Frequently Asked Questions

How are Epsilon Payments useful to my clients?

First, Epsilon Payments are always fixed payments: matching your clients’ monthly payments to the Epsilon values is a one-time, set-and-forget adjustment. This can save your clients hours of hassle and stress during years-long repayment. They’ll never again have to:

• log in to a loan servicer’s website
• monitor the remaining balances of debts
• calculate and manually change payment values as a debt is paid off.

Second, Epsilon Payments automatically minimize the total lifetime costs of all analyzed debts simultaneously, so this one-time adjustment to the payment values is done intelligently. Your clients will never have to wonder whether there is a smarter way to repay.

Finally, Epsilon is offered with a number of financial metrics. These are designed to help you and your client better understand repayment. You can see what kind of lifetime savings, return on investment (ROI), rate of return (ROR), and return on cash flow (ROCF) are achievable with the debts. You’ll know exactly what your client is getting out of the money they invest in repayment, and how to compare it to other investment opportunities.

How are Epsilon Payments useful to me, as an advisor?

Below are just some of the benefits to using Epsilon Payments.

• The optimality of Epsilon Payments helps you fulfill your fiduciary duties to your clients by saving them as much money as possible.
• The fixed nature of the Epsilon Payment values makes Epsilon the simplest debt repayment strategy available, ensuring that your clients follow through with your recommendations.
• Our included metrics and visualizations make it easy for you to compare your clients’ debt repayment to other investment opportunities, justify your recommendations to your clients, and communicate with your clients.

More information on the topic of how Epsilon Payments fit into advisors’ financial practices can be found in our white paper, Mastering Client Debt Repayment: Ideal Repayment Plans for Clients and Advisors.

Which debts can be used with Epsilon Payments?

To qualify for use with Epsilon Payments, a debt must be both predictable and independent.

• Predictable means that the debt’s remaining principal, interest rate, minimum payment, outstanding interest (if applicable), forgiveness time (if applicable), and next capitalization time (if applicable) are known in advance.
• Independent means that the information above can be accessed for each debt separately, and that it is possible to direct specific payment values toward each debt individually.

Some debts that do qualify:

• Student loans with subsidized interest and/or capitalizing interest and/or loan forgiveness
• Fixed-rate mortgages
• Frozen credit cards, including those with introductory interest rates
• Personal loans
• Auto loans
• Debts with arbitrary combinations of interest rate schedules, outstanding interest, interest capitalization, and loan forgiveness.

Some debts that do not qualify:

• Variable-rate mortgages (their interest rates are not predictable)
• Income-based student loans whose minimum payments are not known in advance
• Revolving credit accounts still being charged (their balances are not predictable)

If you’d like to see other kinds of debt accommodated, please let us know — the more feedback we get about a feature, the more likely we are to implement it!

What financial metrics are included with my analysis?

We provide a variety of financial metrics with each analysis. This collection of metrics was developed with the help of working financial advisors to be as useful as possible.

Examples of these metrics can be found in this example analysis.

Is there a metric you’d like to see that isn’t included? Contact us to start a discussion, and we’ll be happy to see how we can assist you. Fees may apply.