BFN Giveaway: Win a Premium Membership to BeDebtFreeAmerica.com
Last week I shared a debt repayment calculator site and today I’d like to share another one that you might find interesting. This week, let’s take a look at BeDebtFreeAmerica. Also, Chris, the creator of BeDebtFreeAmerica, has donated a certificate for a free Premium membership at the site so let’s take it a step further and run a giveaway, too. Check out the bottom of the post for details.
What is BeDebtFreeAmerica?
BeDebtFreeAmerica is a “debt elimination tool” that can help you optimize your debt repayment schedule. It seems to work in the standard manner you would expect from such a site. You enter all of your debts and their associated information (balance, interest rate, etc) and the software creates a customized, and customizable, plan for you to efficiently pay them all off.
Multiple Reports
BeDebtFreeAmerica provides the user with multiple reports so that can keep on top of your plan and how it is proceeding. You can view the details for one debt at a time, or a detailed list of every debt, monthly payment, interest paid, balance remaining, or just the stripped down basics of what to pay each month. For people who like to look at data a bunch of different ways (ok, for nerds like me) this is a handy feature. Click here to check out a sample account.
The tool appears to use the interest rate method for determining to order of payoff (pay off the highest rate loan first) but the site states that sometimes it chooses to give a smaller debt higher priority in the payoff list a la Dave Ramsey’s debt snowball. It does provide what I consider to be a nice feature in that you can manually adjust the order the debts are paid off if you decide that you really want to pay off a specific debt first (or last, I guess).
Free “Kick-the-Tires” and Premium Memberships
I like that BeDebtFreeAmerica provides free access as well as a premium membership. Even the premium component currently only costs $30 for a lifetime membership though, so it’s not exactly big bucks we’re talking about. The free component provides the basic functionality but you are limited to four debts and it limits some of the capabilities. For instance, with a premium membership, you can modify interest rates and add extra payments at any time and can view all of the reports (you only get the basic report in the free account). Check out this comparison for more details.
Overall this looks to be a pretty nice tool and I’d recommend you take a look at it if you are in need of the assistance. The ability to try it out via the free membership is a great way to delve into it and take it for a test spin.
Win a Premium Membership
But why settle for the free membership when you win a premium membership! If you are interested in winning a premium membership to BeDebtFreeAmerica, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post. Tell us how many debts you are going to pay off with its help….or if you don’t feel like doing that, then just say it’s none of our business!
To Review:
- Leave a comment below
- Updated: The giveaway will close Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 11:59 PM EDT.
- I will randomly select a winner using random.org . The winner will be announced February 10th and I will contact you via email – so please leave a valid email address in your comment.
- Good luck!
Check Out SeeBeyond2020.com – Online Debt Repayment Calculator
As I come across interesting and/or helpful sites on the web, I try to pass them along in the hopes that you might find the interesting and/or helpful as well. Through my personal experience, I’ve seen the freedom that comes with being out of debt and after taking Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, I’ve seen the power of the debt snowball as a tool to accomplish that goal. Along those lines, this online debt repayment calculator was brought to my attention: SeeBeyond2020.com.
SeeBeyond2020.com is a subscription service that attempts to provide you with a plan to get out of debt in the shortest amount of time possible. Now, this is not some debt consolidation deal or anything along those lines. Instead, it simply provides you with a plan to apply your current payments to your various debts in the most efficient manner to reduce your overall time until you have paid off all your debts and save you some money (hopefully a lot of money). You can see their little “How it Works” section for a bit more detail. Probably the most interesting thing to investigate if you are considering the service is an actual example plan.
As I mentioned, this service is a yearly subscription service. And it appears to me that you don’t really get an overall, comprehensive plan. Instead, I think that you get a monthly email telling you exactly what to do that month with each of your current debts. For full disclosure purposes – I have not used this service so I can’t offer any personal recommendation one way or another. In this case, I’m just pointing out a service that you might be interested in investigating. One other note if you are a big Dave Ramsey fan – I was not able to tell if this service followed Ramsey’s debt snowball technique for getting out of debt. Frankly, I doubt that they do but I am not sure. UPDATE - per the comment from Roger below, see that SeeBeyond2020 uses a hybrid snowball/avalanche method for determining your payment plan.
If you have used this tool, please leave a comment to let us know how well it worked for you and your overall impression and recommendation.
We Did It – No More Student Loans!
As I heard the garage door open, I grabbed my papers and ran downstairs to meet my wife and two older kids. I put the two papers on top of the new box and went to the door to meet them. "Quick – come in, I have something to show you." As we all came into the kitchen, I said, "I have good news and I have great news, which do you want to hear first?" "Start with the good news, of course," my wife replied. Click here to continue reading…
Am I Stupid to Pay Off Our Student Loan?
First, I have to apologize – we are not allowed to use the word "stupid" in my house. It just slipped out – honest. 
Anyway, what I really meant to ask is "am I silly to pay off our remaining student loan?"
We have one student loan left
When we moved from the southwest back to the east coast, we had just completed paying off all of my student loans. That left us with (from highest to lowest balance) my wife’s student loans, a mortgage, and two car loans. As seen on my story page and the first checkpoint post , that was the point in time where I started to get really obsessed with paying off all of our loans and getting rid of everything except the mortgage. Click here to continue reading…
The Lesser of Two Evils: Determining Which Loan to Pay off First
The other day I was asked a good question: "We are looking to put some extra money towards prepaying one of two loans, so how would you go about determining which one to pay off?" Like most good questions, there is no easy answer. For most debt repayment questions, I would turn to Dave Ramsey’s debt snowball (pay off the loans in order from smallest balance to highest) or a similar technique (pay off the loans in order from highest interest rate to lowest). But this person was asking a slightly different question. Click here to continue reading…
Subscribe to Borrow From None
Affiliates
-
Social Networking
Links of Interest
What is RSS?