The Story
I built Downslope because I'm in the same situation as a lot of people.
Downslope is three small, focused tools for one problem: knowing where your money stands and what to do next. Debt Payoff, Budget, and Net Worth. No accounts, no bank connections, nothing leaves your device.
Debt Payoff (map every debt, build the fastest exit)
Budget (plan the month before you spend it)
Net Worth (track what you own against what you owe)
I'm carrying debt. Not the abstract kind you read about in case studies. Real balances with real interest charges showing up every month. I know what it feels like to open a statement and watch the interest eat most of your payment before a dollar touches the principal.
When I went looking for a calculator that could actually help me plan, I kept running into the same problems: tools that locked the useful features behind a paywall, tools that couldn't handle a 0% promotional card correctly, or tools that gave me a number without explaining how they got there. When I went looking for a budgeting app that thought in paychecks instead of calendar months, I mostly found the same thing wearing a different color scheme.
So I built the tools I actually wanted to use. Debt Payoff came first, because that was the most urgent problem. Budget followed because knowing your payoff plan doesn't help much if you don't know what you can actually afford to put toward it each pay period. Net Worth came after that, to zoom out and show the whole picture (everything owned against everything owed) instead of one slice at a time.
What I bring to it
I'm not a random person who spun up a calculator over a weekend. I have a finance background and spent a lot of time making sure the math is right before I let anyone else use it.
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Education
MBA, 4.0 GPA (Grand Canyon University)
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Validation
Tested against Excel amortization
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Privacy
All math runs in your browser
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Experience
Finance background, paying off debt myself
The debt payoff calculations have been validated against Excel's NPER and CUMIPMT functions across multiple scenarios. You can see the exact test cases on the About the Math page.
Why it's built this way
The personal finance space is full of tools that look helpful but exist to collect your email or sell you something. I've used them. I know what they feel like.
Downslope is different in one important way: your data never leaves your device. No accounts to create, no bank connections, nothing sent to a server. The only exception is the optional AI game plan and money check-in features, which send an anonymized summary of your numbers to Anthropic to generate a suggestion, and that's clearly labelled every time you use it.
An honest note on the Pro features. The free tier in every tool is genuinely complete (unlimited debts, avalanche vs. snowball comparison, budgeting by pay period, net worth tracking, charts, interest savings). Pro adds scenario modeling, cash-flow planning, an editable schedule, promo expiration tracking, printable reports, CSV import/export, and the AI features. I'm not hiding basic usefulness behind a paywall. See the full breakdown on the
Pricing page.
What I promise
My commitments to you
- The math is correct. If you find a calculation that doesn't match Excel, I want to know and I'll fix it.
- No dark patterns. No countdown timers, no fake urgency, no hiding the cancel button.
- Affiliate links only when they help. If I ever recommend a balance transfer card or a refinance product, it's because the numbers say it saves you money, and I'll show you those numbers.
- Your data stays yours. I have no ability to see your financial information. It lives in your browser and nowhere else.
I'm paying off debt and using these tools myself. If one stops being useful to me, I'll say so. If I find a bug in the math, I'll fix it publicly and document what changed on the Updates page.
That's the deal.
