Payday Loan Escape Planner

The fee looked small. $75 to borrow $500 for two weeks — until the rollovers started, and the fee came back every payday like rent. A payday loan’s real price is not the fee on the poster; it is the fee times the number of times you have paid it, at an APR in the hundreds. This planner makes the trap visible — every loan, every rollover, the true APR in plain sight — and then does the part no lender will: it builds your exit, one protected set-aside per payday, with the exact payday the cycle breaks.

What it does for you:
– Start Here — 5-minute setup: take-home per payday, your payday cycle in days, the set-aside you can protect every payday and your monthly essentials.
– Payday Loan Trap — every loan by lender: Borrowed, Fee, Term, Rollovers So Far; Total Fees Paid, Owed Now and True APR calculate themselves. (Samples: 391%, 443% and 261% APR — real payday math, not typos.)
– The rollover number — one line shows what ONE more rollover of every loan costs, so “just this once” has a price tag before you pay it.
– Escape Timeline — 12 paydays laid out: set aside the same amount each payday, Cumulative Saved and Gap Left count themselves down, and Status flips to ESCAPE READY the payday your savings cover everything you owe.
– Expense Log — log spending once; Loan Fees and Escape Fund are categories, so the cost of the trap and the growth of the exit sit in the same budget.
– Monthly Budget — zero-based monthly budget; Actual pulls from the Expense Log by itself.
– Dashboard — total owed, fees already paid into the trap, paydays to escape and your highest true APR at a glance.
– Monthly Summary — 12 months of spending in one view.
– Sample rows pre-filled (3 loans: $1,500 borrowed, $507 of fees already paid, $1,731 owed; escape in 12 paydays at $150 per payday) so every formula works the moment you open it; formula cells are locked (password disclosed in Start Here) and every formula is error-wrapped. A planning and tracking tool, not financial, legal or debt advice — if a lender is threatening you, a local non-profit credit counsellor can help for free.

What’s inside (.xlsx, works in Excel AND Google Sheets): Start Here · Payday Loan Trap · Escape Timeline · Expense Log · Monthly Budget (zero-based) · Dashboard · Monthly Summary (12 months).

Instant download. No shipping, no waiting. Message us if you need help setting it up — we answer fast.