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Pay down debt with Money Manager

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Create a debt repayment plan to pay off debt faster


Explore different strategies to pay off your debts and get a suggested payment plan to help you live debt-free. Follow along as we use different Money Manager features and utilize popular debt repayment strategies to get you on your way to debt-free in no time.

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It’s available to Coast Capital members right in Coast Online® Banking and the Coast Mobile® Banking app and is free to use.

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What we’ll take you through

 Click on the links below to skip straight to the step.




Step 1 - Accounts

Link your external accounts

To accurately budget, you need to account for all your finances, even at different institutions. Linking your external accounts allows you to view all your transactions in the Money Manager. For best results, you’ll need to link it all: your chequing accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, investments, loans, mortgages and more.

Follow along with our video or check out our step-by-step instructions to learn how to use the Accounts feature.

  1. Log in to digital banking and open Money Manager by tapping Money Tools then Money Manager from the main menu.
  2. From the right menu, tap Add an Account to open the Accounts feature.
  3. Search for a financial institution by its name or URL.
  4. Select the institution from the list and enter the requested login credentials.
  5. Depending on your institution, you may need to regularly update your connection if your credentials have changed or any multi-factor authentication is required, like a verification code or security phrase.

Tip: Having trouble connecting your institution?  Submit feedback to us with your institution name and we will look into updating our connection.

Step 2 - Transactions

Review your transaction history and subscriptions

We’ll take our best shot at categorizing your transactions, but we may need a little help getting this right at first. You can review your transaction history and recategorize anything you like, and Money Manager will learn from these changes over time.

Later on, we’ll walk through creating an auto-budget based on these transactions, so take a few minutes to make sure it’s customized to your preferences.

Follow along with our video or check out our step-by-step instructions to learn how to use the Transactions feature.

  1. From the Money Manager menu, tap Transactions to open the Transactions feature.
  2. Tap the date period at the top of the page and change the date selection to Last 90 Days.
  3. At the top of the page you may see a red question mark with a number of transactions that weren’t automatically categorized. Tap this box to show the uncategorized transactions.
  4. In the category column, tap the category to recategorize each transaction.
  5. Finish categorizing your transactions for the 90 day period. Your changes will be reflected across all tools in Money Manager
Tip: There are more things you can do in the transactions tab, like viewing subscriptions, further modifying transactions, and searching, filtering and exporting transaction listings. Check out our support page for more information.

Step 3 - Spending

Review your spending

The Spending feature is a visual representation of your categorized transactions to show you where your money is going. This helps you better understand your spending and look for opportunities where you can adjust your behaviour or budgets to make sure you’re still on track.

Follow along with our video or check out our step-by-step instructions on how to do it.


  1. From the Money Manager menu, tap Spending to open the Spending feature.
  2. At the top of the page, tap the date period and specify the date range you want to analyze.
  3. Tap the Account(s) dropdown to choose which accounts you want to include.
  4. Tap on a section of the wheel to see how much you spent in each category.
    • If your spending in a category is below 3% of your overall spending, it will show with other low-spending categories in a group called “Other”.
  5. Tap on any category to see a breakdown of spending by subcategory, like how much of your Food & Dining spending is on groceries versus restaurants.
  6. Tap on any subcategory, or on the centre of the spending wheel, to see the transactions associated with it.
    • From this view, you can also edit the transaction details just like in the main Transactions feature.
  7. To return to the main spending wheel, tap the blue arrow in the corner, or in the gray area outside of the Transactions view.
  8. To see a breakdown of your income in Money Manager, tap the Income tab above the category listings.

Tip: To see a longer term breakdown of your spending, check out the Trends widget as well. See our support page or tutorial video to learn more about it.

Step 4 – Budgets

Create your budget

Creating a budget is probably the most important financial management step as it helps you set realistic spending and savings goals. Money Manager will auto-populate a budget for you based on your previous spending—you can fine-tune it as needed. Once you create your budget, check back regularly to make sure you’re on track, and reallocate budgets if need be.

Follow along with our video or check out our step-by-step instructions to learn how to use the Budgets feature.

  1. From the Money Manager menu, tap Budgets to open the Budgets feature.
  2. To start, we recommend you use the Auto-generate Budgets feature, which will create budgets based on your average spending over the last two months.
  3. From there, review your generated budgets and adjust them if necessary by tapping Edit Budget and changing the amount. You can even add sub-budgets within a category by tapping a budget, then Add New Sub-Budget and the sub-category you want to create.
  4. You can decide which categories you do and do not want included in your budget. If a category was added during auto-generation that you do not want in your budget, you can delete it by tapping the budget, tapping Edit Budget, and then Delete.

Tips:

  • The auto-generated budgets feature works best if you have linked your external accounts (Step 1) and have reviewed the categorization of the last 2 months’ spending (Step 2).
  • If you end up deciding to recategorize your transactions, you can recalculate your budget by tapping Add New Budget, then scrolling to the bottom and tapping Recalculate Budgets.

About the bubbles

  • Bubble budgets allow you to see both the health and the impact of your budget categories quickly.
  • The larger the bubble, the more of your income it takes up. The color of each budget indicates whether you are on track, nearing your budget limit, or over limit:
    • Green = below 80%
    • Yellow = between 80-100%
    • Red = over 100%

To view details and transactions:

  1. Tap on the budget you want to dig in to and bring up the budget details window.
  2. Tap on Transactions to bring up the list of transactions in that category for the current month.
  3. Finally, tap Add New Budget at the top of the screen and you can see what income will be remaining after your budgeted spending is removed. Take note of this amount for the next step.

Tip: Not a fan of the bubble view? You can also view your budget as a list. Just tap the List View icon

Step 5 – Debt Repayment

Create a debt repayment plan

Now that you’ve done your budget and have an idea of what you can put towards your debts, use the Debts feature to input that amount and prioritize your debts individually. Explore the different strategies within Money Manager to see what works best for you, but a good rule of thumb is to focus on the debts with the highest interest first, while continuing to make minimum payments on the others.

Follow along with our video or check out our step-by-step instructions on how to do it.


The snowball method is a popular debt repayment strategy that helps you pay off multiple debts quickly by paying the same combined amount every month. When you’ve paid off the highest-priority debt, take that monthly payment and put it toward your next debt. The monthly total you pay for all debts remains the same.
After setting up your budget, take a look at your income that hasn’t been accounted for yet. Subtract about 20% to give yourself some wiggle room, then allocate the leftover amount to your money goals (that could be savings, debt repayment or a combination of both). For example, if you’re projected to have $1000 unaccounted for, subtract 20% for your buffer and you have $800 remaining to put towards your money goals, and your debts can be a part of that.
  1. From the Money Manager Menu, tap Debts. The feature will show you any debts you have at Coast Capital or other financial institutions that you linked through the Accounts screen. If you have other debts to add, please revisit Step 1 of this guide.
    • If you see an exclamation mark next to any of your debts, it just means we need some more information.
      • Tap on the debt and update the interest rate and monthly payment amount
      • If you have an auto-transfer or payment set up on a schedule that isn’t monthly, please calculate the monthly amount.
        •  For example, if your payment is bi-weekly, just multiply the payment about by 26 weeks and divide by 12 months to get your monthly payment amount.
  2. Once all details are updated, each debt will be given a priority number and a forecast chart will appear.
  3. Any debt account can be hidden from the Debts chart without being excluded from other reports. For example, a credit card that is paid off in full each month may not need to be included in the chart. To hide an account, tap on the account, tap the “•••” button, then tap Hide from debts.
  4. Tap Total Monthly Payment at the top and input any additional income you can afford to allocate to your debts based on your budget.
  5. You can select which of the four snowball strategies you’d like to use for your plan. Financially, the best option is the pay off the debt with the highest interest first (while always making your minimum payments on the others), then move to the next highest interest and so on. However, if you have a smaller debt hanging around that you could pay off quickly, some members find that simply reducing the number of debts they have encourages them to pay off their debt faster. Pick what works best for you.
Tips
  • Set up a recurring, automatic payment to your debt the day after your payroll is direct deposited. Don’t have your payroll set up as direct deposit? Download a void cheque and check with your employer if they offer it.
  • Minimum payments higher than what you can comfortably pay? Talk to us about a consolidation loan to consolidate your debts into one monthly payment.
  • The dotted line on the chart represents the time it will take to get out of debt by making minimum payments without utilizing the snowball method.
  • The colourful chart represents the expedited payoff for each debt which you can achieve by using the snowball method and by paying more than the minimum.
  • You’ll see an estimated payoff date, as well as an estimate of the amount you'll save.
  • To see a payment schedule, just tap on one of the debts. Any debt below the top priority will eventually show the payment amount start to increase. This is a reflection of the snowball method at work. By sure to check once a debt is paid off so you can update the payment amounts in subsequent debts.

Step 6 - Goals

Check your new debt goals

Each debt you prioritize will be automatically be added to Goals so you can track their progress and see a forecast of when each debt will be paid off.

If you have additional wiggle room in your budget, consider making some savings goals as well. Even if it’s a small amount each month to build up your emergency savings, your future self will thank you.

  1. From Money Manager, tap the Goals tab.
  2. Goals will automatically pull in the information it needs to create a debt goal and calculate the date the debt will be paid — including balance, interest rate, and minimum payments.
  3. Check every once a while so you can see your progress towards paying your debts off. Seeing a visualization of your progress is a good way to keep motivated!

You’re done!


You did it! You’re already on your way to paying down your debts. Keep checking back to make sure you’re on track, and consider setting up an automatic, recurring transfer to set your plan on autopilot.

Let’s build the right plan, together

Our team of experts will find the right solutions for you and your goals.
Call us at 1.888.517.7000 Mon-Sat, 8am-8pm; Sun, 9am-5:30pm.

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