Personal finance

Personal finance planning tools — not financial or tax advice: savings goal contributions, emergency fund targets, debt payoff timelines, snowball and avalanche strategies, 50/30/20 budget splits, net worth snapshots, sinking funds, and FIRE number estimates from the 4% rule of thumb. Enter your assumptions; talk to a licensed advisor before major money decisions.

On debt payoff, the two common strategies optimise for different things. The avalanche method targets the highest interest rate first and costs the least in total interest; the snowball method clears the smallest balance first and produces an early win that many people find easier to sustain. Run both — if the interest difference is small, the one you will actually stick with is the better choice. Elsewhere, treat the well-known rules of thumb as starting points rather than targets: the 50/30/20 split assumes a cost of living that does not hold in expensive cities, and the 4% withdrawal figure behind FIRE estimates came from a specific historical study of US portfolios over 30-year periods, not a guarantee for every market or a longer retirement. None of these tools model tax, which materially changes the picture.