The Debt tracker is where you record what you owe. Like Assets, it sits next to the budget — debt accounts are places, not categories. The tracker feeds the net-worth view and powers debt-payoff goals in the Lab.
Open it
Go to Debt in the main nav.
Your balance, debt-free date, and forecast
One card at the top of the Debt page covers all three: your total balance owed today, a chart of how it's moved, your Debt-Free Date — and, with Forecast turned on, where that chart is headed.
Total balance owed is shown with dollar amounts down the chart's left side and dates along the bottom. Hover any point for the exact balance on that day. Pick one of the same four ranges as the Assets chart — YTD, 1Y, 3Y, All — and the figure under the total updates to match, so switching to 3Y tells you what you paid down over three years. A falling line is the good outcome here, so it reads green and the figure says "paid down"; a rising balance reads red and says "added."
This history is built from the payments you've linked to each debt, not from a separate record of balances — so the more payments you link, the further back it reaches.
Part of that line may be dashed. A dashed stretch is estimated, not recorded: it covers payments made before the balance date you entered, so we work backwards from the balance you gave us. That works for a loan, where the payment is the only thing that moves the balance. It doesn't work for a credit card, where purchases push the balance the other way — a card you keep paying while still spending can look like it fell steadily when it never moved. So on a card, that stretch is drawn dashed to say "our best reconstruction", and the "paid down" figure ignores it entirely, measuring only from balances you actually recorded. If you want a solid line further back, update the balance regularly — each figure you record becomes a real point. Debts you've marked paid off aren't included: the app doesn't record when they were cleared, so counting them would invent a history that never happened.
Your Debt-Free Date is the month you'd clear every tracked debt if you keep paying the minimums, shown alongside your current principal (total owed today) and projected interest (what you'd pay in interest along the way). The estimate uses each debt's current balance, APR, and minimum payment, so you'll see a date as soon as every active debt has a minimum payment set — if one is missing, add it. If a minimum payment is too small to cover that debt's monthly interest, the balance would never fall, and the card says so instead of showing a date. It's an estimate from what you entered, not financial advice.
Forecast
Turn on Forecast and the balance chart keeps going past today — a dotted line runs out to your Debt-Free Date, so you see the path there, not just the destination.
With a few months of balance history, a second dotted line appears based on what you've actually been paying recently, not just the contractual minimums. If you've been putting extra toward a debt, the gap between the two lines is what that extra is buying you — a sooner debt-free date and less interest along the way. That second line needs at least three months of recorded payments to show up; with less history, only the at-minimum line is drawn.
That pace is measured from your loans only — the debts typed mortgage, auto, RV, student loan, or personal. A credit card's balance moves with new purchases as well as with payments, and BudgetLabs only ever sees the payments, so a card that's been sitting flat all year would look like one you'd been steadily clearing. Rather than promise you a debt-free date built on that, cards are left out of the measurement — along with HELOCs and lines of credit, which revolve the same way — and so is anything typed Other, which could be either. Setup now asks you for the type of each debt, so new accounts are counted correctly from the start. If a debt of yours is really a loan but is typed Other — anything added during setup before August 2026 started that way — open its Edit pencil and set the right type to have it counted. Debts you've already cleared don't count either. If nothing you track qualifies, you'll see the at-minimum line on its own. The extra we do measure is then applied across all your debts, highest APR first — so if you've been overpaying a loan, the forecast assumes you'd keep directing that same money at whatever you owe.
A mortgage needs its escrow amount filled in to be counted. Most mortgage payments bundle taxes and insurance in with principal and interest, and the minimum payment people enter is usually the P&I figure from their loan documents. Left to guess, BudgetLabs would read that escrow as extra principal every month and hand you a payoff date years too early — and there's no way to tell from the numbers alone whether a payment above the minimum is escrow or genuine overpayment. So a mortgage with no escrow recorded sits out of the pace measurement, and the card tells you which one to fix. Add it under Escrow / Fees on the debt account and the mortgage rejoins the calculation.
Forecast is a per-device setting, like the chart range — it starts off, and your choice sticks the next time you visit from the same device.
Add a debt account
- Tap Add Account.
- Pick a type: credit card, student loan, auto, mortgage, RV, personal, HELOC, line of credit, other.
- Enter:
- Name (e.g., "Chase Sapphire") and lender.
- Original balance — the balance when you took it on (or when you started tracking).
- Current balance and valuation date.
- APR — the interest rate.
- Minimum payment and payment frequency.
- Due day of the month.
- Escrow amount — for mortgages with escrow.
- Save.
Loan term
For fixed-term loans (mortgage, auto, student, personal), enter the original Loan Term (in years or months). BudgetLabs uses the original balance, APR, and term to compute the contractual monthly payment — and fills in the Minimum Payment for you if you leave it blank. Each debt card then shows the term, an estimated payoff date, and how much time is left (e.g. "2 yr 3 mo"). Revolving accounts like credit cards have no fixed term; just leave it blank.
Grouping and collapsing
Debt accounts are grouped by lender, and each group sits inside its own bordered panel tinted with that lender's colour, with a matching dot beside the group name — the same scheme the Assets page uses for institutions. Groups are ordered by outstanding balance, with anything missing a lender pinned to the bottom.
Tap the coloured dot to choose any colour you like, with a picker or a hex code. Lenders and institutions share one set of colours, so picking a colour for Chase here also changes it on Assets, and the other way round. Colours are saved to the budget, so they follow you between devices — unlike the collapse state above, which stays on the device you set it on.
Two levels of collapsing, both remembered on the device you're using:
- A whole lender — tap the group header to fold every account under it.
- A single account — tap the chevron on the card to fold it down to its name, type, lender, and estimated current balance (zero once it's paid off). The collapsed balances in a group still add up to the group's own total.
This is a viewing preference rather than budget data, so it stays on the device and won't follow you between phone and laptop.
Update a balance
Debts don't auto-sync. Update balances when you make a payment, or on a monthly cadence — whichever fits how you work. Open the account, change Current balance and Valuation date, save.
On mobile, opt into the monthly update reminder under Settings > Notifications.
Mark a debt paid off
When you hit zero, mark the debt paid off instead of deleting it. Open the debt's Edit pencil and switch on Paid off, then save.
Paid-off debts stop counting toward your active debt count, the total owed, and the debt-free projection — and they stop generating bills on the Bills page. They stay in the record, so the payment history and the historical net-worth chart are unaffected. Switch it back off any time.
Linking transactions
When you log a payment toward a debt, link the transaction to the matching debt account. Expand Show linked payments on the card to see every one, split into principal, interest, and escrow, with the running balance after each.
Only the principal reduces the balance — interest and escrow leave your account but don't pay the loan down. On a loan with an APR, each payment is charged one month of interest; on a credit card, interest accrues over the days since the last activity. If your lender publishes the exact split, put it in the transaction description (Interest Amount: 330.81 Escrow Amount: 997.96) and BudgetLabs will use those figures instead of estimating. Recording an extra principal-only payment? Write Interest: 0 in the description so none of it is treated as interest.
Payments dated before your recorded valuation date are already baked into the balance you entered, so they're shown for history (marked with a *) but don't reduce it a second time.
Net worth
Total debt is summed and subtracted from total assets in the Lab's Net worth view. As you pay debt down, the gap closes — that's the chart you want to see climbing.
Goals
Set a debt-payoff goal to track a specific debt against a target date — e.g., "Chase Sapphire to $0 by December 1." The goal opens to a live trajectory chart with what-if sliders for monthly contribution and target horizon. See Lab — Goals.
Mortgages and escrow
Mortgages have a couple of quirks:
- The principal balance is what counts toward net worth — not the full payment.
- Escrow (taxes and insurance) goes out, but it's a budget category, not a debt reduction.
Track the principal in the Debt tracker; track escrow as a recurring expense category in the budget.
Related
- Assets and savings — what you own.
- Lab — Goals — for debt-payoff goals on top of these accounts.
- Hank — ask "list my debts" and Hank will summarize them.