Debt’s a nasty thing to deal with, especially if you’re new to credit cards and loans. Managing and keeping track of your debts can be a hassle and even depressing if your credit score is less than ideal. However, there’s no better feeling that conquering your debts or credit troubles.
Creditable isn’t just a debt management app; it helps you get out of debt, improve your credit score, collaborate with others and all the while for free and anonymously. Let’s take a look at getting setup with Creditable.
Overview
Creditable doesn’t want to be just another debt tracking app that reminds you of every penny you owe. While those apps can be useful, they’re not as helpful as they could be. Creditable helps you generate credit goals, which gives you something to work towards, and connect with others who have similar goals which will help you collaborate and give you motivation.
Creditable Home
Thankfully Creditable is free, at least for the time being. It’s a new app so it’s very possible some sort of paid plan may be in its future, but it would be fantastic if it could stay free or at least offer a free option. For now you can enjoy Creditable for free though!
Interface and Usability
As you’ll see as you continue reading, Creditable has a really well designed interface that makes great use of today’s web technologies to create a more seamless user experience. So not only is the user experience a pleasure but the app design itself gives it a light-hearted yet still professional feel that makes you feel a little more comfortable about dealing with debts (which we’d all like to just forget about).
Interface design
While I love the app interface and usability so far, it’s clearly a very fresh app with a few sections lacking a full array of content (Your Tools, Community, etc). This is to be expected however, but also goes to show that the Creditable team has worked hard at giving the app plenty of substance right out of the gate. This is an area many app developers falter and can result in a very bare-bones feeling app (which isn’t pleasant).
Getting Started
Getting started with Creditable is really easy and I have to point out how much I love their signup form. Click the red Get Started for Free button and a little form pops up that asks what name you’d like to go by.
Signup Name
Once you’ve entered your name and clicked continue, the next popup will appear asking for your email and desired password. Click Start and that’s all there is to it! I love the simplicity of it and wish more app developers would come up with such well integrated and simple signup forms.
Email and Password
Upon signing up, you’ll be directed to your account overview which prominently displays a three step guide to getting started with Creditable.
- Step 1: Add accounts
- Step 2: Manage credit
- Step 3: Generate plan
Getting started
But before we get started setting up our accounts and all that, I’d like to point out a few other bits on the Overview page. First, the “debt snowball” plan is explained. Although I already know about this, I think it’s great to see this information first off, even if only as a reminder for some.
Debt Snowball
Just below the “debt snowball” information is a section for community updates so you’ll always know what’s going on with the community or the app in general. I love seeing a section like this readily accessible so I know when new features are available, if there are problems, etc. Many apps keep this information almost entirely separated from the app itself and users have to go search for it.
Community updates
I won’t go through the remaining content shown on the Overview page but I’ll summarize it by saying it has the right information in the right places and a prominently displayed feedback form so you can help the developers continue to improve things.
Adding Accounts
First thing’s first—you’ll need to add your accounts so you can begin creating a plan to tackle them. Via the Overview page, click the Add Accounts link in the Step 1 box. You’ll enter the number of accounts with debt and begin entering each of their information on the next page.
Accounts Information
There’s a variety of account types to choose from with options indicating whether the account has had any late payments, if it’s in collections or if it’s a charge-off. These are all aspects that affect your credit score so be honest!
Once you’ve entered your accounts’ information, move on to Step 2 to manage your credit. One thing I’d like to see in the Adding Accounts section is the ability to add/remove accounts once on the page that you’re entering their information.
Manage Credit
If you know your credit score, you’ll be able to enter it here. If you don’t know it, you can check it for free with myFICO (credit card info. required for signup).
Manage Credit
Generate Plan
In Step 3 Creditable will generate a personalized plan based on the information you’ve entered. The newly created plan will be the new information displayed on your Overview page. You’ll see your accounts’ status and credit tasks, your debt snowball and other information.
Personalized Plan
From here you’ll be able to enter payment information, add snowflakes, view your payoff schedule for all your accounts and even see a helpful payoff chart showing the difference between your regular payoff schedule and the debt snowball schedule.
Payoff Chart
A “snowflake” is something you’ve cut back on, sold or earned in order to pay off your debts faster. Your entered snowflakes can even be included in the community snowflake list to “help others find ways to increase their debt snowball”.
Community & Questions
Creditable offers an easy way to ask the community questions. Users are able to vote questions and answers up or down, which will help keep the community “junk free”.
Questions
If you answer other people’s questions and users up vote your answer (or your question), you’ll gain reputation points. I think you can see where this is heading and it’s proven to be a pretty reliable system for communities to mostly self-manage themselves and enable users to help each other.
Q and A
Aside from Q and A, a community forum is available to further discuss your financial related topics. It seems like a great way for users to inspire and motivate each other and certainly gives users somewhere to show their excitement for accomplishments they’ve made.
Community
Final Thoughts
There’s more to Creditable than what I’ve covered here but I’ll leave those extra features for you to discover. The overall app looks and works great although it does have some maturing to do, which is expected for such a new app. It’s certainly off to a fantastic start though and well worth trying out, especially for the extra features we didn’t have time to cover!
There’s a few areas of the app where the interface could be simplified or a minute feature could be added to make things a touch more usable. That’s why they have the feedback form so easily accessible though and the bits I noticed were really just me being very picky. One rather large aspect, however, would be the apps ability to connect to your accounts to automatically detect payments or pull in information. For the time being entering information will be fine but people certainly do enjoy automation, especially when they have a pile of accounts they’re managing.
Overall, kudos to the Creditable team for developing such a great app. I look forward to seeing it develop in the future. Let us know what you think of Creditable and if you plan on giving it a try via comment below. Thanks!