Note · 18 March 2026
Write the full list before you choose a repayment order
People like a rule. Pay the highest interest first, or clear the smallest balance first so a finished account feels real. Both rules can be sensible. Neither rule survives contact with a list that is missing a debt. The quiet card, the second cooperative loan, the sum a sibling expects on the first of the month: if it is real and it is omitted, the order is a story about a different household.
Four facts, one line each
For every debt the household is willing to include, the sheet needs four facts: what is owed now, what the charge is, what must be paid to stay current, and the day that payment falls. A rule about extra money is applied only after those minimums have a place in the month. Extra is whatever remains after food, housing, protected instalments, and a small reserve.
Highest-interest-first puts that extra against the steepest charge. Smallest-balance-first puts it against the account that can close soonest. In the office we price both with your numbers, in baht over the coming year, as far as the papers allow. You choose. The plan records the choice so a tired evening does not reopen the debate.
Family loans are included only in daylight
A loan from a relative often has no rate and a heavy sense of duty. Households leave it off because writing it down feels rude. If the money leaves every month, the spending picture is wrong without it. You may include it by stating the amount and the understanding, or you may leave it off and live with an order that does not mention it. What we will not do is guess.
Protected debts stay on their minimum even when their rate is low. A hire-purchase on a work vehicle is the common example. Clearing a small shop card while the pickup falls behind is a bad trade, and the written order should make that trade difficult to do by accident.
The list is the work
Households sometimes apologise for bringing a thick folder, as if the tidy version of their life should have fitted on one screen. The folder is the job. A debt-repayment engagement at this practice is mostly the discipline of one complete list, then a choice you can explain to the other adult in the house. The arithmetic is ordinary. The relief, when it comes, comes from seeing the whole month on one page.