Debt Snowball Free Template

Overview of the Debt Snowball Method

The debt snowball method prioritises paying off debts from smallest to largest balance while maintaining minimum payments on all other debts. Once a smaller debt is paid off, the amount used for its payments is rolled into the next smallest debt, creating a “snowball” effect.

For an in depth analysis of the snowball method – see our special report Debt Snowball Method: A Simple Way to Clear Debt?

Whilst the total saved is often somewhat less than using the avalanche method, it has the great psychological advantage of giving you “wins” early on and so may well prove easier to stick to and get to your debt goals more reliably.

Use this spreadsheet example and template to see how it works!

Download Icon for XLSX Excel type spread sheet format
Click to Download Spread Sheet in Excel format (XLSX)
Download Icon for ODS open spread sheet format
Click to Download Spread Sheet in Open Document format (ODS)

How to Use the Snowball Payoff Template

First create a couple of spreadsheets from the template. For each right click on the tab at the bottom and select duplicate:

snippet showing how to create a new sheet

Name your sheet – this first one will be the one without using Snowball.

Now enter the details of each debt to the spreadsheet. Order them by the lowest outstanding debt to the highest eg:

snippet showing initial data input

Next fill in the date column by first replacing the date in the top cell with your start time eg 01/01/26

Snippet showing the data fill handle

Then fill in the rest of the column by clicking on the handle (small dot on right bottom of the cell), then pulling down on the data fill handle – by moving your mouse down while keeping the left button down, until you reach row 100:

snippet showng the data fill handle in use

Later you may need to extend the date rows – just drag it down again like you just did.

Now for each debt select the 3 cells in row 4 – click cell B4 and then hold shift and click cell D4

Snippet showing how to select cells for loan 1

and pull down by moving the mouse with the left button down, until the debt goes red (ie it is paid off) – if you overshoot, don’t worry, the formula for the totals ignores negatives:

Snippet showing loan 1 data filled in

Do the same for the other loans. Then you will see the totals for each loan and the grand total on the right:

Snippet showing totals paid when not using snowball

Seeing what you would pay using the Avalanche Method

Create a duplicate sheet like we did earlier.

Setup your date column as before. Now fill in the initial data as before (this time be sure to order them by interest rate).

However this time we will be loading as more payment on loan one , so it will receive £100 a month, whilst the others get correspondingly less at the start:

Snippet shwong the snowball method where initial data is entered and we're going to pull down on loan 1

Select the 3 cells for loan 1 as before and pull down until the debt is paid off:

snippet showing loan 1 is now paid off

Now select the 3 cells for loan 2 and pull down until the data is filled in upto the loan 1 payoff date:

snippet showing loan 2 pulled down to loan 1 payoff date

The money that was going to loan 1 (our high interest credit card) can now go toward loan 2 -the personal loan. So change the value in the payment cell (F19 in the example) from £60 to £160. Then drag the data down again until loan 2 is fully paid.

snippet showing when loan 2 is paid off

Repeat the process for each of your loans, each time one is paid off, snowball it’s payment to the next.

snippet showing the totals when using snowball method

The result is that using the snowball method you could save £5,170!

Debt free sooner!

However also look at the time saving – with the snowball you pay off the last loan in month 84, without it we would be looking at 65 months later on in month 149!

If you want to compare with using the avalanche method, please read our article How to Use the Avalanche Method to Pay Off Debt Fast

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