Debtless
Payments & progress
Your credit after paying off debt: what to expect
What typically happens to your credit reports and utilization after you pay off a debt, how long updates take, and what to check afterward.
Money decisions, made clearer.
The Debtless Journal
Debtless is a 100% free debt payoff app for iPhone. Practical ways to get out of debt, one decision at a time. Clear examples, useful routines and a free app to put your plan into practice. The Debtless Journal is a free debt blog of practical articles on payoff methods, credit card interest, loans, collections, budgeting and privacy, written for anyone deciding how to pay down what they owe. It turns reading like this into a plan, drawing on 442 articles in this library.
The Debtless Journal articles
442 articles
Loans & bills
Using home equity to pay cards: what you put at risk
The real tradeoff in using home equity to pay off credit cards: a lower rate against turning unsecured debt into debt secured by your home.
Life & debt
A debt plan for seasonal work
How to build a debt payoff plan around seasonal income: pay aggressively while the work is steady and drop to minimums during the slow months.
Privacy & habits
Make the minimum automatic and the extra deliberate
Why automating minimum debt payments while deciding the extra amount by hand each month can protect your credit and still let your budget flex.
Getting started
Paying off debt in your 20s: what to do first
Where to start on student loans and early credit cards in your 20s, and the habits that make later decades of debt easier.
Payoff methods
What to do when debt payoff stalls in the middle
How to diagnose why a debt payoff plan slowed down, whether it's new charges, a smaller payment, or a rate increase, and adjust it.
Free debt apps
Debt payoff charts: which ones tell the truth?
Learn to read a debt payoff chart correctly, including the difference between a balance line, payments made, and a labeled projection.
Budget & cash flow
An annual budget reset for a debt plan
Once a year, rebuild a debt-plan budget from scratch to catch insurance renewals, raises and changed minimum payments all at once.
Credit card debt
Authorized users and card debt: who owes what
How liability usually works between a primary cardholder and an authorized user, and why it helps to track your own share separately.
Payments & progress
How long to keep debt and payment records
General guidance on how long to keep payoff letters, loan statements and tax documents tied to debt, and which ones to keep indefinitely.
Loans & bills
Co-signed a loan? How it belongs in your own plan
Why a co-signed loan counts as your own liability, how it can affect your debt-to-income ratio, and how to monitor it and ask about release.
Life & debt
Replacing a car in the middle of a debt plan
How to size a car replacement while you're paying off debt: look at total cost, keep the purchase modest, and fit the new payment into your plan.
Getting started
Paying off debt in your 40s and 50s
How to weigh debt payoff against kids, retirement saving and other competing goals in your 40s and 50s, with a way to prioritize.
Payoff methods
Where tax debt fits in a payoff order
How to think about federal tax debt alongside credit cards in a payoff order, and why an IRS payment plan needs its own attention.
Free debt apps
How accurate are debt app projections?
See how a small input error, like a wrong APR, changes a debt app's payoff projection, and how often to recheck the numbers.
Budget & cash flow
Debt payments on commission income
How to structure debt payments around commission income: size minimums to a floor month, then send a set percentage of everything above it.
Credit card debt
Joint credit card debt: planning when two people owe
How joint credit card liability generally works and how two people can plan and record payments on a shared balance.
Loans & bills
What happens to debt when someone dies
What happens to a person's debt after they die, who the estate pays first, and when a survivor might actually owe money.
Life & debt
Debt that is not yours: identity theft first steps
What to do when a collector chases you for debt you never took on: report it to the FTC, dispute it with the bureaus, and freeze your credit.
Getting started
Paying off debt before retirement: what to weigh
How a fixed income after retirement changes which debts to prioritize, and why a mortgage and a credit card deserve different treatment.
Give your plan a place to live.
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