7. Debt Management and Reduction

You can easily incorporate debt repayment plans into your Budget Vision forecast. This helps you see how your debt payments affect your cash flow and plan your path to becoming debt-free.

Tracking Credit Card Payments

There are two main ways to handle credit cards:

1. If You Pay in Full: Treat credit card spending like any other spending. When your payment is due, create a transfer from your checking account to your credit card account (which you can add as a negative-balance account in Budget Vision).
2. If You Carry a Balance: The easiest way is to not track the individual credit card transactions. Instead, simply add your monthly credit card payment as a recurring expense from your checking account. This is the simplest method for forecasting.

Tracking Loans (Student, Car, etc.)

Treat loan payments as simple recurring expenses.

1. Go to the date of your next payment.
2. Create a new expense transaction for the payment amount.
3. Set it to recur monthly for the duration of the loan.

By adding these as fixed parts of your budget, you can accurately forecast your balance and see how much discretionary income you have left after all your debt obligations are met. This can help you decide if you can afford to make extra payments to pay off your debt faster.