New members sometimes add rent, the phone bill or a paycheck as a debt account, and the plan comes out strange. Here is where each thing goes.
Debts: a balance you are paying down
A debt account is anything that has a balance, a payment and, usually, an interest rate. Add these on the Account List page:
- Credit cards and store cards
- Personal loans, car loans, student loans
- Medical bills, tax bills, collections
- Buy now pay later plans (Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay): enter the remaining balance, the installment as the minimum, and 0% if there is no interest
- Money you owe a person, at 0%
- A mortgage, if you want it in the plan (see Does Undebt.it support mortgages?)
A 0% rate is fine. The plan still needs to know the balance and the payment so it can schedule the payoff and free up that payment for the next debt when it is gone.
Bills: a recurring expense with no balance
Rent, utilities, internet, phone service, insurance, streaming and other subscriptions are expenses, not debts. There is nothing to pay off; they come back every month. Adding them as debts breaks the math, because the plan would try to pay them down to zero.
Those go in the Bill Tracker, an Undebt.it+ feature. It tracks due dates, sends reminders, and keeps bills on the same calendar as your debt payments without touching the payoff plan. What is the difference between a debt account and a bill account? covers the distinction in more detail.
Income: your monthly budget
Income is not an account of any kind. What the plan needs is one number: how much you can put toward debt each month, minimums included. Set that as your monthly budget on My Account. The difference between that budget and your minimums is your snowball, the extra that rolls to the next debt.
If your income varies, set the budget to what you can count on and add debt snowflakes in the good months.
Savings and an emergency fund
Undebt.it does not have a savings goal object yet, but plenty of members use a workaround: add the goal as a debt at 0% interest, with the target amount as the balance and the monthly amount you want to set aside as the minimum. Name it Emergency Fund. Put it where you want it in the order (a custom payoff order lets you place it first) and log each deposit as a payment. When the balance hits zero, the fund is full and the plan rolls that payment to the next debt.
The one caveat: it shows in your totals as debt. If that bothers you, uncheck Include in payoff plan on its details page and use it as a tracker only.