracting the lump sum payment from the first month: -XLOOKUP(account_name,$B$16:$B,$F$16:$F)

5. Rehide the previously hidden columns. Widen the graph if you’d like since you’ve added an extra column.

[twalane]

This is fantastic @richardpeng. I think this is definitely Show and Tell worthy! Share custom Tiller solutions and workflows for Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel.

[mpresley410]

I have a possible bug/possible feature change. I have a couple of credit cards that the beginning balance is pulling weird. Even if I put the start month before I even had the card it never shows a beginning balance of zero. So, my progress bar is always red, even though I have made recent payments. I have used the card since whatever date it is pulling the beginning balance from, but I would like to back my start date up enough to where that shows a zero to see what my true progress at the time I look at the plan. I hope that makes sense!

[heather]

@mpresley410

never shows a beginning balance of zero

@mpresley410 it sounds like it’s working as expected. It will pull whatever the first starting balance it can find in the start month selected. If there is no balance for that month it just pulls the first balance it can find after that. If the balance is something other than $0 it won’t show $0. You could add a manual entry to the Balance History sheet for $0 for this account.

[mpresley410]

Ok… i had considered adding a zero balance entry but sidnt want to mess anything up. Thank you, I’ll look into it!

[twalane]

@mpresley410 here are the steps for that in case you need them : To create a final $0 balance

[mpresley410]

YES! Thank you!!! I needed this!

[twalane]

awesome! glad that came in handy