The three inputs
Every payoff plan comes down to three numbers per debt and one for you:
- What you owe: current balance per card or loan.
- What it costs: APR and minimum payment.
- What you can pay: the monthly amount your cashflow supports beyond minimums.
Most calculators make you type all of this in. With your accounts connected, the agent reads the balances and your cashflow directly, and you supply only the rates and minimums.
Pull balances and interest paid
“List every credit card and loan with its current balance and credit limit. Then search the last twelve months for interest charges and finance charges and total them per account.”
The agent calls list_accounts for balances and limits, then search_transactionsfor interest charges. Card issuers word these differently (“interest charge”, “purchase finance charge”), so if the total looks low, ask the agent to list the descriptions it matched.
The interest total is the number that tends to change minds. It is what the debt cost you last year, in dollars, from your own statements.
Add rates and minimums
BankBridge does not provide APRs or minimum payments. Copy them from your latest statement or card app and paste them in:
“Card ending 4417: 27.24% APR, $85 minimum. Card ending 0932: 21.99% APR, $40 minimum. Auto loan: 6.9%, $412 payment.”
The account endings are the stable way to refer to accounts. The agent sees the same last four digits.
Find what you can pay each month
“Using my last six months of cashflow, what is my average monthly surplus after expenses, excluding credit card payments and transfers between my accounts? Show the lowest month too.”
The agent starts with get_monthly_cashflow for each month. That tool counts every inflow and outflow, including card payments and transfers between your own accounts, which is why the prompt asks to exclude them; the agent finds those with list_transactions filtered by category. See stop double-counting credit card payments. Plan on a number closer to the lowest month than the average. A plan that only works in good months fails in the first bad one. If your income varies, read budgeting with irregular income.
If the surplus is small, ask where it went: build a budget from your real spending and look for subscriptions to cancel.
Compare avalanche and snowball
“I can pay $900 a month total toward these debts. Simulate month by month: avalanche (highest APR first) and snowball (smallest balance first), paying minimums on the rest. For each, show payoff date per debt, total interest, and the order. Assume no new charges on the cards.”
Ask the agent to show its work as a table, or in Claude Code to write the simulation as a short script, so you can check the arithmetic instead of trusting a summary. Then pick. If the two plans differ by a small amount of interest, choose the one you will follow.
Track it monthly
Save the plan in a Claude Project or a file. Each month, ask:
“Compare my card and loan balances to the plan. Am I ahead or behind? Did any card get new charges?”
New charges on a card you are paying down are the most common reason plans slip. The agent can list them by merchant so you can see what they were. For the bigger picture, add the debt totals to a monthly net worth snapshot.
Connect your cards and checking ($5 per month per bank) and start with the interest total. It is a two-minute question.