The debt optimiser

On the Debts page, each liability carries its balance, interest rate, and monthly payment. Ember auto-amortises the balance forward from the last update you gave it, so the figure shown is a live projection rather than a stale entry. Each row also shows its own estimated FIRE-date impact — how much sooner FIRE arrives if that debt's payment gets redirected into investments the moment it's cleared.

Every debt has an after-payoff policy, set per debt on the Debts page:

• Invest the freed payment — once the debt is gone, its old monthly payment starts flowing into an investment of your choice instead.
• Roll into other debts only — the freed payment accelerates whichever debt you're still paying down, and only starts investing once every debt is clear.
• Roll into other debts, then invest — the default: freed payments clear your remaining debts first, then flow into investment once you're debt-free.

You can also choose a target investment for the freed payment and, optionally, have the redirection stop once you reach retirement rather than continuing indefinitely.

The Debt optimiser compares three strategies side by side for any extra monthly amount you'd put toward debt:

• Minimum only — the baseline: pay the contractual minimum on every debt, no extra redirected.
• Avalanche — direct the extra amount at the highest-interest-rate debt first. Usually minimises total interest paid.
• Snowball — direct the extra amount at the smallest balance first, for the psychological win of clearing debts faster, even where it costs a little more interest overall.

Each strategy card shows time-to-debt-free, total interest paid, and the payoff order Ember used to get there, so you can see exactly which debt clears when.

When you enter an extra monthly amount, the optimiser also shows an honest overpay-vs-invest comparison: is that spare cash better spent accelerating a debt's guaranteed interest-rate return, or invested at your expected portfolio return instead? This weighs your debt's actual rate against your assumed investment return — it isn't a FIRE-date projection in itself, so treat it as a rate comparison, not a substitute for the "what-if" impact figures shown alongside it.