If you’ve ever made a late payment on a personal loan or other bills, you’ve more than likely seen your credit score take a hit. According to creditcards.com your bill payment history counts for 35% of your FICO score. Ninety percent of all lending decisions in the U.S. use FICO scores in their decision-making process.
Payments are considered late and reported to the credit bureau at least 30 days after your minimum payment is due. Once reported to the credit bureau, your late payment will appear on your credit report and stay there for up to seven years.
If you’ve taken out a personal loan and you’re juggling paying it back along with all of your other bills, it can get tricky fast. With different due dates, tracking your bank balance, and making sure you’ve got money left over for groceries, eating out, and shopping, you need a convenient way to quickly access and manage all of your finances. Sure, spreadsheets and computer software work just fine when you’re at home. But when you’re on the go and you need to access your financial information—especially if you’ve got a personal loan payment due, say, today—then there are a variety of mobile apps designed to help you do just that.
Don’t forget – if you’ve missed a payment on your Leap Credit installment loan, we can help.
1. Debt Payoff Planner
Available for iOS and Android
Debt Payoff Planner is a manual input app, meaning there’s no automation when it comes to how your financial information is collected. Unlike others, this free app allows you to put in your debt balance along with the starting balance, the minimum payment, and the annual percentage rate for each debt you owe. Then you can choose your strategy for paying off your debt, like the snowball method. The Debt Payoff Planner app will suggest a plan, the length of time the plan will take, and the expected date of total debt payoff. The only downside to this app is that every time you make a payment, you’ll have to manually enter it. But you can request email reminders and track your success. You can also see the result of making minimum payments vs. additional payments, which helps give a clearer picture of how long it will take to pay off your debt using both methods.
2. Debt Manager
Available for iOS
For only $0.99 the Debt Manager app, which is only available for iOS, is a great way to apply very strategic debt payoff methods, like the snowball and debt avalanche methods. What’s really intuitive about this app is that once you’ve successfully paid off one loan, this app automatically takes those payments and applies them to the next loan in the queue. After inputting your information in the app, you can try various scenarios of additional payments to see how quickly you could pay off your debt. Track your loans and credit with user-friendly bars and charts, which can be exported as a PDF file or embedded HTML.
3. Mint
Available for iOS and Android
Mint may be the most well-known when it comes to personal finance apps, and the most diverse. It provides you with a complete picture of your finances all in one place. Just link your credit and debit cards to your Mint account and this app will pull your transactions, categorize them, and keep track of how you’re spending your money. Manage your bills and personal loans, create a budget, and get free access to your credit score. With Mint, you can also get a breakdown of the factors contributing to your credit score so can be proactive in managing it. Schedule bill payments or reminders to manually pay your bills and personal loans. You don’t have to have the mobile app to use Mint, you can access your account on your computer as well, which makes it all the more convenient.
4. You Need a Budget (YNAB)
Available for iOS and Android
Also known as YNAB, the You Need a Budget app is built around four rules:
- Give every dollar a job
- Embrace your true expenses
- Roll with the punches
- Age your money
These rules not only help you create a better personal budget but also help you control your spending. With YNAB you can import transactions from your checking account and apply them to each budget category to get an accurate picture of your spending. If you accidentally overspend, you can adjust your budget categories to help keep a balanced budget. Get detailed reports of your spending each month. YNAB claims that, on average, new users save $600 in the first two months and more than $6,000 in the first years of using the app.
5. Prism
Available for iOS and Android
Much like Mint, Prism is another personal finance app that gives you a complete picture of your finances. With access to one of the largest libraries of billers—more than 11,000 of them—Prism automatically pulls in due dates and balances so you can keep track of your bills and send reminders when it’s time to pay them to help you avoid late payments. You can also schedule and pay your bills and loan payments directly from the app, so it eliminates the need to log into multiple accounts.
Need help paying overdue bills? Apply for a personal loan with Leap Credit now to help get caught up on your payments.