We like do-it-yourself payment plans here. Much of the time we feel like you can pay off debt by using tools to organize the debt, get educated, create a payment plan and follow it. SpringCoin is one of those tools that helps you do this. It provides automated negotiations, payment plans and advice to help you pay off your debt faster.

Here is what they have to say about themselves on their website:

SpringCoin is the fastest, easiest and most cost-effective way to get out of debt. SpringCoin’s advanced software delivers the most successful, personalized debt relief solutions by analyzing thousands of consumer debt cases and repayment programs. The company’s innovative software also negotiates lower repayment terms with creditors, manages monthly payments, and tracks consumers’ debt relief progress in real-time. SpringCoin’s weekly quizzes and challenges help improve personal finance knowledge and create lasting change in consumers’ spending habits. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in San Francisco, CA, SpringCoin is funded by Y Combinator.

Payment Plan

After browsing their company information, I began by logging in and setting up my account with SpringCoin. It asked for me to provide an e-mail and password to set up my account. Once I had logged into my new account, it then requested my address, and the last four digits of my social security. It then, with my permission, pulled in my credit report from Experian. Using the credit report, it built a profile for my debt that I currently owe. After pulling in that information, it allows me to set up a payment plan using SpringCoin where I am able to pay all my debts in one lump sum payment. I like how this prevents you from missing a payment and streamlines the monthly process; however, you would have to probably do some manual tweaking if you are using the “snowball method” to reduce your debts.

Budgeting

It then asked me for my bank’s name and log in information. Using that, it pulled my income and transactions into the SpringCoin interface. It then quickly built me a budget outline based on what I was currently making and spending – very similar to Mint.com. I especially liked this feature as it categorized all my spending, what I spent on average, what my income was, and if I had any monthly surplus. I could then edit the amount I wanted budgeted in each category based on my needs. For example, if based on my spending, the budget gave me $300 for eating out/entertainment; however, I was overspending based on my income by $200. I could then decide to lower my eating out/entertainment category manually by $100 to help balance the budget. The only draw back in this feature was that it did not allow personalized categories nor subcategories like Mint.com does.

Reminders

Reminders was another great feature of this program. After pulling in my spending information from my bank, SpringCoin automatically realized which bills where monthly bills and offered to set up automatic reminders for me to pay bills such as my electric, water, etc. Remembering to pay bills is what often gets lost in the shuffle of the busyness of a month, so I thought this was very helpful.

Education

Education was a key part of their program. They offer you a weekly quiz which earns you SpringCoin points that you can redeem for rewards like gift cards. The quiz begins by having you read a couple of articles on the topic of the week such as understanding your credit report, disputing an error on your credit report, and more. After reading the articles, you then take the quiz. I felt this method of teaching helps you to learn new topics as well as make sure you retain the information. Assuming you get at least a 60% score on the quiz, you receive 20 SpringCoin points. They also have a blog where you can read many more educational posts.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I liked SpringCoin. You do have to have most of your bills and income already set up online in order to take advantage of their features to the maximum such as having your paycheck automatically deposited. Many people already do this, so I do not think this is really a draw back. Plus the great thing is that by clicking here, you can try SpringCoin for free for three months and see how it fits your needs. After the three months, it costs $8 per month for their basic plan which would fit most families needs and $35 per month for their premium plan.