Debt Snowball Helper
Roll your way out of debt
We built a little desktop app, and it exists for one reason: to help you watch your debt shrink until it’s gone.
It’s called Debt Snowball Helper, and it walks you through the debt snowball method which is the approach Dave Ramsey popularized as Baby Step 2 of his plan. If you’ve never heard of it, the idea is almost insultingly simple:
- List your debts from smallest balance to largest (mortgage excluded).
- Pay the minimum on everything, and throw every spare dollar at the smallest one.
- When it’s gone, take everything you were paying on it and roll it into the next-smallest debt.
- Repeat until you’re yelling “WE’RE DEBT FREE!”
Each payoff frees up more money for the next target, so your payments snowball. Small wins early, momentum forever. The math nerds will tell you that paying the highest interest rate first is technically cheaper. They’re right, and the app will even show you exactly how much cheaper (more on that below). But the snowball wins where debt is actually lost: motivation. A paid-off debt three weeks in beats a spreadsheet-optimal plan you abandon in month two.
What the app actually does
Two modes, depending on how much you want to track.
Easy Mode is the back-of-the-envelope version: give each debt a name, a balance, and what you pay monthly. When a statement comes in, punch in the new balance. The app keeps your debts in snowball order, shows who your current target is (look for the ❄️), and tells you what you should be paying once earlier debts are paid off and rolling forward.
Advanced Mode is for people who want the receipts. Each debt gets an APR and a minimum payment, and you log actual payments. The app splits each one into interest and principal, keeps a full payment history, and quietly runs a parallel “what if you’d only ever paid the minimum” simulation so it can show you exactly how much interest your extra payments have saved. There’s even an undo for the payment you fat-fingered.
It answers the question you actually have: “when will this be over?”
The app simulates your whole plan month by month and puts a date on it, not just one big “debt-free by March 2029,” but a projected “gone by” date on every single debt. It also shows the comparison that makes the snowball real: the payoff date and total interest if every debt just got its minimum, next to the date and interest with the snowball rolling. The gap between those two lines is your reward for showing up.
It’s honest about the alternative. Right below your plan, the app shows what the avalanche method (highest interest rate first) would cost in interest by comparison. Sometimes it’s a real difference, sometimes it’s pocket change, and sometimes, depending on your debts, the two orders are literally identical. Either way, you get to choose with your eyes open instead of taking anyone’s word for it.
It nudges you at the right moments. A little “💡 $50 more” hint next to the extra-cash field shows what one more streaming-subscription’s worth of money per month would actually buy you. Often it’s “debt-free months sooner and thousands less in interest.” A gentle reminder pings you if a debt hasn’t seen a payment this month. And when you pay something off or cross 25/50/75% of your total? Confetti. You’ve earned it.
Your data stays yours. Everything lives in a plain file on your own computer. No account, no cloud, no analytics, nobody’s servers. The app quietly keeps rotating backups on launch and restores them from a menu if needed, and you can export a backup file any time to move machines.
A note on accuracy
The projections assume a flat month of interest at APR ÷ 12 — the same convention as a typical mortgage. Real credit cards and auto loans accrue daily and tack on fees, so your statements will drift from the estimate. For those debts, there’s a per-debt setting to type in the actual interest from each statement instead, so your history stays true to reality while the projections stay useful.
Estimates are estimates. The plan is the point.
For the curious: how it’s built
It’s an Electron app with a Vue 3 renderer in a plain reactive state, no store library, with all persistence over IPC to the main process. The simulation engine is one deliberately boring, well-tested function that walks the plan month by month; snowball, avalanche, and the what-if hint are all the same function handed a different debt ordering.
If the app helps you, you can buy me a coffee. And if you’re deep in Baby Step 2 right now: the snowball works. Keep feeding it. ❄️
Debt Snowball Helper is an independent project and isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by Ramsey Solutions.
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