About One Debt at a Time

One Debt at a Time started from a simple frustration: most debt calculators are either cold and clinical, or they’re run by companies quietly trying to sell you something. When you’re staring down what you owe, the last thing you need is a sales pitch dressed up as help.

So this is the opposite of that. It’s a free tool that takes your debts, does the math, and explains — in plain English — the fastest and cheapest ways out. No account. No upsell. Your numbers never leave your device.

We will never sell debt-relief products, push loans, or hand your information to anyone. We don’t have anything to sell you. The tool exists to help you understand your own situation and make your own call — nothing more.

The name is the whole philosophy. Debt feels crushing when you look at all of it at once. Taken one debt at a time, it becomes a series of small, winnable steps. You can do this.

My debt story began when I was 23. I was out of school, working as a delivery driver and making great money, when I was in a car accident that ultimately forced me to stop working because of my injuries. Nothing life-threatening — but my back just couldn't do the job anymore.

From there, my only viable option was to take a desk job at the same organization and go back to school full time. That's where the debts started piling up: student loans, housing costs, and a near-zero income. I had help from my parents, but there was no way they could have covered everything. After about three and a half years, I had around $114k in student loans, both private and federal.

I was fortunate to land a full-time job with my new education before I even finished my bachelor's — but as you can imagine, I was as green as a gourd and wasn't getting paid all that well at first. I pushed as hard as I could to improve my skills, grow my income, and be an asset to every organization along the way, but I never fully recovered from the cost of going back to college.

Life kept throwing hurdles — and some wonderful things too, like meeting my wife — but it also kept adding debt: buying a house, cars that had to be repaired and replaced, having a child, and all the things life throws at you. At its worst, we were nearly $300k in debt.

I'm about halfway through my own debt-free journey now, and I built this site to help anyone who's ready to commit — no matter how great or small your debts are. You can do it, one debt at a time.