| 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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