Monday, January 12, 2009

Pay Your Debt More Often

You probably get the same spam every day that we do - "reduce your debt now with our service!", "get out of debt fast", etc. Well, we at StudentPlatinum.com decided to get in on the action and really research how all this debt calculation works. It's not a secret - in fact, by law the calculations which determine your interest and payments cannot be a secret, it's just somewhat unpleasant math.
So, that said, here is the not-so-secret formula to reduce your debt faster - Pay your debt more often.
Probably not the closely guarded formula you were looking for, but it's true. It works on the principle of average daily balance, the billing method most credit cards use to compute interest. The faster you reduce your average daily balance (ADB), the more you'll save in interest. Here's an example. Say you have a starting balance of $1,000 on a credit card with 15% APR. If you do nothing all month and pay $100 at the end of the month, your finance charge will be computed as such:

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