Almost everyone has some kind of debt they’d like to pay off.  Debtspark wants to help you plan to pay off yours.

The app is based on the premise that, to quote their home page, “Getting control of your money starts with a basic understanding of cash flow: Do you make more than you owe?” So, Debtspark lets you enter in the amount of your debts and the associated interest rates, the amount of the payments you need to make, your income and your expenses. Then, it adds everything up, shows you how much (or how little) money you’ll have left over at the end of the month, and creates graphs to show your progress on a month-by-month basis.

Pretty basic, right? Debtspark has an attractive, easy-to-use interface, but otherwise it’s a little underwhelming.  Other financial management apps, like Mint and Wesabe, do a better job of delivering financial insights.  Debtspark is basically just a gussied-up online spreadsheet.

However, with Debtspark, you don’t have to give up your bank account login information-a bonus for people who would rather not trust apps like Mint with that info.  The flipside, of course, is that you have to update all of your account information yourself. Annoyingly, Debtspark doesn’t carry over interest rates to the next month-each month, you have to enter them in all over again.

Also, aside from helping you confront your debts head on and balance your budget, Debtspark offers no real insight about how to plan to get out of debt.  To make this app truly useful, here are a few things I’d like to see:

The option to carry balances and interest rates forward to the next month

Some of type of  tool that shows you how long it will take to pay off your debt, based on the monthly payments you  are currently making, or that shows you what you would need to pay each month to have your debt paid off in a certain amount of time.

The ability to set a projected budget and track expenses in specific categories  (like groceries) as they occur to make sure you don’t go over your budget.

What do think of Debtspark? Would it be useful for you?

Our Rating of Debtspark

Tags: Accounting

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