Installments,paid off one by one.

Installment tracker

How to keep track of installment plans

One installment plan is easy to carry. Three at once, each with its own end date, are where it gets hard.

Why installments add up quietly

Each plan looks small on its own. €25 for a phone, €60 for a sofa, €120 for a laptop. Nobody signs all three on the same day: they arrive months apart, each one affordable at the moment you agree to it. A year later they add up to €205 a month, and the only place they meet is your bank statement.

The second trap is the end date. People remember when a plan started and rarely when it finishes. Yet the month a plan ends is the month money frees up, and the month a new one starts is the one that gets tighter.

Four things to note for every plan

Before you track anything, take each agreement and write down:

• Payment: the amount of one installment, as it leaves your account.
• Count: how many payments there are in total, and how many are already paid.
• First payment: the date of the first one. The last follows from it.
• Total: payment times count. For a 0% offer it equals the price. If it is higher, the difference is what the financing costs you.

Use the payment amount from your agreement. Figa does not calculate interest: it plans the payments you will actually make.

See every plan in the months it is paid

A list of plans tells you what you owe. It does not show which months carry two or three installments at once. For that, each installment has to sit in its own month, next to the rent and the other bills.

In Figa you add a plan once: select Add expense, enter the amount of one installment, turn on Recurring expense and choose how often you pay. Set the Series start to the first payment, then under End condition choose After X occurrences and enter the number of payments. Every installment appears in the months ahead.

Know how far along you are

Open a plan to see its Series balance: how many installments are paid, the amount paid and remaining, the total, the next payment and when repayment ends. Paying an installment works like any bill: select Mark as paid, or select several in the month list and mark them together.

When the last one is paid, Figa shows Commitment fully repaid! and the plan stops appearing in the months after it.

When a payment moves

Sometimes a lender moves a payment, or you agree to pay one later. Choose Skip this occurrence for that installment. The balance then counts it separately, as Paid, Skipped and Unpaid, so the numbers keep matching what really happened.

A plan with a set number of payments cannot be paused or ended in Figa. For a bill that runs until you stop it, use a recurring bill that never ends instead.

Before you sign the next one

Look at the months ahead before you agree to a new plan. If the laptop ends in May, a new plan starting in June keeps your monthly costs where they are. Starting it in January stacks it on top for five months.

The same view answers a simpler question: can this month take one more payment? If the months ahead already look tight, the answer is in front of you before you sign.